Packed lunches....Grrrrr

[HenniPenni]

Rant alert....DDS school has banned all crisps, snacks, chocolate and chocolate covered cakes. But they are still allowing children to take things like cheese strings, cheese dippers, fruit winders etc.

Whist I agree to a certain extent with what they have banned, I have been extremely annoyed to find out today that they are not even allowed to take cakes that contain chocolate chips! how can they decide that but allow cr*p such as cheese strings/dippers etc.

I wouldn't mind but my DDs all take at least two pieces of fruit/veg, and to be honest their lunch boxes now look boring and unappealing.

LOL Didn't realise this thread would still be going!

Todays lunchbox consisted of:

Tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches,
Grapes,
a small clementine,
flapjack
an an Alpro dessert (DD has a dairy intolerance and can't stand the Alpro yogurts- I wonder how long it will be till I'm told that she can't have that as it's not a yogurt!)

an yes she does have marmite in her sandwiches too, but only with cheese.(NOT STRINGS. YUK)

AND my D button is packing up!!

what wrong with jam sanwiches? Jams got lots of fruit in it.

"All of you who say your kids eat healthy breakfast and dinner - why not give them a healthy lunch instead, and give them the crap in the privacy of your own home so that it doesn't affect either the school's efforts to promote healthy eating, or other children's views of what normal food is? "

I'm with Fluffy on this one - and my lo's do eat 'crap'(chocolate, crisps etc) from time to time.....including....wait for the suspense....> McDonalds! But I like to maintain this sort of thing as an occasional occurrence rather than the daily norm, and it's harder to fight that battle if the child alongside them is chowing down on a club biscuit

Dd's school food today was: Breadsticks and raisins for snack

and for lunch: ham sandwich on wholemeal, chopped melon, a mini babybel and a banana

...she doesn't complain about it being 'boring'

However post dinner time tonight if she eats a satisfactory amount of vegetables she may just get a bakewell tart.

sigh I didn't say there was anything wrong with jam sadwiches in themselves. I also don't believe children will implode if you feed them jam on toast for breakfast. I was using them as an example of how it's easy to build up a lunch box with little nutritional content. I stayed behind at my sons lunchclub a few times and saw similar for the meals of 3 year olds. All carb based and a distinct lack of protein, let alone much else a body may need.

My point was that if you have a few rules, it may encourage people to think of an alternative to say the chocolate or the crisps. Rather than have both.

Yes, yes, it's possible to have unhealthy sandwiches with cheese and lots of mayo, no jam is not a waste product from the devils intestines. Thought I should add that in before anyone else wanted to point it out

The jam we have at home is high in fruit content, it's only fruit and sugar. One very large bag of sugar But I'd imagine you'd have to eat quite a bit to get one portion of fruit out of it. In the process a young child would probably get much of it's daily sugar allowance.

in my day they were more interested in making sure you'd washed your hands before eating and that your shoes were clean!

In my day they re-inforced the table manners you had at home.

Whereas now, they encourage kids to eat like savages.

We enforce table manners at our school.

And we insist on hand washing although we do let the shoe one slide I must admit Jools

At both my kids' schools, they don't give them enough time to eat. So inevitably food either has to be wolfed down in an uncivilised manner or they're still hungry.

exactly fluffy!

ah I remember it well - all herded into the loos to wash hands - dinner lady at the exit where we had to walk past and show front and backs of hands before we went into lunch!

Shoe inspection was in the morning!

we enforce table manner too St.G. Some of them have terrible table manners and the amount of food that ends up on the floor is shocking!

I think if they are banning crisps and sweets then they should also ban the other rubbish foods like the dippers etc. My dd has quite a healthy lunchbox, she's just started reception and has
a wholemeal sandwich/roll with ham/turkey/chicken with lettuce and cucumber
a piece of fruit (she has a piece of fruit at morning break too) usually banana, grapes or apple
small box of raisins/some nuts in a bag
fromage frais
small box of pure orange/apple juice
a homemade cake or muffin

I don't really give either of mine crisps because they are really awful but no food is banned just had in moderation and to be honest they never want crisps anyway. They eat chocolate but have healthy diets and eat varied foods and I do think it's best not to have banned foods.

I wish my DD's school would ask parents not to put in chocolate biscuits/crisps etc

Mine have I suppose what you would call a healthy lunch. I choose not to put crisps in and rarely a chocolate biscuit

Today they had wholemeal sandwhiches with ham, tangerine,grapes, cheese and some bread sticks

they will also have yogurts

But then my Dd's come home and say has chocolate biscuits every day, why can't I? has crisps every single day, why can't I?

so as usual I am the bad one coz I don't want them eating crisps and chocolate every day

But, each to their own I suppose.

Maybe the schools could limit chocolate/crisps to twice a week???

am just interested to know why you all do packed lunches, is it becase school meals are turkey- twizzler variety?

have 2 children, that would cost £15 a week for school dinners, approx £60 a month

I know I have too feed them a meal when they come in but you don't notice that cost the same

we don't have £60 a month to hand over for school dinners

Plus I would prefer to know what they are eating,

also Not sure if they would always eat the school dinners

apparently the other week it was a spicy curry and some parents complained lol

Hopefully there are others who will say they haven't got £60 a month also!! lol

I only have one in primary now but last year there were 3 of them. School dinners would have cost us 22.50 a week (£90 a month). We felt that we could do better for them with the money.

When I had all 3 at primary last year it would have cost me at least £105 per month.

DDs1&2 wouldn't have eaten school dinners as their taste is quite conservative, DD3, on the otherhand would eat anything from the menu, including spicy curry etc.

ah, hadn't reckoned on more than one child being fed! sorry, just got dd at school atm....

dinny our school doesn't provide meals, and anyway ds probably wouldn't eat anything if they did.