Should schools have rules on healthy lunch boxes?

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Schools should have the right to have rules about what children bring to school in their lunch boxes. If some parents allow their children to bring heavily advertised unhealthy food into school, it makes it more difficult for parents who want to do otherwise. It is also easier for a parent to refuse a request for unsuitable fund if there is a school rule against it.

Advertising and labeling should also be much more explicit about health risks.

Children are not responsible adults who have the maturity to make their own lifestyle decisions, no matter how much their parents believe they are. This is why schools have always had a firm set of rules that you do not see in normal society, and very rightly so.

School children have an extremely powerful peer base - other school children (just look at toy and fashion fads to work that one out). It is unfair, igonart and selfish to influence the children of others by giving your child unhealthy food, just as it is unfair on your children to give them unhealthy food for their lunch (no matter how they would disagree). Treats should be for after school and weekends, and just that - treats.

I am against a nanny state, but very much in favour of this rule.

I'm the parent.
They are my children.
Your concern is noted now trust me to bring up my children and get your nose out of things that do not concern you.

Diets that are bad for adults are not necessarily bad for children. I can remember lunch boxes containing sandwiches made with lard or with winkles accompanied by the odd bottle of beer. Oranges, now much beloved of the nutritionists, were then difficult to peel and so acid they turned your mouth inside-out.

I envy modern children because now, in later life, I pine for burgers, hot dogs, fry-ups and sausage rolls all of which I am denied and with which they are so liberally supplied.

Bring back the sugar cane!

I wish the schools would concentrate on educating our children and leave the rest to the parent. I thought the new government would stop all this Nanny Sate

Just as we thought the nanny state had gone we get this nonsense!

I will feed my kids what I like, what they like and if anyone tries to stop me I look forward to seeing them in court!

Shouldnt Ifsted be more worried about improving the poor quality of teachers in this country rather than producing this drivel?

Absolutely not!

Schools are totally unaware of a parents circumstances and the child's individual health needs. The allegedly act in loco parentis or whatever it is, but can't be bothered to really supervise kids and now they will start making the kids feel guilty.

All this will do is make parents stop feeding the kids at all.

Nanny society going mad.

Schools and teachers could actually start doing the jobs they are paid for, i.e. Teach!

My niece has come home from pre school on several occasions with food still in her lunch box because she has been told that she's not allowed to eat it. The healthy eating policy is a good idea if it is restricted to the food the school is serving. It is wrong for a dinner supervisor to tell a very young child they're not allowed to eat something that's been put in their lunch box.

If the schools were really that interested in educating kids on healthy eating they would be given more home economics lessons that would teach them about nutritional value & how to prepare healthy food. They don't do that, they just have nazi dinner supervisors preventing children from eating their lunch.

Haven't we been here before, or at least somewhere similar? I don't think the schools should have the responsibility to make sure parents take THIER responsibilities seriously and feed their children a healthy diet!! We will have scenes like the ones we saw when Jamie Oliver tried to improve the food that schools serve. Fat, lardy irresponsible parents handing saturated fat laden junk over the school fence to their pasty faced, equally lardy offspring. One thing that has changed since I was at school is that children are allowed off the premises during lunch breaks etc. We weren't! We ate our packed lunch or the food the school provided that our parents paid dinner money for. If we didn't eat that then we went hungry. We would have been put on detention if we had wandered off to buy chips etc. Equally, when we went home, we ate what was prepared for us by our mothers or we didn't eat at all. I work with women who cook 3 or 4 different meals a night to pander to their spoilt brat kids who demend this that and the other. Unbeleiveably stupid way to carry on.

These rules will neither solve nor exacerbate the problem, so long as food manufacturers continue to pitch sugar and fat-laden foods to children circumventing their parents.

As a child, I experienced my primary school head-teacher visiting my home because my mother was sending me to school with a carton of fruit juice for my break-time drink. This was necessary as the school had stopped selling juice for break-time and required us to drink full-fat, warm milk, which I wouldn't. As my mother was concerned about me going thirsty, she sent me in with a drink. Why the head-teacher thought this required a home visit, was beyond me even at such a tender age - he was implying there was something wrong with my home life because I wouldn't drink milk (if ice-cold skimmed milk had been on offer, that would have been ok, but I've yet to find many people who like room-temperature milk!). My mother was perfectly capable of deciding my dietary needs and this should be the case with today's parents.

Schools have to take into consideration children's allergies and likes/dislikes. In some cases, parents may send in undesirable foods just to make sure there child eats something and doesn't go hungry - children won't eat if they don't want to, particularly with no enforcing supervision. What they eat at home may be entirely different!

Schools should concentrate on what they're there for - teaching - not policing. Maybe if they try to teach children about nutrition and a healthy balanced diet, this will filter through to their lunch boxes!

When I was a teacher some of the pupils brought in cans of food for dogs & cats & they were none the worse for enjoying it, honest, so I can't see the point of making an issue out of lunch boxes.

Out of all the parents who do object, how many of them don't care what their kids eat and how many of them are actually giving their kids these so called "unhealthy packed lunches"?

I'm sure it's not all by the way.

You could even ask "what are their diets like out side of school" as well. With obeisity rising may be it's justified?

My kid's school has guidelines and we generally follow them because to us they make sense.

Our local school cannot even enforce the uniform policy, let alone regulate lunch boxes. The girls are wearing skirts that hardly cover their knickers and the boys look a mess.

