I despair - the healthy eating message in schools

[FurtherSupport]

I really have tried with my DC. I believe the best diets have everything in moderation, lots of fruit and veg, plenty of protein, fats so long as it's not so much it's you overweight, avoid processed food and artificial rubbish and include minimal sugar and refined carbs.

I'm in no way obsessive about it, but this is what we aim for.

The message from schools is all low fat and replace sugar with sweetners. At the school where I work they serve an ice lolly that is basically coloured flavoured water as dessert. It's low in fat, sugar and salt and therefore must be healthy.

DS1 is just back from cadet camp and thrilled to tell me how unhealthy the food has been because he's had a cooked breakfast every morning before going out on the moors for a long active day. OTOH, he thinks (despite me continually telling him otherwise) that the fruit cola they sell at school is healthy because it says on the bottle it contains one of your five a day

Really good idea movingonup about a single issue charity that remains genuinely impartial. Does it exist? I'm not aware of one - do any experts on the thread know?

I'm so angry about this but it just feels like almost a lost cause - let's face it, the government want to privatise everything which simply means even more influence if the big corporates over what happens in the former public sector. Shame Jamie Oliver has gone quiet on this. And I'm guessing by their silence that MNHQ aren't up for it.

Going to track down Fed Up later.

Depressed emoticon.

Just told DS1 who the sponsors are and he said this is getting funny ...

Just had a quick look and two charities operating in the UK regarding food education for children. The Children's Food Trust - looks fairly good about cooking education until you look at the list of partners: Brake foods, Iceland, Tesco. Then there's Jamie Oliver's Food Foundation which seems better and more ethical in terms of where the money comes from but isn't really involved with food education in schools.

Bit depressing that we have nobody impartial keeping an eye on this. Although quite reassuring that we don't because judging by this thread it wouldn't be working.

I have read the guidelines for school meals and the expectations are low. For example only one wholegrain dish a week

I hope mn can do something on this. I don't know why it fires me up, I don't know why I even care. It's not like you have to take shit advice.
For some reason fake food and people pacifying kids with food are the two things that get my back up I don't even know why because I can choose not to.

Fed Up is on Netflix BTW if that helps anyone...

I suspect it fires you up Rabbit because children told shit advice as the truth doesn't leave parents any where to go.

And there is no choice. This stuff is insidious and controlled by people who do not have your best interest.

The lack of choice, the indoctrination and the ticking time bomb that will affect everybody is what gets to me. But mainly the rubbish being peddled as truth thing gets me cross. It's an insult to my intelligence and causes problems for my children and the children of people I care about.

I just found it on u tube, cant wait to watch I'm so sad

I'll admit I'm one who needs help with understanding all this. I do get the eat real food thing & our evening meals are all home cooked fresh gluten free (coeliacs) but we eat cereal, squash, yoghurts,crisps,sandwiches, jam, God forbid grapes etc
I get so confused by all the messages I think sod it I'll just do my own thing. I prepare all our food on a Sunday & I don't have time to try & research new meal plans or what we should be eating let alone make paleo muffins or whatever with ingredients I can only get from specialist shops & that's not even taking into consideration how the kids would moan & argue with me about it. Arrrgh I just feel it's yet another pressure on me that I don't know how to fix. Certainly if my kids were taught the 'correct' message at school that would help families or at least the next generation

I've put a lot of the 'correct' message in my Austerity Housekeeping eBook. No paleo muffin bollocks there, just two months of balanced menu plans and shopping lists, plenty of fruit and veg in simple meals that take 20-30 minutes to cook. Ingredients from any supermarket, economical.

