Healthy School Lunches

[Dimplenose]

I just want to have a rant as I'm fed up (excuse the pun) with today's news reports on unhealthy lunchboxes verses school dinners.

Surely it's better for a child to eat something at lunchtime even if it is unhealthy rather than to leave most of their school lunch.

It would be lovely if all our kids all had a healthy packed lunch but I don't think it's lack of knowledge on the parents part that causes them to send an unhealthy lunch but the hope that their child will eat anything at all.

 

[wilma-bride]

Sorry to disagree, Libby, but I think that there has to be a balance. As someone with an incredibly unhealthy diet, I can still recognise that my children 'need' certain things in their diet.

Let's face it, given a choice, most kids would prefer to eat crisps, chips, biscuits and chocolate over fruit and vegetables. Just because I don't eat the 'right' things doesn't mean that I don't have an obligation to the health and well-being of my child and, if that means providing them with a healthy choice at lunchtime, then that is what I should (and do) do.

Don't get me wrong, DS and DDs have a chocolate biscuit and crisps with their lunch but they always have some sort of fruit and usually a vegetable like carrot sticks or cucumber too.

It's about balance and moderation. When I think back to the last time the whole 'healthy vs unhealthy lunches' thing made the news, I remember all thos Mums who were coming to the school gates at lunchtime and bringing their kids Burger King and McDonalds. It was completely ridiculous.

And I do think a lot of it is down to education. As someone who has struggled with my weight my whole life, I am trying to teach my kids about healthier choices and eating habits, in the hope that I can save them some of the misery I have suffered due to being constantly battling with weight.

ETA - Maybe I am just lucky that my children, especially Daniel, actually like some of the healthier choices but I'm not convinced that, had I never made them eat these things in the first place, I wouldn't have a real struggle getting them to eat it now. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you give a child crisps and chocolate and then suddenly try to get him/her to eat a carrot, out of the blue, that child will probably put up a fight. If you give in, the child will probably never choose the healthy option. If you persist, you might eventually make a difference. And, obviously, the younger the child when you start making those educated decisions for them, the better.

 

[joolz1910]

This is a tricky one. I don't do lunches (DH does these) and he has a far more laid back attitude to food than me. I try to buy healthy options and encourage the kids to snack on fruit/breadsticks but they would prefer chocolate and sweets. I think you need a balance of stuff they enjoy, and stuff that's good for them - and we all know that these two things are rarely the same.

 

[silver apple]

I'm with Joh on this. I've also struggled with my weight all of my adult life and have always been very fussy, so when my dc were small I was determined that they would be healthy eaters. They don't have to eat their meals, but they aren't given anything else. Luckily they now eat ANYTHING

I am a school nurse and the proportion of obese children that I see is staggering, and I really don't want that for my children.

Having said all of that, I think it is completely up to each individual parent to decide, good or bad, what their child has in their diet.

 

[Head_in_the_clouds]

Alot of schools round here ban any drink but water and no crisps, sweets or things that are deemed unhealthy are removed from the child's lunchbox. This goes down to things like homemade flapjacks, and homemade "healthy snacks" like chocolate free brownies (you can make them with prunes and cocoa powder). Part of me thinks it is a good idea and part of me thinks its terrible. I think its horrible that parents allow their children to get obese and it is so sad when you see an overweight child. However, I think some of the schools round here are like police/dictatorships! I once bought a lovely pencil case and stationery set for a friend's grand-daughter only to find out that home bought Stationery was banned and the school would provide pencils and equipment so that all children had the same.

