Should schools dictate what goes in your child's lunchbox?

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi all,
We've been asked by the Press Association to comment on the Packed Lunch Policy, which advises that lunch boxes should include at least one portion of fruit and one portion of vegetables every day and should avoid crisps, chocolate bars, biscuits and sweets. Maybe you've been told off for putting a treat in your child's lunchbox? Or maybe you're pleased that government's helping you stand up to pester power? Do you think the guidelines necessary/useful? (Thanks in advance)

Here's why they are asking:

By Rosa Silverman, Press Association

(ADVISORY: First ran yesterday under embargo)

Page 1: 02:47

Nearly two thirds of parents believe schools should not dictate what they put in their children's lunch boxes, according to new research released today.

The Government's School Food Trust (SFT) has issued advice on the subject and early last year drew up a Packed Lunch Policy schools could use.

But a survey suggests parents resent such intervention, with 64% saying schools should not tell them what to put in their children's packed lunches.

Just 10% of parents interviewed admitted that their children were not eating the healthy lunch they packed for them, the study by consumer researchers Mintel found.

Emmanuelle Bouvier, senior consumer analyst at Mintel, said: "Mums and dads may feel insulted at the assumption that they don't know what to put into a simple packed lunch.

"Many parents choose packed lunches precisely because it gives them greater control over what their child eats - much more so than with school dinners.

"These new guidelines clearly take this control away and understandably this is putting people's backs up."

But the survey also suggested that parents had been making healthier food choices for their children since the Government published its guidelines.

In 2006, before the latest initiatives were introduced, 66% of mothers said they tried to give their children a mixture of healthy food and treats.

In the latest survey this number rose to 86% of parents.

Nearly three quarters of parents (71%) thought school dinners were healthier than they used to be.

The SFT said its packed lunch guidance was intended to help schools work with parents to ensure as many children as possible received the fuel they needed to stay healthy and alert.

A spokesman said: "Our research has clearly shown that the average packed lunch is not as nutritionally sound as a school dinner which is, of course, now subject to rigorous standards.

"It is up to individual schools to adopt policies of their own but many parents have told us that school meals can take away the worry of putting together a packed lunch because they are nutritionally balanced."

The guidelines include advice that lunch boxes should include at least one portion of fruit and one portion of vegetables every day and should avoid crisps, chocolate bars, biscuits and sweets.

:: A sample of 532 parents or guardians of children aged four to 16 were interviewed.

end

Fennel said:

"I'd be happy with the guidelines. It's all very well for mumsnet-types to blather on against it but so many children have utter crap in their lunchboxes, and I don't see why it shouldn't be part of going to school to have to eat something half way healthy."

This is a very good point, Fennel, but are these parents going to take any notice if the current guidelines are made more stringent/enforceable? If they're not following the guidelines now, what's going to make them change?

I'm not sure there is an easy solution to this problem. IMO it starts with parents who don't know how to cook from scratch - and that's a self-perpetuating problem. Children brought up by parents who reheat frozen food and never cook from scratch, aren't going to learn this skill on their own - and now there's so little cookery in schools, they aren't learning it there either - so they're just going to go on doing what they know, and another generation will grow up on rubbish and convenience food.

ok.

Guidelines fine.

I mean, it's not going to be a policy filed away between Homework and Numeracy, is it?

Penguin and a packet of crisps every day?!

Well, from my reading of the OP it's guidelines. And a small survey base. And a highly spun comment. But hell, I'm a journalist, I might be wrong.

So rather than regulate the lunch box - teach the children to cook healthy food from an early age. That way they will know what they are supposed to eat and how to cook it, which in turn will mean that they will feed their own children a healthy diet.

Yes Katy! If healthy eating is so bloody important why don't they focus more on "Food Tech" lessons and make them compulsory?

No. I have no objection to rules about bringing other food/drinks to school (no sweets, etc), but parents should be able to decide what their children have for lunch.

On the odd occasion my DS has a packed lunch it is healthier and more balanced than the baked potato and beans he often chooses for hot lunch. And yes, he has a chocolate biscuit - it's pudding.

That's a bit...long-term, though. It's not going to reduce their own medium-term risk of dying.

(Mind you, I am personally - and probably irrelevantly - deeply conflicted about the use of school time on cooking. I suppose it's OK if this time (as opposed to the many decades ago when I was a gel) boys are covered as much as girls. And it doesn't detract from, you know, properly learning stuff.)

food tec is compulsory in first year, is it not?

And a sizeable chunk of the curriculum at primary is taken up with food and nutrition.

And parents should teach some basic cooking.

These are just guidelines. One more tool to raise awareness.

Baked potato and beans is pretty damn healthy, actually. Fibre, carbs - complex ones, protein, a helping of veg (beans/pulses count once, so as long as it's his only helping of the day), fairly low in salt and sugar, low in fat. I'd be very happy if my children had that for lunch.

It's thoroughly well-balanced.

