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School Food Policies
Replies
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msjennigirl wrote: »As a teacher, I can say with certainty that when a child comes home and says, "I was the only one..." it's not always true.
Children are rarely to be trusted.6 -
Do all schools in the states provide food at school? Can kids opt out? IDK, cafeteria food is usually not ideal since very few kids will pick healthier foods.
I would say skip the snacks. Kids don't need them. Have an extra few minutes of active recess to perk them up instead.
If there has to be snacks, skip the baked goods. Whole foods only seems like a smarter choice than cookies as a reward food.3 -
We taught our kids the sometimes/always food thing, and didn't limit them.
They never have or would binge on sweets because we never restricted access to them.
As far as kids not snacking, I disagree that they don't need it. Some do and some don't, it depends where they are in their growth cycle.
Both of mine tended to snack a lot when they were going through growth spurts and then show very little interest in it when they were between growth spurts.
Since we raised them in such a way as to allow them to refuse food, they never ate when they weren't hungry and still don't. My kids were allowed to refuse meals and grab something healthy later or ask for a sandwich. I didn't want to interfere with their natural hunger signals. They, over time, settled into normal family meal patterns. Our son is still growing, and when he's having a growth spurt, he snacks a LOT. When he's not growing, he pretty much just eats at meal time.
It helps that we homeschool and don't have to deal with issues like the school policy. I think it's silly to provide two snacks. I think that encourages eating at a certain time regardless of appetite and encourages overeating of calories to get the treat in the name of getting in something nutritious first. It's just silly.3 -
I have to wonder why they're having two snacks? And curious because both I don't have kids and the school system is different here, these snacks are handed out during class?
If there's going to be a treat everyone should get it but it should be just that. If snacks are an everyday thing then I don't think it should always be a cookie. Kids will nearly always take the cookie, hungry or not. So okay sometimes. Rest of the time get offered some fruit or nuts, if they genuinely need a snack they'll take it.
It's really weird to me that there were two snacks, regardless of what they were.1 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »WeepingAngel81 wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »GlassAngyl wrote: »Children will always choose desire over common sense. It's up to adults to help the child to build good habits. Personally, I don't think cookies should have been offered at all. In my home, there is no desert. There is no sweet reward for doing what is expected of you. This creates a mind set that they should be rewarded for eating right which can lead to over eating later on in life instead of eating till you are full.
Remember the "Finish what's on your plate if you want desert." from childhood? Remember eating past the point of full just for a cookie or ice cream cone? Anyone regret or resent their parents for teaching them that? I do. I won't make my kids fat.. Junk is reserved for special occasions like birthdays and holidays.
I grew up in a finish what's on your plate if you want dessert home. I think it taught me good habits by teaching me which foods are important for health and which are treats.
Same here. I don't remember eating past the point of being full, but then, my mom always gave me reasonable portions. She started us with small portions and we were welcome to seconds if we wanted them.
Yes, this is me too.
I'm glad I was required to eat my vegetables, as I learned to like them. Overeating wasn't really an issue (and I was always a thin or normal weight child), maybe my mom just had a good sense of portion. (We also could usually get more if we wanted.)
I'm not talking about veggies.. My mother was abandoned with her three brothers and lived on the streets eating out of trash cans and collecting beans other kids used to play tiddlywinks with just to have something to eat. She never got over that so would pile a mountains worth of food on our plates so "we would never know that feeling of starvation" I guess.. and then since she couldn't stand food being wasted, made us eat it all because there were kids going without in this world. After was "desert".. So I grew up with the opposite belief that proportions had to be perfect and desert should never be used as a reward to convince kids to finish what's on their plates. Either they are hungry and will eat it all, or they aren't and there is nothing to tempt them into thinking that they have to continue eating. No punishment for not eating as well. The punishment was going to bed hungry.0 -
I was definitely the kid that binged when my mom wasn't home. The school shouldn't offer cookies at all. A lot of parents have issues with food their kids are given due to things as simple as allergies and it's really not a teacher's responsibility to monitor an individual child's intake. Schools should only offer healthy options or require the parents to pack an additional snack appropriate for their child.0
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rheddmobile wrote: »Teaching kids to think of unhealthy foods as a reward is not a good thing, and neither is forcing children to eat foods they don't want to eat. Either give cookies or don't but don't make them contingent on eating something else.