I think parents should have the right to decide what their child eats and I would feel quite upset if I felt someone else was making this decision for me. I am a very healthy eater and very health conscious, I love food, I love to cook and I rarely eat "junk food". As a kid my mum would always make sure I had something sweet in my lunchbox (like a fun size chocolate bar, or a digestive biscuit) and most days I had a packet of low fat crisps (like Go Ahead or Golden Wonder Lights) alongside my fruit and hummus/crackers, pasta salad or whatever. This was for two reasons; at the time we didn't know about my heart condition but I used to faint and go weak alot - the doctors advised I always had something sweet for an emergency and something salty to dilate my blood vessels but the other reason was that the other kids used to eat chocolate bars, crisps and fizzy drinks everyday and there were rumours going round that I was anorexic and that was why I looked so ill all the time and was fainting. I think by banning foods they sometimes become more tempting and this can actually cause children to rebel when they get older. My Mum never banned any food, my parents both come from cultures where the attitude to food is everything in moderation and the focus is on healthy home cooked meals. I was never raised on fish fingers, chips and beans or processed foods. My Mum's friend was very controlling with her daughter as she started to become overweight, so she would put her on diets. It didn't work - her daughter got worse and actually got a job whilst at school to fund her overeating - this was all because she was rebelling at her mum saying "you can't have this, you can't have that." I think its down to the way we were both raised by our parents that today - I don't have a weight problem and she still does, its a healthy attitude vs an unhealthy attitude. I think we should be educating children about food rather than banning things right, left and centre. I also think that it doesn't make a blind bit of difference for schools to control what parents put in their children's lunchboxes when some children are going home and being fed junk for breakfast and dinner and as snacks.

 

[irongirlof12]

I just want to have a rant as I'm fed up (excuse the pun) with today's news reports on unhealthy lunchboxes verses school dinners.

Surely it's better for a child to eat something at lunchtime even if it is unhealthy rather than to leave most of their school lunch.

It would be lovely if all our kids all had a healthy packed lunch but I don't think it's lack of knowledge on the parents part that causes them to send an unhealthy lunch but the hope that their child will eat anything at all.

I'm with you Libby, I hate this Nanny state and the way we are governed. I do think the aim should be healthy all the way, but I know my DD7 hates school dinners and when I tried to get her to give then a try she then hated school!, ate nothing and came home starving. so we have sandwiches etc now.

 

[thelittlemermaid83]

I agree with Joh.

I know when DD starts school in September that if i decide to give her pack lunches she will be having healthy food. I ate too much junk food at lunch time in my hay day and I would rather my child had a balanced diet. If school dinners are healthy then she will have them instead.

Personally i think its the parents fault if there child is obese. What is stopping them from packing a healthy lunchbox?

 

[wilma-bride]

I'm with you Libby, I hate this Nanny state and the way we are governed. I do think the aim should be healthy all the way, but I know my DD7 hates school dinners and when I tried to get her to give then a try she then hated school!, ate nothing and came home starving. so we have sandwiches etc now.

It's strange, isn't it, because DS absolutely loves school dinners and I feel really mean because I don't usually let him have them - but that is down to the cost as it is £2.10 a day and I can feed him for a lot less at home. Plus, even if DS has school dinners, I still have to cook a hot meal for the rest of us anyway so there's nothing to be gained.

 

[Head_in_the_clouds]

It's strange, isn't it, because DS absolutely loves school dinners and I feel really mean because I don't usually let him have them - but that is down to the cost as it is £2.10 a day and I can feed him for a lot less at home. Plus, even if DS has school dinners, I still have to cook a hot meal for the rest of us anyway so there's nothing to be gained.

I started off on school dinners but it disrupted out family evening meal and also the food was disgusting! Its not that long since I left school (2003) but the food our school provided was much more unhealthy than what was in my lunchbox certainly, but also than most of my friends!

 

[natalielongstaff]

Both my kids have packed lunches, i like to see what they have eaten at the end of the day and provive a mix of foods....as a perpetual dieter i hate the terms "healthy foods" and think children should learn to make appropriate choices

Aslso we eat a hot meal in the evening so like others said the cost of school meals is a definate factor for me

As a childminder i encourage the parents to provide healthy alternatives for the children and ALL of them bring fruit every day and then i encourage the kids to eat certain foods 1st and leave the choc bars till last

 

[higgy66]

My 2 DD's have school meals as they are cooked on the premises and to very strict guide lines as to calorific value, amount of protein, carbohyrate etc.