Sadly schools, head teacherrs and teachers themselves have let standards across schools fall and as a result children and parents run riot.

Lunch boxes who cares, Where is the discpline anymore ?

Dont make excuses, make a difference.

Ah, Sometimes, peer pressure is a wonderful thing.
If schools teach children about healthy eating - what is bad, what is good - don't you think that there will exist a peer pressure to outdue one another?
Many parents will likely have children who will insist that that candy get left out, or that soda pop. Children, who are learning about healthy eating, will not want to be shamed.
It's a matter of schools teaching, children learning, advising parents, and that good-old peer pressure.
Should schools have stricter rules on healthy eating?
No, after all, there is practically nothing (edible) that cannot be eaten in moderation, and this should be part of the learning exercise.

Why don't we just get rid of Ofsted? We'd save billions of pounds and wouldn't have to put up with his nonsense any more. Haven't these people got anything better to do? Let people get fat - just don't treat them on the NHS. They'd soon loose weight then.

Healthy nutrition should be part of education and indeed the curriculum. It was when I was a kid...and we learned the benefits of healthy food and the consequences of too much sugar, fat etc etc. We have seen the return of diseases like Beri Beri in some of our cities, which you can only get through a deficiency in vitamin B. It is a horrible disease as are many of the effects of unbalanced and unhealthy nutrition, and it is frankly an indictment of the general determined ignorance of sections of the public that it has returned in Britain, which is after all supposed to be a part of the developed world!

I think the danger comes in deciding what is "healthy". Generations of kids grew up eating bread and butter pudding, pies and all sort and there wasn't an obesity crisis. Kids dont need a salad and carrot sticks all the time, they need a balanced diet with the right number of calories for their age. Which I think some people forget is more than adults usually.
I think leave the Schools in charge of School dinners, parents in charge of packed lunches and simply pass a law to make fat kids AND their parents do extra exercise. Lets see how many of them abuse their childrens health and future then!

No. Never.

Schools policing kids' lunchboxes is the thin end of the wedge. It is a small step from telling people what to eat, to telling people what to think.

All the loaded language and emotive talk of childhood obesity is just a thin smokescreen around an attempt to get kids used to being micromanaged in every aspect of their lives from an early age; and so turn them into mindless, corporate drones who will do exactly what Big Business tells them.

Also, you underestimate what kids are capable of.

Does anyone know of a 'healthy' lunch box?

I have tried several but they all have the same unpleasant plasticky taste.

I don't consider healthy packed lunch rules 'bossy and interfering'; I consider them downright sinister and the thin end of the wedge from a Government which I was under the impression had been voted in at least in part on a pledge to redefine the relationship between the individual (particularly the sovereign parent) and State and reintroduce the concepts of personal choice and responsibility.

The problems with these rules (and generally they are rules, with in many cases disproportionate sanctions, as opposed to guidelines or advice) is that they deny the parent the ability to decide what they consider best for their child. For instance I don't personally agree with the prohibition of certain food types (which affords them the cahet of illegality) but believe in 'everything in moderation'; however as a future parent I have no right or ability to challenge the rules or argue in favour of my perspective unless I want to see my child suspended or put in detention, or find myself on a Social Services watch list as some sort of noncompliant troublemaker. In an area such as mine, where all the local schools pride themselves on having attained 'National Healthy School Status' even the option of voting with one's feet has been removed.

It's also become a very emotive subject, with over-zealous supporters accusing those who disagree as being somehow irresponsible, willingly endangering their children's health, even immoral. I'm sick and tired of the conflation of food with morality and guilt almost akin to some latter day healthist religion. On top of all that there is the motivation behind the 'healthy eating drive', namely the controversial and increasingly disputed assumption that there is a problem or crisis concerning obesity, itself an immensely problematic concept which owes much to statistical manipulation and scare tactics, and the overreaction to which is increasingly being linked with issues of bullying, low self-esteem, eating disorders and many other issues of far more concern than the consumption of the occasional contraband cream bun or membership of the despised 85th percentile.

Schools should teach kids about health and nutrition and encourage healthy eating, but making rules about it is going too far.

In a word, "no". All of this neurosis over what schoolchildren eat was symptomatic of the last failed Labour government. It has since been shown that school dinners get not get any healthier under Blair and Brown, despite Oliver's intervention, which had little if any effect.

Some stupid schools even placed restrictions on what teachers could eat. That is utterly ridiculous.

Let's boot out the socialist nanny state and allow people to make choices for themselves, rather than the state nagging them and restricting their ability to make decisions.

This has gone too far. Schools now think they own our children.

If my stepdaughter had come home hungry saying she wasn't allowed to eat her lunch because a teacher told her so, I would be straight on the phone to a solicitor to sue the school.

Schools and teachers should stick to TEACHING and leave the parenting to us!

School should concentrate on teaching. I chav/feral families what to feed the offspring on doughnuts, burgers & chips, let them.

I would love to occasionally pop a treat in my kids' lunches, but the grief it causes all round isn't worth it. Even so, I know of children who are sent to school with lunches full of junk - despite being elegable for free school meals, but as that's real food they refuse to eat it.

Surely the simplest solution to this situation is to provide universal high quality free school meals to children? No risk of processed plastic cheese and sweets being sent to school, and all children are being offered one healthy meal a day.

But this doesn't pander to faddy eaters and might cost money, so it will never happen.

