Whoever is against the healthy eating policy, say "I"...

[purpleduck]

Ok, well, I am not really against it, but it seems to be an excuse take away some of the kids rights.

For example, my dd had half a jam sandwich in her snack box. On whole wheat bread. This was after she had 3 portions of fruit for her breakfast, and was going to have another four in her lunch...
The LSA looked in her snack box, and said "That's not healthy.."

I am so angry!!! As a girl, my dd will face so much pressure about her body/diet etc - how dare they start her feeling anxious about it at age 6?

Now my daughter -who is a fantastic eater- is anxious about her snack.
I am fuming - she sits quietly through her lessons, does as she is told, and gets along with everyone...

While I agree in principle with promoting healthy eating, surely this should take the form of EDUCATION????
And if a child really is having trouble sitting still, THEN look at his/her diet.

I just feel my rights as a parent are being sidelined....

What do you guys think? Has it gone a bit far?

It is the usual case of ideas, which are good, being introduced but without the additional funding/training neccessary to implement them properly. Yes, healthy eating does need to be introduced in schools. Unfortunately, many children are given a whole load of crap for lunch and something needs to be done about this. However, there is a huge difference between a child been given a jam sandwich/small treat and a child been given crisps, chocolate and coke.

I was reading an article in Mother and Baby magazine today about how some people have taken the healthy eating to such extremes that their children have become malnourished.

I am not sure how schools can get round it. Definitely, speaking to the parents and not having a go at a poor 6 yr old would be a start.

In my class, the infants get fruit provided by the LA fr snack. I was very happy for the parents to send in crackers, healthy cereal bar, dried fruit instead as I felt that some children needed something more than a tiny apple or carrot for snack. I got a bollocking from my head who told be that I had to send a letter home stating that it was the fruit provided or nothing. Crazy, especially as the parents knew that crisps/choc was not allowed.

Schools are given more and more to do and not given the funding/training to do it properly.

Hmm well lets see. At the moment we have a situation where increasing numbers of primary school aged children are becoming more and more obese. This is obviously bad news for them. We also have a national health system. Obesity is a factor in many diseases. So more fat kids means more ill kids/adults, which means higher costs to the health service. The health service is paid for by the taxpayer. So we all have an interest in reducing the growth in obesity. If individual families paid the costs of growing fat children then maybe we could all turn a blind eye (although there still would be societal costs, such as loss of earnings etc). One of the ways that is being tried to improve the eating habits of children is through health eating programmes at schools. Is it really such a terrible thing to have a slight restriction on what you can put in the lunch box? You can feed your child whatever you like the rest of the time can't you?

Having said that our school just goes for blanket rules, such as no chocolate, fizzy drinks or sweets in boxes. Snack time is fruit only. We don't have any policing that I am aware of, just lots of food wheel stuff.

I had to stop myself arguing feriociously with my poor 5 year old daughter the other day when she very solemnly explained to me an artificial colouring- and sugar-stuffed pot of yoghurt was healthier than an apple crumble I'd made using apples from our garden, oats and wholemeal flour!! Because school had told her that this yoghurt (which they serve there) is the 'best' pudding.

Again, you can sort of see where they are coming from but, as with most things, simplification leads to nonsense.

I'd like to see schools trying to give children a sense of where food comes from, what it does for us and why we need it, always, perhaps, emphasising that over-processing is the road to nutritional disaster.

Besides, a piece of good quality chocolate from time to time is a positive health food as far as I'm concerned

I'm all for the healthy eating campaign. Teaching kids in the afternoon after a cocktail of E numbers for lunch is no pleasure.

But it's inappropriate that children are denied a sticker or a certificate if they have a cake in their lunchbox. If I was the OP, I would be cross.

It's not the restriction so much nooka, it's the way this rule has been enforced. Making the OP's DD feel like some sort of criminal because of what she was given to eat.

I realy don't get why having fruit only at snack time is such a big deal.
It isn't hard to follow this rule but peope still send in their dcs with cereal bars and even a sausage roll was bought in at the end of last term

I'm in the States at the moment, and it is very different at school where there are no healthy eating rules. Icecream is sold at lunch time, snack time is whatever you want (and not consistently applied anyway, so the children's fruit often comes home with them). There is a very short after lunch playtime (ds claims 10 mins) only (no morning or afternoon break). Very few children walk home as they either get picked up or get the school bus. The obesity problem is much worse..

LucyJones - ours isn't a 'fruit only' policy. it just specified something healthy. what the heck is wrong with a cereal bar?

It is easier to label than a pear!!

I am all for promoting balanced, healthy eating - but outraged that idiot folk are sanctioned to say 'that's not healthy'directly to a child, and about a jam sandwich. Had it been wholemeal bread and butter, she wouldn't have done this. But add a smear of fruit and sugar and syuddeb]nbly she can undermone a child's confidence and humiliate them.

Similiarly on another thread, at LaurieFairycakes's school mass produced, chorleywood processed 'best of both' bread is 'allowed', while homemade, properly fermented, unbleached organic flour bread is not allowed if it is white. How can schools be peddling such uneducational misinformation? It's a crime against education as well as food!!!

Sign me up!

(until sensible guidelines and information replaces 'bad science' officiousness)

Orm, I know, and I'm sure that I would be just as peeved. But I would also feel a bit embarrassed. Because jam sandwiches are not very healthy are they? Now really... Not that we haven't occasionally realised that we had run out of stuff for lunches every now and then and had to make to

The trouble is that schools need to be consistent, and it is much easier to take blanket positions than think about the rest of the picture. That's why I think it is simpler to have straightforward rules such as no fizzy/chocolate etc.