If I had to make up packed lunches every day I'd go mad as I'd run out of ideas and I think mine would end up being one of the unhealthy ones. They love carrot sticks and they'd eat cucumber all day long. They love yogurts and fromage frais etc but after a couple of days then what? They hardly ever eat sandwiches and when we do - as it's not very often we have crisps with them so that's no good.

I agree that chocolate and fizzy drinks should be banned as this gives the children a quick high followed by a slump so mid afternoon they wouldn't really be at their best for school work.

I'm really pleased with their school meals. We get a 3 week menu each term so I know exactly whey they're getting and they always offer a jacket potato if they're isn't something the children like. At one point my youngest was choosing Jacket potato quite often so the school let me know and we monitored it for a while and now she only chooses that as a last resort. She admitted she was only choosing them out of habit!

They eat things they would never eat for me - sweet and sour pork and rice, chicken curry etc. If I made that they wouild turn up their noses!

I've always been abit over weight but as I'm tall I carry it ok. I never talk about dieting in front of the girls but we always talk about healthy eating and making choices etc. They have chocolate or biscuits most days as I don't want it to be an issue however, they know they have to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables so that they can have the "junk" stuff.

This week they've been doing healthy eating at school and my eldest won a prize as she knew all the answers so I'm hoping that's a good thing - although I have to admit how she knew the answers is beyond me as I've never told her how many glasses of water we should have and how much exercise and sleep we should have but she knew the lot! Perhaps I could learn a thing or two.......

 

[Dimplenose]

No, I agree with everyone that healthy food is the best option but working a a midday supervisor I see so many children not eating very much day after day. It's not that we don't encourage them to eat but we can't force feed them. When we inform the parents they often start bringing in packed lunches and the difference having some calories (even unhealthy ones) at lunch time makes is enormous.

(I bring in a packed lunch myself even though I'm entitled to a free meal as part of my job as they are not very nice.)

 

[joolz1910]

I think most parents are responsible but you get some shockers.

Someone I know had terrible problems with her child being very badly constipated. She was under a consultant at the hospital who referred her to a dietician. The mother said to me: 'Well she always eats crisps and chocolate and stuff - she doesn't like anything else, and if I tell her she can't have them, she just goes and gets them out of the kitchen herself' with a resigned shrug of the shoulders. The child was 3. I am not kidding.

I have another friend who is on the other end of this particular spectrum. Her daughter has never been to Mcdonalds, is not allowed any chocolate/sweets. She is also not allowed to watch any tv. For a 5 year old, she has a really healthy diet, but I think once foods get banned, they eventually become something people can crave.

Personally, I believe that both of these approaches could potentially create 'issues' with food later in life.

 

[jamjar84]

I think this is a touchy subject. Like Joh, I have battled with my weight since I was about 12 and that's probably due to the fact that when I was younger I mostly stayed with my grandparents, who did't allow any unhealthy foods, I didn't even know soup came in a tin until I was about 6!! Everything was fresh and we got nothing that 'came out of a packet' as my granny would say.

When I went to stay with my parents full time, sweets and crisps were allowed (though not very often) and it was a real treat, and because they were in the house, my brother and I would often just take chocolate biscuits and things when nobody was watching. I remember I used to hide them in a drawer, and I think this is a really unhealthy attitude to food, because I was brought up to think that 'bad' foods were completely forbidden, it led me to have a lot of issues as a teenager, and when I was 17 I was half the weight I am now, because I rarely ate anything.