£billions have been spent on celebrity chefs improving school meals. Why are parents having to resort to lunch boxes at all?

As well as failing to engage young people in a variety of topics, our school system is failing to get young people excited about a variety of foods. I am not surprised.

What about introducing new foods from local and around the world. Linking it with diets of people in the world and history. Looking at veganism and other diets. Lunch time can be a learning exercise to. Lwt the parents bring stuff in, but put a little bit of something else out, linked to learning. If only a few touch it, then fine, least we got some to experiments. And for once we want the kids to experiment here.

Making this into a rule flogging exercise is the real problem. Kids rebel and parents get all upset because deep down they know they put microwave food in for little jonny because they both work to keep their little overly expensive box house.

Making learning fun is the issue here. Pretty hard when our young 'uns are crushed under constant assessment and even parents are obsessed with their child's "intellectual" performance.

Of course, the tories will not go this root. They'll cry "nanny state", allow parents to bring in what they like and not actually think about innovation.

Education is messed up because the Tories want to dumb people down and labour want to turn schools into ultra slick rationalized thought factories.

Parents are quite right! Why don't schools and inspectors concentrate on EDUCATION? THAT'S why they're being paid! Not surprising we've had to pour money down the drain supporting an army of irrelevant hangers-on in the education industry. Back to basics - teaching and learning, not being hectored and treated like idiots!

No and we should stop wasting time with all this. When I was at school 20 years ago there were a few fat kids and I still see some fat kids today so whatever we have been doing on this subject over the last 20 years, it clearly hasn't worked.

My local chippy is very worried. All his dinnertime custom has disappeared now that the local schools are taking exams. The healthy eating mania is driving more and more children to take their food outside school. I used to do it too at their age. Now some half century later I am eating healthily and, to be honest, not enjoying it!

On a recent visit to England, I was shocked by the number of obese (young)adults and children. I shudder to think how things will be in 20 years if something doesn't change. Here in Italy, if the kids weren't served a healthy, balanced lunch diet, their parents would descend on the school en masse to complain.

'I'm the parent.
They are my children.
Your concern is noted now trust me to bring up my children and get your nose out of things that do not concern you.'

'I wish the schools would concentrate on educating our children and leave the rest to the parent. I thought the new government would stop all this Nanny Sate'


Take a good look at the society we live in today. Most parents are not fit to bring up children but as usual its all 'me me me, I will do what I want, none of your business'.

I have seen how you all bring up your children and you're not doing a great job to be honest. Maybe the government needs to be a lot tougher than it is and then we wouldn't have so many problems.

I can't remember ever taking a lunch box when I was of school age but surely it is up to the parent to decide what is best for their own children.

This debate has been going on for years.

What's new to add? Why does so much BBC news consist of reports like this?

Hmm... I would have to say; I think OFSTED's job is to regulate how the schools provide for their pupils.

If parents decide to opt out of the school dinner system, and provide alternatives for their children, I can't see how that's any of OFSTED's - or anybody else's, for that matter - business.

Frankly, if school meals are anything like as diabolically inedible as they were when I was at school (they're the reason I sneaked off of school premises every lunchtime and lived off of chips from the local Fish 'n Chippy for lunch, for five years) then I can't say I blame people for giving their kids alternatives - any alternatives, even unhealthy ones - as long as it gives them something they can actually eat without throwing up, to sustain them during the day.

OFSTED ought to be first concerned with making sure the kids have something edible - note, edible, not just "suitably nutritious" according to some idiot doctor - to eat, before criticising parents.

4. At 12:37pm on 25 Jun 2010, mark_2002 wrote:
I'm the parent.
They are my children.
Your concern is noted now trust me to bring up my children and get your nose out of things that do not concern you.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

And we're the society which have to put up with the badly raised children of idiotic parents who won't say "No!" to their little darlings....

Personally I think that the rot set in when schools introduced cash cafeterias instead of set school dinners. As for lunchboxes, I welcome ADVICE on what constitutes a healthy, balanced lunch for a child, but hard and fast rules are not appropriate.

In my opinion it is very responsible of governments and of state educational establishments to want to guide both parents and children in the area of healthy eating. But there are three major problems:
1. Not everyone's idea of what constitutes "healthy eating" is the same. For official bodies, basing themselves on "current medical research" is chancy, given that advice on what is healthy / not healthy has changed often enough to make one's head spin in the last few years, and also depends entirely on which recent study / television channel/ newspaper happens to be doing the reporting. If I'm a vegetarian, believing that meat is highly dangerous, leading to cholesterol levels and heart disease, I'd rather other parents in my childrens' school don't give their children meat for packed lunch, thanks very much. Will schools introduce this rule?
2. What about views on what constitues "healthy food" that are based on religion, ethnic culture, and specific health problems? Can schools rule for all of this - including the "influence of what other children eat" issue?
3. The good old free market - and let's face it, without it, we wouldn't be where we are today. If I prepare my child's packed lunch, I do so in line with my view of my family's income, circumstances, and priorities. Can schools rule that I should spend more (or less!) and enforce this?
No, there's only one way out.
All schools should provide school meals absolutely free. These can be based on absoutely anything the state fancies - the most fashionable research, what Cabinet ministers would always have wanted to find in their packed lunch box but never did, a mini version of the choice in the Parliamentary canteen...
If you as a parent don't like the menu, you're free to forgo it. You can then prepare your child whatever sort of packed lunch you like, and the school, and the state, can keep out of it.