I like the idea of healthy suggestions rather than bans or deliberate rules.
Also, school meals often give deserts that are hardly as nutritious as lunchbox rules. I have my DDs weekly menu in front of me and the desert list is as follows (give a week in advance with tickbox method of pre-ordering):

Mon: Rice Pudding with Raspberry Jam
Tues: Lemon Drizzle Cake with Custard
Weds: Chocolate Sponge and orange, choc sauce
Thurs: Pineapple Upside Down pudding with ice cream
Fri: Ice Sponge Square

(all days offer fruit or Yog as alternatives)

They are very proud of their menus and make a big deal about the healthy balance... yet serve all that up. It is fine and have no issue with it apart from the fact that my DD got criticised for taking in a fairy cake with pink icing last week... Emailed a letter to the governors over the weekend

No of course schools shouldn't dictate what goes in my child's lunchbox.

The numpties in charge of dictation would be dictating aspartame and nasty low-fat artificial foods. I do know better than them, to be fair.

I posted this ages ago, but my step dad is a janitor. he told me (without naming names) about 2 children int eh same class. One gets a wholemealt sandwich with salad - no meat, or cheese in it jsut salad, a bottle of water, some rice cakes and a yoghurt. he eats the yoghurt. thats it, nothing else, doens't drink teh water.
Another child in teh same class gets a can of fizzy juice, 2 slices of bread and butter and a penguin. he eats the penguin. nothing else, doesn't drink the fizzy juice either.

So surely both children are losing out?
There is a mother of a child in Ds2s class, she told me once "I don't buy any kind of fruit even tinned it's far too expensive, I'm a single parnet, I can't afford luxuries like that".
Then was in the shop in front of me buying 60 cigarettes.
Thats the mother's they need to educate

Our school has recently banned Jam and chocolate spread. I still send Ds1 in with jam sandwiches, it's the only sandwich filling he will eat, and he is a good eater.
I am waiting for the school to say something to me, becasue no one, especially the Government have got the right to tell em how to bring my children up. They can't run the country properly, so why should we trust them to look after our children?

Message withdrawn

Schools should only dictate if they are prepared to serve free school meals. Then they can tell parents what their children are to eat - by providing it!

They immediately assume that children eat badly at home. Which is insulting to those of us who do feed our children good food.

Sometimes I give my dts a little chocolate item (note I said little) or a biscuit, or sometimes crips in their lunchbox. But they still have their fruit and veg. They need a treat now and again.

Stop being so damn miserable about it all - not all mums are feeding chips to their children through the school gates!

Ds1 came home with chocolate icecream around his mouth on friday. If he had had packed lunches he wouldnt have been allowed a cereal bar.

How is that sensible?

In answer the the OP, in our case no, ds has to have a high calorie diet and we are encouraged to give him crisps and cake ect, but if they have to make special allowences for him he is going to stick out like a sore thumb and be resented by the other kids.

Plus it should be parents choice!

Charleen for doctors note health reasons i would say any child could have what the want in their lunchbox

OTHERWISE

yes schools should dictate

at the moment my ds mooans buckets as he does not have choc mini roll crisps etc like his mates

No - The problem is that making healthy choices is quite complicated (and lots of people are too ill-educated to make them). The trouble is that the staff at a primary school are unlikely to be trained in nutritional science and therefore impose blanket-bans which bludgeon the point in. So in DD's school, you are allowed muesli bars for breaktime but not a wholemeal sandwich. That is so non-sensical it is baffling.

I also think that it can be difficult for tiny reception children to move from the five-small-meals policy that most nurseries seem to have to school where they can only eat carrot sticks in between breakfast and lunch (which can be an awfully long period).

Food issues are massively complicated - we have a society which prizes the beauty of thin-ness above all but is STILL rolling in obesity. Bludgeoning in with crude 'food rules' is confusing and harmful for tiny children who really need to be focusing their learning on more important things, like settling into school and making friends.

No I don't think they should dictate it. I think they should encourage the contents to be healthy but thats it.

Like others have said, I also don't get why a child with a packed lunch can't take chocolate or similar, but the children having school dinners get chocolate cake for pudding.

Mind you our school recently stopped the cook from making cheesecake because apparently it wasn't healthy

My children take a wholemeal cob with cheese or ham filling, 1 piece or tub of fruit, yoghurt, mini chedders, raisins and fruit juice and 2 of them have been teased by other kids for having such healthy lunchboxes

No. I'm not stupid, I know what constitutes a healthy diet. To ber honest, if one of my dcs is going to eat crisps, I'd rather they did it at playtime then after school. I think that those parents who provide a packed lunch of cr*p are very unlikely to change the household's eating habits just because the school tells them to, and really, is a piece of cucumber once a day going to improve the diet of a child who eats rubbish at home all the time? Healthy eating as part of a lesson is good - educates the next generation, but I don't want to be part of a lame solution.

no, it's none of their business

balance.

A treat as part of a healthy meal - fine
removing anything and everything that isn't lettuce - wrong
filling your kids lunch box with chocolate and biscuits and forgetting to put anything of any nutritional value in there - wrong

So I think the schools should send a leaflet home if they notice a child's lunch box is dreadful, and should have the power to take action if the parents continue to decide that 3 mars bars and a pack of skips is a good lunch for their child, but I think they should back the feck off if someone has a mini twix for after their healthy lunch.

Rather simple I would have thought.

During secondary school I bought myself a burger for break and a burger for lunch EVERY DAY from 1986 through to 1991

To justify this, I thought 'oooh loads of protein and iron'!!

It's amazing my brain isn't actually a sponge