Mothers buy chips to get around schools healthy eating

[Blandmum]

I have just heard in the radio that some mothesr have been boycoting a schools healthy food initiative.

They have been taking orders from the kids, going to the local chippy, and taking food trollys of junk food round to the children at lunch time.

Oh FFS!

Taking out of the equation those small numbers of children who have special needs issues with food, what the fuck do these women think that they are doing?

How do they think this will help the children or the school?

I have just seen one of the mothers on the TV arguing their case.

She makes two points.

A. Children have the right to choose.

My answer would be, no they don't, because they are children and they will make crap choices that will damage their health

B They were doing this because the ikids don't have time to eat.

Now this argument initaily looks more sensible, and schools do need more provision for dining facilities.

However, if they want to make sure that their kids can eat, why not send them in with a pack up? Or if they don't have the time (and I do see that some familes could be pressed for time), why not buy them a ham salad sandwitch on brown bread and a bottle of water. But they don't do they? They want the kids to have the 'right' to eat chips every day.

See answer to point A.

I stand by what I say, they are idiots.

Nothing to do with class. It's to do with ignorance.

Just shows how desperately we do need these initiatives in schools and how much we need to start reducating children, in schools, about healthy eating and nutrition. Because these kids are not going to get it at home are they?!

The woman are idiots. They are doing nothing to help their children at all.

I agree, it's more to do with ignorance than class.

And if you take away eggs, potatoes, milk and pasta, a healthy food family menu IMO costs more money than rubbish food.

If you had £10.00 to do a weekend's worth of shopping, to buy enough to to really satisfy your family, how tempting would it be to buy bargain offer frozen chips, burgers, fish fingers, tinned peas etc instead of choosing a bag of real potatoes, eggs, pasta? Ok these food are cheap but are bland unless you add things to them. Without all those expensive proteans (cheese is relatively expensice, let alone parmesan, and good meat or fish would be out of the question) spices, sauces, olive oil, butter, your healthy food choice looks a lot less appetising.

I love the shopping trolley in the photo though -it adds a certain something.

I think sometimes people feel attacked at a fundamental level not because they choose to feed a crappy diet, but because it's just what they've always eaten. They were brought up on this themselves by their own parents and can't see a problem with it. In relatively recent times, along come all these experts who say their lifestyle is rubbish and it doesn't go down well because we all know how touchy people get when their parenting is brought into question.

I think it's sadly going to take longer than one generation to alter people's eating habits. It can't happen overnight.

'You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place' says it better than I can.

I don't know though. When I was little my dad was on 3 day week and my mum had to buy and cook food for us on very limited money. But we still didn't do rubbish - everything was cooked and bought from fresh - not all provessed. She managed well on that.

I agree the temptation is there, but with the knowledge and determination it can be no more expensive, especially shopping away from the big supermarkets.

It's the situation which is risible, nothing to do with any personal qualities the women themselves may or may not have! Tramping through a graveyard with a purloined supermarket trolley to hurl packets of chip over the fence is a funny situation. Darkly funny, yes.

I would have been beside myself with excitement if Mums at my school had done this, and I would have been clamouring for a food parcel whether or not I liked chips!

Attack multinationals who advertise crap food to children and increase portion sizes etc etc? Abso-bloody-lutely I do.
But this thread was called "Mothers buy chips to get around schools healthy eating" hence the discussion of the mothers. And anyone who thinks that in Britain you cannot have a pretty good idea of someone's class by listening to them and seeing them is somewhat naive IMO. I didn't mention their class however, it was assumed by other people that I was attacking them because they weren't middle class, which is absolutely wrong. Being brought up in a working class home in Yorkshire does not mean that you want to undermine your children's school and feed your kids crap, and I should know.

I think it is possible to eat healthily if you are determined enough, on a limited budget - but it is harder to get a good variety consistently and make dishes appetising to children.

Hulababy, I don't know how 'healthy' food prices today compare to those in the 1970s. And of course there were far fewer cheap rubbish food options then.

I know I could probably make some great dishes on a £10.00 weekend budget, but would be raiding my food cupboards for all the extras - like pesto, stock cubes, sea salt, dried herbs, and these would not come out of that £10.00.

I can understand how someone who had a limited food budget might feel riled by the healthy food message. If the powers that be ordered me to buy only expensive organic food for my children, or else be labelled as a bad parent, I'd be riled, too.

Blu, me too - if mothers had done this at my school, I'd have been compelled to try their offerings.

sorry haven't read all of this thread can i just add some insight - fat mingers who do they think they are?

But tigermoth isn't that the point - that although it's not easy or convenient to eat well on a very tight budget, it is possible if you are determined enough. Call me judgemental, but I can't help feeling that as a parent, part of my job is to be determined enough. I find it unbelievably sad that we as a society have allowed the pursuit of profit to create families where parents are not motivated enough to eat properly on a tight budget, partly because they don't understand the long term health and welfare implications of feeding their kids shite as a regular diet, rather than occasional treat.

Eating healthily for the £1-54 that a secondary school lunch costs seems a good solution to me! And it's free for the people with least money.

I agree with you tigermoth I think you've got a valid point.

For some parents its a choice between sticking to a small food budget and having enough money to put into the electric or gas meter or spending a little extra on the little extras to make food better and running the risk of going without electric or gas.

It does happen. My friend is one example.

I'm not saying that some of that ten pounds or whatever couldn't be used to buy some appples a few oranges, or veg etc but when things like fishfingers chips or burgers or are on offer and cost less than a pile of fruit and veg then thats what some will go for out of nessecity.

Alos I think that so many many people these days simply can't cook or know how to get the best from food if you are on a low budget and I think thats what the government should be doing, investing money to teach the basics, from local schemes that are accessible to all, to actual proper cookery lessons in school.

But not everyone can afford school dinners, If you are a single parent and you work 16 hours a week and claim tax credits then you aren't entitled to free school dinners.

What I found myself thinking after the initial anger had subsided was - aren't any other PARENTS complaining? If a pair of fat idiots turned up with a shopping-trolley full of chips and other junk outside my daughter's school, I'd be on the phone making representations to the governors. Or even out there telling them where they could shove their lard-burgers. And so would many other parents.

Not that it would happen, because my dd goes to a nice middle-class village school and not a grim sink-comp in Rawmarsh.

(Is there an emoticon for "smug grin"?)

yeah, I'd be fecking fuming, I'd need someone to hold my bin liner for me, I'd be that mad.

I think its the walking across the graveyard with the shopping trolley that has me ROFL.

UnquietDada re you allways a wind up merchant

wind-up? moi? No, I just say what I think.

than I won't say what I think of you

Why not? It's the place for a frank exchange of views... And many people on here are far harsher than I ever am.

UD I think you sometimes eat chips on the quiet.

have I gone too far?

thats ok then as long as every one else is doing it

Heresy, Filly!!! I am grievously insulted. I'll have you know I only consume the finest organic comestibles. Only the other day, my dd was heard to say "Daddy, what's a chip?"

you can get organic chips, you know.

Oh yes, believe me, you can

I'm surprised there hasn't been any combative "direct action". I'm imagining two jaunty women called Jessica and Fiona pulling up at the school railings in their 4x4, jumping to the ground in their sensible Birkenstocks and setting up a rival stall a hundred yards further down. Their wooden bead necklaces would be swinging as they unload crates from Waitrose filled with organic carrot-sticks, fresh pasta and low-fat natural yoghurt...

I think the school has probably gone from one extreme to the other too quickly. Why can't they serve chips fried in rapeseed oil, with chicken or ham and salad. Nothing unhealthy about that. Kids need some fat, just needs to be the healthy kind.