Yes, I grew up in a household which made me clean my plate before I ate dessert. And like the OP's children I learned to sneak snacks and binge on them as a result. Healthy children raised in cultures which don't use food as a reward don't naturally do this. It's taken me forty years to retrain myself that I can eat an appropriate amount of food because I can have more when I want it.
I don't have any issue with that policy--we have it at home for dinner, though I'd say just offering two decently healthy snacks most days would be easier. Some kids like healthy food, but maybe not the one option on offer. One son won't touch a banana but scarfs raspberries. The other is the exact opposite. Neither would eat celery but would eat carrot sticks. That type of thing is pretty common with younger kids.
I do wonder how food culture affects different kids differently. My brother and I had no regular desserts but generous portions of reasonably healthy food. No clean the plate rule, but we saw bigger than normal portions as normal (obese parents). We also saw treats being consumed like drugs when available, and hidden from everyone (but parents talking about the chocolate "calling to them...so usually to the finder went the spoils). Definitely good/bad foods. Little to no physical activity. Brother and I were chubby and have battled to stay at healthy weights as adults and have difficulty stopping eating treat foods.
Husband grew up with little food available in general, and lots of junk. He barely eats and will turn down something tteat like if he's not hungry or if it's not his favorite treat. Yet his sisters both battle (mild) weight problems.
Our sons don't eat much in general and we do have an "eat your whole dinner " for dessert policy because it's their one decent meal. Fruit is on offer most of the day and often snacked on. Dessert is something like 3 pcs of candy corn or a few gummy bears. At least 1 or 2 decide not to eat their whole dinner--not hungry, don't like peas, whatever. They're not upset, we're not upset. If we have a treat midday (birthday cupcakes for ex), we just say they've had enough sugar for the day. No whining, for the most part.
They have ample opportunity for outside play and inside running around (we homeschool), they play sports every season. Food is fuel, some more enjoyable than other types, but no reason to hoard or gorge bc treats will be available tomorrow or the next day. They are starting to see how some food makes their bodies function well (mostly this has to do with digestive functions) and some food doesn't.
There is a cabinet with treats , the bucket of candy that gets refilled at Halloween/Easter (after we throw away all the uneaten candy there from the previous holiday), and pantry has some cookies for their one day a week school lunch. Nothing gets taken without permission and they always ask if something is an anytime snack (fruit, applesauce, fig bars are, for ex). I left my 7 and 5 yo alone with a bag of mini marshmallows to make models of atoms--told them they could each have 5. Came back and everything was still there. At their ages my brother and I would have scarfed it all. And leftover holiday candy would be a joke. All of them can't finish snack bags of Doritos or similar they get out at parties, saying it's too much.
So after that rambling....not sure the clean your plate itself is the cause of everyone's issues. Availablity of treats was part of mine--by golly if cookies were a sometimes treat and today was that day, I'd stuff myself to get it bc who knows when it would come around again.1 -
My child's first grade teacher said it best: "If you promise to only believe half of what you hear went on at school I promise to only believe half of what they tell me they do at home"msjennigirl wrote: »As a teacher, I can say with certainty that when a child comes home and says, "I was the only one..." it's not always true.
Children are rarely to be trusted.
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WJS_jeepster wrote: »
My child's first grade teacher said it best: "If you promise to only believe half of what you hear went on at school I promise to only believe half of what they tell me they do at home"msjennigirl wrote: »As a teacher, I can say with certainty that when a child comes home and says, "I was the only one..." it's not always true.