My instinctive reaction is..for heaven's sake stop interferring and leave us to look after our own children. I do understand about peer pressure and supporting the school in their efforts to encourage healthy eating (as well as acceptable behaviour and dress) but why should all children have to have their lunch boxes monitored and policed just because some parents cannot say, firmly, 'NO'.

When my children were at school they went through phases of wanting school dinners or preferring packed lunches. What they had in their lunch boxes was healthy and well balanced. Yes, they might sometimes have had a packet of crisps or a bar of something sweet (not chocolate which would melt) along with their carrot and celery sticks but as their mother I knew what their overall daily diet consisted of and I believe a balanced diet can encompass the occasional intake of something that is not strictly 'healthy'.

I used to despair about one of my children who was a very fussy eater, preferring burgers and chips to the fresh home cooked meals the rest of the family preferred. I would let her eat them, rather than nothing, but they were best quality and often homemade and 'chips' could be new potatoes sauted in their skins. Like her sibling, and encouraged by her partner who loves cooking, she now eats a whole range of good food and is very health and diet conscious. No-one in our family is overweight.

Of course they should have rules on what children eat Especially lunch boxes. It is really amazing the junk some parents allow their children to eat. My experience shows the poorer you are and the more the parent is uncaring the more junk and bad stuff they feed their kids. That’s Why I believe in free healthy school meal for the poor, as some parents cannot be trusted.

The problem is who decides what & how much of something is healthy? A pint of fresh apple juice or milk has more calories than a pint of lager. Cashew nuts ( a personal vice) are quite high in fat but also contain extremely high quality protein. Do they count as healthy? If they do eating a kilo of them isn't a good idea!

Growing kids need about 2000 calories a day and about 30% of that should come from fats.... there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with eating 800 calories of McDonalds at lunch as long as you eat no more than 1200 calories more at Breakfast and Dinner and ensure that some of that 1200 calories is in fruit and veg form.

Schools should only be serving high quality nutritionally balanced food themselves but punishing kids because they have a chocolate biscuit in their lunch box is so far out of line its not true.

When I want someone to tell me what to feed my child, I'll ask you. In the meantime, I don't try to do your job of being a teacher so don't try to do my job of being a parent. Really, DON'T!!

17. At 1:34pm on 25 Jun 2010, John Sparks wrote:
Why don't we just get rid of Ofsted? We'd save billions of pounds and wouldn't have to put up with his nonsense any more. Haven't these people got anything better to do? Let people get fat - just don't treat them on the NHS. They'd soon loose weight then.

Why stop there? If we stopped treating smokers cancers we'd save a fortune. If we stopped treating DIY related accidents people would have to use pro- builders and joiners and that would boost the building industry. If we made drinkers pay for any consequence of their habit that would save billions. If we made drivers injured in car crashes pay for the full cost of their treatment that would save billions. People who get food poisoning clearly haven't been cooking their food right or washing their hands so thats their fault. People who slip on ice should expect ice in winter so we shouldn't treat that either.

In fact put that way we don't need an NHS at all do we? Start your precedent and thats where it ends. Anyway as cakes carry VAT and fruit and veg doesn't the obese have probably paid more towards the NHS anyway! (and that last bit is a joke)

Oh dear. I suppose really it comes down to the parents who don't care, stuff lunch boxes full of rubbish, child becomes obese - somebody needs to care.

It does seem Draconian. How about just bringing back in compulsory school meals (sensible ones such as the ones that were around in the 1960s 1970s, not chips, burgers etc)?

Will the nanny state also look at what the children eat when they are at ho
me?
If budgets are going to be cut by 25%, where's the money going to come from as we seem to be looking at cutting services rather than improving services.

Of course parents should provide their children with a healthy diet but as far as third parties wading in with what that constitutes, MYOB springs to mind.

Over the years, I seem to remember things like bread, butter, potatoes and many other things seesawing between being good then bad, then good again.

Fruit is supposed to be good for you, now we hear that the acid in fruit is damaging our teeth.

How about some common sense and moderation in all things? How about letting parents take responsibility? How about minding your own business?

The healthy lunchbox idea is stacked against healthy active kids.

My daughter is an active club swimmer and needs a calorie rich diet that the so called healthy diets cannot provide. Why should she have to live on a diet that threatens anorexia to protect the overweight and inactive?

Also my daughters school despite introducing the 'govt guidelines' still allows treat on a friday that would be frowned upon by the school inspectors apparently!

Well this new government is looking for 25% cuts across departments. I think this article highlights one contributory candidate.

My sister, who is a teacher, tells me that certain foods are banned from school lunchboxes as part of the school's healthy eating policy.

It makes no difference however, because she says many of the children dump their food in the playground bin as soon as they arrive.

Some of them do without food at all because they think they have to "slim" and others simply will not eat the healthy offering but sneakily buy crisps and snacks from the shop on their way to school.

You can take a horse to water etc.

I'm all for the encouragement of healthy eating but enforcing a set of rules on what a child can and can't eat seems a step too far.

Once something like this comes in it creates the possibility for a whole host of other rules to make sure parents bring up healthy children. A detailed account of what they had for breakfast? Checks to make sure they brushed their teeth in the morning? Coordination tests to see if they got enough sleep last night?