I don't think grapes are bad at all.
I think you cant go far wrong if you think produce rather than products and if there is a lower fat version of something don't bother with it because its probably sugar loaded and won't sustain you like the real thing.
After fucking around with low cal, cutting this food group and that food group, 5:2 etc to loose baby weight I gave up and started eating what my ds has always had and the weight has nearly all gone because I just don't need to eat as much or as often I'm satisfied easier and I don't think about food as much even tho my dinners are nicer now. My fridge always has blue milk, real butter, the dark chicken meat, mackerel. Obviously we have fruit and veg but tbh I'm always on a serious budget so I usually use frozen veg myself. Treats are not bad, no fruit is bad the thing that's bad is pushing sugary foods as all the time foods because they are packaged up to display one healthy angle when actually they are still a cake but with oats tipped in or still a sweetie but one with fruit sugars and highlighting the 1 of your 5 a day angle, you need to know when you are having a treat and no be deceived into thinking its a healthy all the time snack.

DiamondsInTheFlesh I know you have to be gluten free so including the examples for others who want an idea what to try.

The only thing you really need to know is that veggies take up half your plate. a quarter should be for carbs and a quarter for protein as a general guide.
Your veggie bit should include as many different colours as you can. eg carrots, peas and sweetcorn for a hot meal or lettuce, toms and yellow pepper for a cold meal.

Carbs should mostly consist of whole grains, potatoes and brown rice but try to include things like rye (ryvitta is easy to get a hold off), barley, buckwheat, polenta. If you have a cake for dessert, curb the carbs on your main meal.

protein should be as unprocessed as possibly. If you want the chop with fat on it. Eat it, just don't do it every day. Try to eat fewer meat portions and use lentils and beans for protein too if you can. A bacon sandwich or sausage and mash every once in a while is fine too.

Fats will come into you diet through cooking and dressing foods. I don't go overboard with fat but I don't skimp either. I have butter on my toast, dress my salads with oil and fry bacon in a pan.

I agree Rabbit, with "know that you're having a treat". That's one of the big issues IMO. If you have cake or ice cream or a candy bar, you know it's sugary and it's a treat. But so many foods are chock full of sugar and all sorts of crap and are just as unhealthy as cake, but they're pushed as "healthy options" by the corporations. People honestly think they're eating well and they might as well be having sweets.

I watched Fed up. That poor girl making so much effort to get nowhere.

Totally going to watch Fed Up on youtube later.

Are we getting anywhere with a MN campaign?

I think that MN really should take it up as a campaign.

Would MNHQ like to comment?

I would absolutely be behind a campaign.

Would it be possible for MN to run/support a campaign at the same time as having partners like Asda and Mini Milk, which are two from today's home page, but there are loads of others, many on that Change4Life list?

I'm assuming that a campaign is probably too risky to MN's commercial contracts. I guess hence the silence. A shame.

So what can the rest of us do??

I think MN could potentially support a campaign while preserving their relationship with sponsors, but could not possibly run one. Which is fair enough - it's not their job to take on government policy, politicians and big corps.

Support could be things like not endorsing or testing products that make healthy eating claims or are branded healthy while being very high in sugar; promoting and sharing the literature and information from a non-biased source.

I don't see why MN (if they were so minded) could not help promote or campaign for better food education in schools but someone else would need to establish what exactly that education should be because that's a big responsibility and MN's advertiser relationships would mean that it can never be wholly impartial.

Like this MovingOn

This is exactly the kind of thing that winds me up. In moderation, in place of sweets, I'm sure they do no harm, but to sell them as being health food....Grrrr

Yes. I may have mentioned that product as an example once or twice on this thread

I was a tester so I made my comments on the thread but the number of testers who were impressed because it is a "healthy snack" is really depressing. Of course not everyone is as anal as me and looked up the sugar content and compared it with Haribo where it came off worse but still, it is a worry.

I think it would be really powerful if a big organisation like MN said: we can't test your product while it is branded as being healthy because it's sweets. If you took all the 5 a day and healthy marketing off the product and advertising then we would be very happy to send out to testers as a treat food.

There is no such thing as bad food but there is such a thing as misleading marketing.

Oh those bloody Change For Life leaflets. Dds used to come home with them from First School and I couldn't believe they were giving out such crap information.

I'd support some sort of campaign - Eat Real Food /get big corps out of school nutrition etc.

"Handy bags of healthy food snacks" Hmmm. Something tells me this isn't going to happen.