I think that parents absolutely have an obligation to provide their child with a healthy diet, but it has to be balanced. My daughter is only 1, and already she has started turning her nose up to certain foods, and it's really really hard to be strong and not give in to her, there have been a couple of occassions where she has hardly eaten anything all day because she has spat it out and I've relented and given her something sweet, just to get some calories into her! Though hopefully I still have time to instill a healthy attitude towards food in her, and I will definately be more strict with my next child, the poor thing won't know what's hit him/her when they arrive in May, as I've learned a lot of what not to do's with my first. :lol:

I think that the key is definately balance, yes, there should be fruit and veg in packed lunches, but the occasional treat like some crisps or chocolate isn't going to turn out a nation of obese children, I think that if kids learn early about having a balanced diet then it's something that will come naturally to them.

As a child I was NEVER allowed fizzy drinks, my mum thought fizzy drinks were the worst thing you could ever put into your body (and that's from a woman who smokes all day!!) so as soon as I left home, I was drinking two bottles of diet pepsi a day, just because I could. We drink far too much fizzy juice in our house now (just my husband and myself, he has banned our kids from fizzy juice- which I don't necessarilly agree with) and as a result we can't drink water, as we hate the taste.

I guess what I could have said far more concisely is that nothing should be banned, but parents should know when to say no and not over indulge their children with junk food.

Sorry I feel as though I am butting in, but it's a subject I've been giving a lot of thought to today.

 

[PoppyAnna]

Very interesting views.

My DD has school dinners, like her Head Teacher I am very pro school dinners, I believe it is good for as many of the children as possible to sit down and eat the same meal, together. Her head teacher went out of her way and against the council to recruit a catering company that she took a long time to choose, it's a small one form entry school and everything is cooked on site, I get a three week menu rotation, the Head will not tolerate sectioned trays, they have a plate for their dinner and a bowl for their pudding and a proper glass for their water They have to put their hand up after their main meal and are not allowed to eat their pudding until they have eaten their dinner, each class also takes turns to lay the tables for the school dinners and has to help tidy up, it's very much seen as a daily shared experience, eating the same and eating together. It isn't the same for the children that have to sit on the seperate packed lunch tables, TBH there aren't many of them as there is a big percentage of children that have school dinners.
We are invited in once a year to sample the meals and I've been on Roast day and pasta day and both were lovely. The menu is so varied and often DH and I joke with her that we wished we were going school for dinner today. Instead of a sweet pudding they are often offered cheese and biscuits or milk and one cookie as an option and the head is happy to take insruction from parents if there is anything the child is to avoid for a while. Many parents credit the Head with curing their child of their past fussy eating ways. I know that Anna gets at least three fruit/veg portions a day at school.
With my DD's love of good food I know that I would NOT be able to provide her packed lunches for less than the £10 a week it costs me for school dinners.
She hates sandwiches and most bread apart from pitta, I would have to provide a very varied healthy choice that I wouldn't use it all up and therefore I would either be out of pocket or she would have to eat the same lunch three days running and I know she just wouldn't eat. I am convinced if my DD had a packed lunch she would either be closer to overweight as I would probably over pack the lunch (do kids need crisps AND a choc bar or biscuits??) or under nourished on bread, bread, and more bread...
She also gets to sit and eat with her teachers as they all eat the dinner too.
Just yesterday we had an item in the Head's weekly newsletter about the high sugar content of some fruit based snacks she had seen in some of the childrens packed lunch, some have the equivilent of two to three teaspoons of sugar.
I still cook a hot meal every night from scratch but to be honest with the small portions that they eat at their age (4&6) I don't think it impacts the price that much. So I'm happier that she has two smaller hot meals a day as I know she loves her veg and she gets a varied diet that stimulates her palate and will hopefully help her make healthier choices in future.
It also works well for me as sometimes I give youngest DD her hot meal at lunchtime too then they will just have scrambled egg or beans on toast on nights when DH and I are going out or fancy a takeaway.