Oh but wait! What about the weekends? They'll have to employ child inspectors to come round and make sure the children are still getting exercise and eating healthily. But what if the parents are lying? Only way to be absolutely sure is to install cameras to watch the children while they're away from school.

Once you get that far down through small incremental changes / rules it won't be long before children are simply taken from parents at birth and raised by the state.

When the teachers are paying for what goes in the lunch box then they can regulate it, until then they should keep their noses out.

The reason why we have so many people not able to cope with responsibility is that responsibility keeps being taken away. we are developing a society who waits to be told what to do. anyone with half a brain knows what is good and what is bad to eat and parents have to take responsibility for their children in every aspect.
i looked at a list of foods which are suggested to be acceptable. firstly some are expensive and some are not acceptable because of food allergies i.e A handful of nuts. My daughter is not allowed any product with any trace of nuts at her school because they have children, one of which has a severe nut allergy.
The biggest help i think for all families would be to do something about the price of fresh produce.

Well, it's a bit like uniforms - if everyone has the same, no one is singled out from their peers. My niece used to complain that her lunchbox contained carrot sticks while her friends had crisps and chocolate, and she therefore felt hard done by. The link between behaviour and learning is proven. Let's do this sensibly, without stigma and nannying, and everyone will be better for it.

There was a time when the person who knew the most about what to eat, and everything else in the world, was your mum and the only person who knew more than her was your gran - not some numpty on the TV or statistician working hundreds of miles away. Now we wonder why kids don't listen to their parents?

"Reforms", "quotas", "policies", whatever you want to call them are disrupting the trust that children have between them and their parents.

There's a lot of talk about peer pressure on this topic, now imagine you're kid comes home one day and says..."Mummy, mummy I got into trouble today because you gave me a cake for pudding for lunch. I told them that I wasn't to eat it till after my sandwiches and now my friends don't like me and say I'm going to prison."

If the government really wants to help kids, and parents, then offer advice but please spare the public from having it rammed down their throats by the lunch police.

There is no such thing as "junk food" - there is either food that is suitable for eating, or food that is unsuitable (e.g. if it has gone bad). The whole concept of "junk food" is based on ideology, i.e. "if you like eating food X, that makes you a Y, and we don't like Y, therefore food X is 'bad' food".

When I was at school which was in the 1970s, a number of the kids flatly refused to eat anything except chips or mashed potatoes. It doesn't seem to have done them any harm (in fact one of them ended up being an incredibly healthy eating vegetarian when he got older!).

It would be beneficial if schools actually taught useful skills, rather than brainwashing kids into eating "the correct authorised way".

But as I have always said "schools teach you how to obey, not how to think".

You are what you eat.

The type of food anyone, particularly a child, consumes is bound to have some effect upon their physical as well as mental state. Healthy eating spawns healthy living, and schools insisting upon the type of food in pupils' lunch boxes are merely adding to the process of education - not just for the youngsters, but for their parents too.

Daily plateloads of "one meat and two veg" were commonplace for most children post-war, and I don't remember seeing one overweight schoolfriend. Certainly, packets of crisps, fish and chips, burgers etc didn't exist then, as choice was so restricted at a time of food shortage. Maybe schools should limit the choice.

Yes they should

They are educational establishments and it appears that many parents are too stupid or uneducated to know what is healthy or not. So, educate them.

79 wrote ... On top of all that there is the motivation behind the 'healthy eating drive', namely the controversial and increasingly disputed assumption that there is a problem or crisis concerning obesity, itself an immensely problematic concept which owes much to statistical manipulation and scare tactics .....

I say - have you taken a look at the people waddling out of the supermarkets lately ? Believe me, there is no dispute. Half the population are obese, and so are their children. They don't get that way from eating a balanced diet with a calorie intake proportionate to their needs. The scare tactics are clearly not working.

"It does seem Draconian. How about just bringing back in compulsory school meals (sensible ones such as the ones that were around in the 1960s 1970s, not chips, burgers etc)?"

Firstly, school meals were never compulsory. You were always allowed to opt to bring in packed lunches if you wanted.

Secondly, I went to school between 1970 and 1981 (i.e. the whole of the 1970s) and I can assure you that chips, burgers, pizza, spam fritters, and all manner of other "unhealthy" foods were on the menu the whole time.

How about a different idea: why not concentrate on education, and not brainwashing and trying to make every kid's taste conform to some sort of societal norm?

"The problems with these rules (and generally they are rules, with in many cases disproportionate sanctions, as opposed to guidelines or advice) is that they deny the parent the ability to decide what they consider best for their child."

For Richie79.

And the questions are... what happens if the paresn't are....

1) UNABLE to decide what's best or
2) don't CARE what's best.

"oh I know lets just shove 4 packets of crips and a chocolate bar in his box every day because I know he likes them. It doesn't matter he's morbidly overweight already at the age of 8".

I'm not condoning the nanny state here... just playing devils advocate.

"Why stop there? If we stopped treating smokers cancers we'd save a fortune. If we stopped treating DIY related accidents people would have to use pro- builders and joiners and that would boost the building industry. If we made drinkers pay for any consequence of their habit that would save billions. If we made drivers injured in car crashes pay for the full cost of their treatment that would save billions. People who get food poisoning clearly haven't been cooking their food right or washing their hands so thats their fault. People who slip on ice should expect ice in winter so we shouldn't treat that either.