Children are rarely to be trusted.
half still seems incredibly optimistic1 -
IMO, if the child was old enough to understand the rule, then it should be enforced, regardless of who got what. Rules and consequences.
Like a few other posters, I take more of an issue with a cookie being offer as a 'reward' instead of just another snack. It seems like this may setup more problems in the future with congratulatory eating. Even as an adult, my mind still often wanders to sugary snacks as a way to console or congratulate.0 -
WeepingAngel81 wrote: »A child refused to eat the healthy snack that was offered to her. The deal was, if you eat your healthy snack, you can have a cookie. She was not given a cookie, and according to the mom posting, she was the only one not given a cookie.
What this makes me think is that the kid was also the only one to refuse the healthy snack. I think the teacher had a pretty good hit-rate on the healthy stuff!
I don't fully agree with how the cookies were offered (I try to avoid using food as a bribe/reward), but that was the arrangement, so it seems fair enough.
Even though I try not to use food as a reward, I do still have the practice of not offering dessert unless a reasonable dinner is eaten first. But dessert isn't a routine thing in our house - mostly it's dinner and that's it. If the kids devour their food I will offer fruit or something. If they're not hungry enough to finish dinner then I figure they don't need something else - though there are exceptions: occasionally I try something new or different that they really don't like, and that's okay and they might get something else after.2 -
We have a cabinet full of delicious snacks some of them calorie dense and "unhealthy" some of them not so. We also have fruit and yogurt and other "healthy" things around. I don't have any rules about food other than, " hey I'm cooking dinner right here in front of you it's not a time to snack!" Both of my kids are very slender and healthy. If my daughter is full and I offer her her favorite dessert she will curl her lip and say no way. I was raised in a similar manner and want all the food. It's the whole nature vs nurture and if you use only my family as an example it's almost all nature.1
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Very interesting comments here. I'm a mother of 3 and each child has different eating habits. My first would've of ate the carrot and the cookie. My middle would have chewed the carrot and spit it out, in an effort to get the cookie and the last would've gagged at the sight of the carrot and wouldn't eat it regardless of the "reward." However, I do teach my kids that rules are to be followed and sometimes they don't seem fair but that's life. It wouldn't have been an "issue" if my kids knew that that was the rule at school (and they don't have food insecurity).1
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IMO schools and teachers should not be trying to police good and nutrition because they are absolutely CLUELESS, and they under no circumstances should be offering snacks or treats.
Where I'm from parents pack all food : lunches and snacks. However schools try to police healthy eating and man are they utterly clueless.3 -
I find any presumption that parents know "more" or "better" than anybody else, including teachers, to be laughably dumb.
I love watching reality shows, like Jamie Oliver, where they go in and look at the lunches parents packed for their kids. They are jaw droppingly bad.
Breeding doesn't make you magically an expert on education, nutrition, and health. In fact, I think there's pretty good observational evidence that it actually has the exact opposite effect.9 -
Eating delicious food (cookie) shouldn't be contingent on them eating something first. That's not how the world works and it's not how food should work. Either give them both at the same time or skip the cookie entirely. And no one should have to eat twice the food to get to the part they want. That also doesn't make sense. In a way that's negative, because they're eating more than they were hungry for.4
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I find any presumption that parents know "more" or "better" than anybody else, including teachers, to be laughably dumb.
I love watching reality shows, like Jamie Oliver, where they go in and look at the lunches parents packed for their kids. They are jaw droppingly bad.
Breeding doesn't make you magically an expert on education, nutrition, and health. In fact, I think there's pretty good observational evidence that it actually has the exact opposite effect.
Conversely, the idea that the teachers and school boards know more or better than anyone else is just as laughable to me. They may have good intentions but they know very little, and what they do think they know may not fit into the family's nutritional plan, health needs or beliefs.