Oh and thinking about the US differences, they serve peanut butter an jelly sandwiches every day for kids on school dinners who don't like what's on offer. I thought peanut butter had been pretty much banned at all schools now?

there needs to be a nuge financial investment by the government with a financial cost to the parent attached - tax code - child benefit.

its easier to tell the teachers though

i am sure the teachers must actually want to teach regualr subjects instead of teaching your children how to be a fully rounded person

a whole lesson personal, social and sexual education - in seniour school

can't you teach my 15 year old something that might help him pass his GCSEs and if you want parents to parent as you see fit MR Brown, then put in some proper thinking, investment and infrastructure in doing it properly

Lots of cereal bars are not very healthy - lots of sugar for example. Not that fruit are sugar free zones - dh says it should be vegetables only

Well the five a day campaign and the healthy eating programme are backed by research you know... and there have been investments (such as providing the fruit and veg). I'm not sure why trying to get primary aged children into the habit of eating more fruit and veg should be thought of as a bad thing, or has anything to do with GCSEs, except that if you have a healthy diet you might find it easier to concentrate at the age of 15. But hey, what the hell, let them eat crap, because it might annoy a few parents to be told that their choices might not always be the right ones...

Not that I am saying that the way that the policy has been implemented is going that well if the result is traumatised children.

Yes but for a snack, Nooka, surely it is better than a chocolate bar, packet of crisps, sausage roll...I remember being so hungry at that age, a bit of fruit was not really sustaining enough.

I do hate this blanket approach when a healthy lifestyle has to be taken in the round.
A jam sarnie when coupled with five a day, plenty of protein and lots of exercise id fine. More than fine.

Another yawn here.

Sure, the occasional sugary snack or packet of crisps won't do any harm, and might even be beneficial in not making them uptight about food- but why do they have to be consumed on school premises? Why can't the children just have this type of snack when they get home from school, or even on the way home if they're that desperate.

To me, sending crisps into a school that's working on healthy eating does look suspiciously like you are trying to make a statement. Can't see the point tbh.

Ive got buns defrosting in the oven for ds's return. No need to rub them in the teacher's face iyswim.

Arguably a jam sandwich isn't unhealthy, home made jam, can even be sugar free and wholemeal bread, who's making the decision I wonder.

I am just glad to be out of the loop tbh. Home educating avoids all this sort of nonsense.

kids run about more and need energy foods, (carbs I mean not sugar) a healthy pudding like a homemade jam tart or banana cake cannot be sanctioned against can it?

I'm afraid I would be questioning the policy it's OTT. They should just focus on getting school dinners right and there wouldn't be so many pack lunches..

I have mixed opinions on this. I'm all for encouraging those who don't eat healthily to do so, but not at the cost of making the rest of us feel like naughty children if we give our children a bar of chocolate or a packet of crisps.
As - i think it was Colditz - said, there are too many people uneducated in proper nutrition handing out advice in schools. LSAs or TAs who are trained in tehir job, but not in food and nutrition.
My step dad is a janitor, there are 4 of them, 1 has to supervise the school ahll where the packed lunches are with 3 TAs, and the another does the dinner hall.It's a small school, about 150 pupils, in a small town where everyone knows everyone else
He has told me about children who turn up with slices of plain bread, nothing on them, and a can of coke and don't eat it, and also the children who have wholegrain bread with lettuce and tomato in it, a bottle of water and a flapjack. They eat the flapjack and that's it. Now both those children are IMO, suffering, because neither is having a drink, and apart fromt eh flapjack, no food either.
They are supposed to encourage the chidlren to eat, and as step dad says, if a 5 year old doesn't want to eat a lettuce and tomato sandwhcih then you can't physically force them. They are supposed to say "oh that's a healthy lunhbox today," or "oh you've got coke in there you're not supposed to", but not to remove food, as the ehad teacher rightly pointed out, the child with the plain bread and coke might eat it and it mihgt, sadly be the only food he gets.

In those 2 scenarios, I think both lunchboxes were wrong, as neither is benefitting the child involoved.

My DD has school dinners so it doesn't really apply to me but I can see the point.
Of course a jam sandwhich is fine as part of a balanced diet but I guess they have to make the rules based on those with awful lunchboxes.

Say a jam sandwich with carrot sticks and hummous, a homemade flapjack and a nectarine with water to drink is fine but a jam sandwich, a packet of monster munch, a mars bar, and a chupa chup with a can of coke to drink is not.

They can't really analyse every lunch and have to say what is healthy or not based on it's own merit, rather than decide whether it's part of a balanced diet or not.

FWIW, I let DD eat junk but it's in small amounts. If she had packed lunches they'd be healthy though, the junk can be saved for at home.

hmm it sounds frankly ridiculous to me, they should have a policy of no pack-ups and provide healthy school meals. Policing pack-lunches is going to far.

I send in £1.50 per week for my DDs break, P1-4 all get fruit. They get a variety, not just one piece and are encouraged to try the 'exotic' fruit on a Friday. This is fine and the teachers have noticed a difference in their behaviour. The only other thing I agree with is no fizzy drinks.

yes I can concur with no fizzy drinks because it does affect behaviour but rather than impose sanctions they should feed them. What happens if the pack-lunch is deemed unhealthy, is it taken away? Or do they then have to sit and eat it?