In fact put that way we don't need an NHS at all do we? Start your precedent and thats where it ends. Anyway as cakes carry VAT and fruit and veg doesn't the obese have probably paid more towards the NHS anyway! (and that last bit is a joke)"

We do; however, whether we need a totally free one, where anyone is free to continually mess their lives up at will and then demand free treatment is another matter.

The problem, however, is "too many rules". When you have a society with too many rules, nobody thinks for themselves; they simply wander along blindly waiting for a new rule or law to point them in the right direction.

All this type of rule does is to stop kids (and the adults they grow into to) thinking about what might or might not be a good choice of food. They simply wait until teacher/government/big brother tells them what they should or should not think/should or should not eat.

However, this simply reinforces what I have thought for years - the state education system is not there for any other purpose than to brainwash and churn out nicely programmed "model workers".

"No-one in our family is overweight."

It's not actually a crime, you know......

19. At 1:49pm on 25 Jun 2010, Crow wrote:
"I think the danger comes in deciding what is "healthy". Generations of kids grew up eating bread and butter pudding, pies and all sort and there wasn't an obesity crisis...."


True

However, there is a big difference between then and now

In the 1940-60s most of us walked or cycled to school and back

During breaks we played vigorously, skipping, running, jumping, boys kicking around a football etc

At Senior School we had double period of PE per week and a double period of Games per week, (Hockey\Football in the Winter or Tennis\Cricket in the Summer)

After tea it was out to play again (no homework at Primary\Junior School) until bedtime (mid-evening or later depending on age) with friends, on bikes, roller-skates, climbing trees or generally 'messing around'

There was not as much money around then as now so only a little, not very much at all, in the way of sweets or liquids other than water or maybe a bottle of 'Tizer' and so there was no 'grazing' between meals as seems to be the habit today

It seems to me that today, children have far too much choice and are never allowed to become 'starving hungry' between meals so therefore I wonder to what extent they ever actually savour or enjoy their food?

Also, I can't quote the actual number but it does require a certain amount of Calories to maintan body temperature and 'back then' there was no Central Heating for most people

For those reasons, childood obesity was no problem then but life is very different now so I can see that feeding children today can present problems, especially if they are allowed to be 'picky'!

I thought the Tories were against the nanny state?My adice to parents is simple tell the public servants to mind their own business.Children will eat what they like not what some idiot from yet another quango tells them to eat.

Dear Big Brother, thanks, but I'll decide what myself and my children eat without you.

Another big brother rule for Interferring busy bodies that can't mind their own business.

A simple question.

Has anybody asked the children why they don't want to eat school dinners?

......

Yeah...

Well, to use myself as an example.

Firstly the choice was less than impressive when I was at school, badly made food, lumpy mash, undercooked hard chips, sickly sweet cheap puddings.

Result - Child requests pack lunches from home.

Solution - Improve the variety & quality of school meals in general.

Secondly... Lunch time lottery...

Kids who go in first take all of the "best" selection, leaving those at end of the draw the dregs..

Result - child to request packed lunches from home

Solution - Ensure the same selection is available over the entire lunchtime.

Free school meals..

Great idea, poorly implemented.

Kids bully, alot ... that is a known fact.. so why do many schools incist on giving "tokens" to the poor kids to pay for there lunches.

All this does is single out the poor kids & add a factor of shame to getting the school meals for free.

result - Kid requests packed lunch from parents.

Solution - All children get lunches for free, or meal fees are paid not by the children (parents could pay weekly, monthly a fixed amount)

Definite preference to free school meals for all.

Mr and Mrs Lardo will still give little Lardo and big Lardo 12 big macs after school.

In this case children over a certain weight should be taken into care due to the gross negligence.

The health of people in the UK is most important for our economic success in the future and to control NHS costs; so it is reasonable that there are rules in place, supported by education on the topic. It is horrifying to see the bad diet and overweight people in the UK, it has got as bad as America. We need controls on trans-fats and higher taxes on bad fast food and snacks, just as we use tax on alcohol and cigarettes to discourage consumption.

It should be the parents decision what they put in the lunchbox for their kids. If they are not responsible enough to handle that themselves then clearly they shouldn't be having kids in the first place.

The teachers have more than enough to do preparing their lesson plans and teaching not to mention dealing with constant interference from government departments reinventing the wheel every five minutes.

Presumably the schools will be also now be clothing children, providing shelter, making sure they get dressed in the mmorning and brush their teeth at night, taking them to doctor and dentist appointments, consoling them when they scrape their knee or their pet dies, planning their birthday parties, buying them Christmas presents and tucking them in at night with a kiss?

Seriously, it shouldn't be necessary to remind school officials that they are not the children's parents. Children do NOT belong to the state in a free country.

56. At 3:12pm on 25 Jun 2010, sd wrote:

Well, it's a bit like uniforms - if everyone has the same, no one is singled out from their peers. My niece used to complain that her lunchbox contained carrot sticks while her friends had crisps and chocolate, and she therefore felt hard done by. The link between behaviour and learning is proven.
__________________________________________________________________
I agree on the uniforms I wore one, and I think it just kept "out" the competition between kids - the haves/have nots - and that allowed for making friends with everyone. But even with that, there were those that still had more changes of uniform than others could afford the optional pieces.
Point being, "carrot sticks" versus "crisps", will always exist in one form or another.
I'm all for healthy lunches, my son had them, but I don't think I approve of lunch box monitors, no, no!!