I totally agree about the attitude of banned foods, I can think of one little girl (7)that comes home for tea, every thing "nice" that my DD's will have in moderation is off limits to her I understand. Put it this way, she does not play much when she comes, she stands in my kitchen with me asking me what she will be having for tea, could she taste a bit, can she have a biscuit etc etc - poor little thing.
With regards to my weight and how that relates to my children, I am overweight, I am currently trying to lose weight, I am 38 and have been overweight for 7 years since having my children and not making enough room for exercise. My problem is not the meals I cook to share with my family, it is the snacking and drinking I tend to do when the children are in bed

 

[higgy66]

Slightly O/T

I never make the girls eat all their dinner to get their pudding. My parents did this and I think it only makes you eat more. I often leave some of my main course when i go out so I can have some room left for a pudding.

Also I love the fact they can be halfway through a chocolate biscuit or bag of buttons and say "Mummy I've had enough!" How do they do that - I would have to finish it off no matter how stuffed I was - I've never left half a biscuit in my life!

 

[PoppyAnna]

Slightly O/T

I never make the girls eat all their dinner to get their pudding. My parents did this and I think it only makes you eat more. I often leave some of my main course when i go out so I can have some room left for a pudding.

Also I love the fact they can be halfway through a chocolate biscuit or bag of buttons and say "Mummy I've had enough!" How do they do that - I would have to finish it off no matter how stuffed I was - I've never left half a biscuit in my life!

It's funny as I have one of each, one would eat as much as she could until I stopped her and one that regularly says no thank you when offered a biscuit or treat as she isn't hungry!

I should re-phrase what I wrote about DD's school dinners to "They aren't allowed to eat their pudding until they have eaten enough dinner".

DH and I differ on this, I'm happy if they've eaten enough dinner, whereas DH can't abide waste but will all know that some days we are more hungry than others.
I just try not to make an issue of anything TBH.

 

[Dimplenose]

Slightly O/T

I never make the girls eat all their dinner to get their pudding. My parents did this and I think it only makes you eat more. I often leave some of my main course when i go out so I can have some room left for a pudding.

Also I love the fact they can be halfway through a chocolate biscuit or bag of buttons and say "Mummy I've had enough!" How do they do that - I would have to finish it off no matter how stuffed I was - I've never left half a biscuit in my life!

My DD was like that when she was younger. Given the choice between chocolate and tomatoes she'd choose the tomatoes. A bag of sweets would never be finished and her food choices were excellent (maybe not enough dairy products but everything else was OK) I was so relieved that she hadn't inherited my weight problems. Then puberty struck and wow what a change! It is now a challenge to get her to eat healthily.

 

[joolz1910]

If mine are peckish, I offer them fruit. If they refuse this, I know they're not that hungry.

Mine know that if they want any pudding, they have to eaten their vegetables. I don't make them clear their plates but they have to have eaten a fair portion and not avoided the veg.

My middle DD was eating her dinner tonight and I asked her if she had had enough. She said she wanted to eat more (it was her favourite) but was full up. God, we've all been there, haven't we? I told her to go and have a sit down for ten minutes to see if she really wanted to have more. Moving away from the table helps me to resist!

 

[wifey]

My DS doesn't get enough time to eat at school and it's got worse since they moved into to the new "purpose built" one which still cannot accommodate all the children from the infants and them later the juniors together like they used to when we were kids. He gets less than 20 minutes for his meal break. I'm happy to give him a balanced meal in his lunch box but he often doesn't have time to eat it after being told where he can sit and clearing the mess from the previous group of diners. The dinner ladies only clean up at the end of the "lunch hour". If he ate school dinners he would have even less time to eat his food when you factor in the queueing for the food to begin with and then finding a seat where he's allowed to sit.Five hundred kids isn't easy to manage I know but they could be more organised about it by staggering the lunch hours like they do for the comprehensive school kids. I'm so glad that we have a balanced meal at home every night as a family too so at least at home he doesn't have to rush to eat it all. The school wonders why so many kids have digestive problems when they rush their lunch down and can only go to the toilet once a day it's bound to cause health issues to arise