As far as I'm concerned - As children now generally lead very sedentary lives - exacerbated by appalling diets - they are becoming obese.

Obese children lead to obese adults.

Obese adults are very unhealthy - cost the Welfare Service more.

I object to non caring - ill educated parents bringing up obese children that will be a drain on our over stretched NHS - THAT I PAY FOR!!

Of course schools should decide what children should eat at school - exactly as they also decide what the child learns - and what behaviour is accepted. That is why they are called schools

Another fine example of the education system reaching out for parental involvement.

I appreciate the intent but not the rules.

10 Fat, lardy irresponsible parents handing saturated fat laden junk over the school fence to their pasty faced, equally lardy offspring.

What a sweeping statement I was an overweight child not by choice i was beaten if i did not eat the mountain of food that my parents put down and so i ate to avoid beatings and i still see food as safe working on it though so yeah I am overweight but i'd be dammed if i let my children be so. So the statement above is rather offensive to me you do not now the reasons behind peoples weight issue's i would hate to think that people would assume because i am fat that my kids are likely to be so. i am extremely careful on what my children eat they have their treats but i think its in healthy proportions. I think the idea of schools being able to dictate to parents is not right and can go to far. My daughter was pulled up in her school for having a fun sized sweet in her lunch bag, her lunch bag contains a salad brown roll a yoghurt banana and grapes and water, I feel a fun sized sweet is acceptable and feel my daughter was unfairly treated.

I like the idea of food economics classes would be more beneficial and perhaps a ban on leaving school grounds at lunch time.

it's all down to basic thermodynamics, if you take in more energy than you expel, you will store it in some form. Young children in school are likely to spend most of their free time running around, I know I did. The problem comes when you start to lead a stationary lifestyle which becomes the problem with teenagers. Really the PE in high schools should be increased/improved. I know I hated it when I was at school but that was because of the teaching staff, not the subject itself.

Surely the quality of childrens' lunch boxes is purely symptomatic of the wider problem of intelligent, accurate information about nutrition and health - something which should be part of basic science lessons for children, and about which, more information (and not the dumbed down garbage we get about 5 portions of vegetables!) for adults?

Apart from the Spice, we call as ‘human being’; all other Spices are living exactly on the same food without doing of a change over to remain healthy and energetic throughout one’s life. On the strength that we are more intelligent than them either to supplement some food by others to develop a particular area of our body over the others to become healthier to live long and stronger to challenge the ones who are against us, some offering of flexible restrictions is a welcome gesture on the part of the Authorities of various Schools.

But to a large extent with maintaining of a minimum nutrient which is made available to one to maintain a growth pattern exactly at par with time, a mare increase in intake through providing of healthy food cannot achieve a behavior change of a child other than to make him or her become more aggressive towards everything unless the over-intake so undertaken is rejected from the body through doing of outdoor exercises. The growth of the future generation mostly depends upon how we nature the Nature to deliver her best to us and not otherwise since we all are intensely attached to her only out of everything that worth the name to mention.

However, at the present era where everything is adulterated, some advice on taking of a particular food over the others might offer a help to us to keep a balance into the bodies of school going children. Therefore, instead of issuing of a strict instruction what we should supply in the Lunch Boxes; a voluntary disclosure of it to the parents might provide a better option to the parents to follow it more at ease than doing it under a constrain.

(Dr.M.M.HAZARIKA, PhD)

#64. You're missing the point. The NHS is not 'free': it costs £100bn a year to run and the money to run it is paid for mainly by our taxes and by insurance (motor insurance covers much of the cost of car accidents). My viewpoint is that having paid over £10,000 in direct taxes a year for X amount of years any treatment I need is not being provided for 'free'... I have paid a huge amount in advance to cover the cost of any reasonable treatment so to be refused on the basis of whatever criteria is popular that day would be outrageous. If the govt was to do such a thing I'd damn well want my taxes back and I'd put them towards private medical care instead.

More to the point I am a 6 foot tall ex-tank crewman. I weight about 15-16 stone yet have a waist line of 36" which is pretty reasonable. Because of above average muscle mass a crude measurement of height against weight puts me as 'obese' yet my GP has never batted an eyelid much less suggested I lose weight. I can well imagine half the england rugby team being denied medical care for being 'obese' according to their BMI's too.

Its a sad state of affairs, but sadly in Britain today we have a number of poorly educated/ working class people who either do not understand or don't care that giving your children junk food every day like chips and fried chicken is bad for their health. Scotland is the worst example according to the world health organisation it has one of the worst diets in the whole of europe, with their diet of fried food, black pudding etc, and as a result one of the largest percentages of heart problems and cancers. The north of Britian is only a little better, with their way of putting everything they can into a stodgy and unhealthy pie ! We do need to try to educate these people more..

As the State has to pick up the bill for ill health, obviously parents *should* be told what to put in their lunch boxes.

If they have a problem with it, their families should be removed from NHS care and be made to pick up their own health care costs.

How much of this is to do with the fact that many people are no longer having children for the right reasons but for the 'benefits' they can bring them and therefore have little interest in their health and wellbeing.

I think schools should make clear what they consider to constitute a healty packed lunch. However, if parents really want to feed their kids junk food, so that they grow up to suffer eating disorders and ill health, that's up to them. It should be made perfectly clear, however, that parents do this at their own risk, and that there can be no comeback on the schools for parents who ignore the advice.

Schools should educate, rules on lunch box contents are nonsense. Children are not dying of rickets anymore and noble though the sentiment is to improve their diet it is not the schools responsibility to enforce it.

What a child eats at home is the parents concern therefore, what the child eats at school is the schools concern. The simple solution would be to ban lunch boxes if the school provides a well balanced and wholesome two course lunch. It didn't hurt my generation!

What do you mean by healthy?

ALL food is healthy when eaten in moderation.

ALL food is junk food when eaten to excess.

The issue is a HEALTY DIET, not what is in a box for ONE meal.

4. At 12:37pm on 25 Jun 2010, mark_2002 wrote:
I'm the parent.
They are my children.
Your concern is noted now trust me to bring up my children and get your nose out of things that do not concern you.
=====================================================================
The trouble is Mark, that while you may be trustworthy, which you obviously are to take the trouble to comment, they are 10s of thousands who aren't.
Go down any sink estate you like and see their top 10 priorities

1. Booze
2. Fags
3. Betting
4. Plasma screen TV
5. xBox
6. Playstation
7. Signing on
8. Wondering what to do when the soap operas finish
9. Terrorising the locals
10. How to turn the micrwave on/how to send for a takeaway.

What the kids are eating? you are having a laugh mate!

If schools are so concerned over a child's lunch-box issues, at the start of the day, let them provide one in stead of the parents. And, once the contents have been eaten, tuff. It will hopefully go towards teaching a little self-discipline. If children wants sweets etc, bring back the tuck shop.

38. At 2:44pm on 25 Jun 2010, Calliphygian wrote:
4. At 12:37pm on 25 Jun 2010, mark_2002 wrote:
I'm the parent.
They are my children.
Your concern is noted now trust me to bring up my children and get your nose out of things that do not concern you.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

And we're the society which have to put up with the badly raised children of idiotic parents who won't say "No!" to their little darlings....
======================================================================
I second that motion

Junk food is very unhealthy; the effects even go beyond physical health. And we taxpayers have to pay the cost of treating obesity, heart disease and other related ailments, as well as suffer the loss of productivity due to illness or disability.

In this information age, only the most stupid parents send kids to school with junk food.

Though I would love these unfortunate kids to be helped, the only way to do it is by meddling in a way that will backfire and/or be prohibitively expensive.

So, I say here, it is best to leave the issue alone. We can't legislate to make stupid people into good parents.

When these kids suffer as a result of their parents' stupidity, reducing their own chance to successfully pass on their genes, it is nature's way. Darwinism and evolution may be cruel or harsh but they are what got mankind to the top (at present) of earth's heap. This eventually sorts out the problem.

Oops, it does not, because.... Social meddling (as practised by loonie Socialist Labourites) subsidise the dumbest to raise the maximum number of (dumb) kids, reversing evolution's natural flow.

82. At 4:16pm on 25 Jun 2010, Peter_Sym wrote:
#64. You're missing the point. The NHS is not 'free': it costs £100bn a year to run and the money to run it is paid for mainly by our taxes and by insurance (motor insurance covers much of the cost of car accidents). My viewpoint is that having paid over £10,000 in direct taxes a year for X amount of years any treatment I need is not being provided for 'free'... I have paid a huge amount in advance to cover the cost of any reasonable treatment so to be refused on the basis of whatever criteria is popular that day would be outrageous. If the govt was to do such a thing I'd damn well want my taxes back and I'd put them towards private medical care instead.
=======================================================================
The trouble with that argument is that taxes go to a bit more than Healthcare, including the salary tou picked up as a tank man and the pension that you draw.

I have no problem with that but, please Peter see the whole picture.

Controlling what a child eats for one meal a day will not have a huge impact on their overall health. Balanced diets include some fat and some sugar. Given the increasing number of eating disorders among young girls and boys, perhaps schools should focus on proper PE and excerise as much as they do on food.

No, schools should NOT have rules on this!

What next? lunch box inspections? Sending pupils home if lunch boxes don't comply? Letting them go hungry? An army of lunch box inspectors paid for by taxpayers?

This is nannying costly interference in our lives that I thought we had kicked into touch when Labour was booted out of office

The schools just let the comp kids out to have junk food every lunchtime. Its not good if you in a mad rush to get back to work and you forget your packed lunch

Schools and government must have too much taxpayers money even to think about this one.

All this user's posts have been removed.Why?

I'm sorry - I am all for healthy eating and active children - but no-one has the right to tell me, or my children, what we should and shouldn't eat. They may advise us... but not force us.

I did give my children healthy foods in their packed lunches, but they often came back with it uneaten as they didn't want it, or wanted what their friends' had. The school did "lunch box checks" (very gestapo-like if you ask me) to ensure the food was "healthy." It's a shame they didn't put the same effort into ensuring the kids actually ate it!
My children now take money to school to buy their lunch to make sure thay have something in their stomachs and to stop the unnecessary prying.

Article 18 od the UN Convention on the Rights of the child clearly states "Governments must respect the responsibility of parents for providing appropriate guidance to their children – the Convention does not take responsibility for children away from their parents and give more authority to governments. It places a responsibility on governments to provide support services to parents..."

The school, as a government body, has to recognise the parents' responsibilities and support us in bring up our children. It cannot tell us what to do, it cannot force us to something and it certainly shouldn't be prying into what we feed our families.