I'm a teacher trained in biology. I was never taught nutrition.... Course in the schools around here, families pack the kids' food and the schools mostly stay out of it except for some cafeteria options that only a minority of students purchase.2 -
Poor kid, if that's mom's attitude all the time. Why should HER LITTLE PERFECT ANGEL have to follow the rules to get the rewards?
The teachers is in the right. If you do A, you get B. If you don't do A, you don't get B. She wasn't singled out and not offered A. Her actions have consequences.0 -
alida1walsh wrote: »Parents have to provide a packed lunch in Australia. Usually I pack a piece of fruit, 2 small fruit pillow biscuits and a wholemeal sandwich and sometimes a plain yoghurt. They generally eat it all. Occasionally one of my kids will grumble about what other kids get. But I'm not budging.
what is a fruit pillow biscuit??? It sounds really cute.0 -
msjennigirl wrote: »As a teacher, I can say with certainty that when a child comes home and says, "I was the only one..." it's not always true.
Children are rarely to be trusted.
And even if it were so, then she was the ONLY ONE who didn't eat the healthy snack.0 -
alida1walsh wrote: »Parents have to provide a packed lunch in Australia. Usually I pack a piece of fruit, 2 small fruit pillow biscuits and a wholemeal sandwich and sometimes a plain yoghurt. They generally eat it all. Occasionally one of my kids will grumble about what other kids get. But I'm not budging.
what is a fruit pillow biscuit??? It sounds really cute.
Fig newton?0 -
stanmann571 wrote: »alida1walsh wrote: »Parents have to provide a packed lunch in Australia. Usually I pack a piece of fruit, 2 small fruit pillow biscuits and a wholemeal sandwich and sometimes a plain yoghurt. They generally eat it all. Occasionally one of my kids will grumble about what other kids get. But I'm not budging.
what is a fruit pillow biscuit??? It sounds really cute.
Fig newton?
That's what I was thinking.0 -
I can't relate to the parents on the thread. I'm an old grandparent and I relate more to the child. I usually wouldn't choose say an apple usually, I'd rather have a cookie. I'd complain about not getting a cookie when I had to watch everybody else eating theirs. Plus that I'd be bitter thinking about the kids that got away with throwing the apple down, or eating bites out and spitting them to make it look like they ate some of the apple, or not finishing the apple and yet they got the cookies anyway. I'd feelindignant about the whole thing.
I'd think the adults were mean and to be manipulated for their bags of cookies and next time I'd try some of the tricks other kids do to get the cookies without eating the whole apple probably. AND I'd go home and make a big drama out of it to my mom, dad and siblings over dinner.1 -
rheddmobile wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »rheddmobile wrote: »Teaching kids to think of unhealthy foods as a reward is not a good thing, and neither is forcing children to eat foods they don't want to eat. Either give cookies or don't but don't make them contingent on eating something else.
Yes, I grew up in a household which made me clean my plate before I ate dessert. And like the OP's children I learned to sneak snacks and binge on them as a result. Healthy children raised in cultures which don't use food as a reward don't naturally do this. It's taken me forty years to retrain myself that I can eat an appropriate amount of food because I can have more when I want it.
Sorry, but it took you 40 years to learn to eat appropriately just because your parent(s) told you to clean your plate?
And may I ask why you are on this site? It's not all healthy skinny people with great relationships to food here.
Over half of Americans are overweight. It's not because our culture is smart about how we teach our children to eat. Cultures such as France which do not use food as rewards have much lower rates of obesity.
Speaking of the French, I read a really interesting thing about how the French frame eating dessert for their children. Rather than saying you must eat your veggies before you have dessert (thus implying that veggies must be suffered through to get a reward) they simply talk about the order that food is eaten. Salad comes first, then entree, then dessert. It is the natural order and you don't move on to step 3 if you haven't completed step 2. I think it is a really subtle difference but an important one. Also, many french homes offer Something for dessert each night, sometimes sweet, sometimes fruit, sometimes cheese. I think doing this helps lessen the feeling that kids might be missing out because there is always tomorrow night.3 -
This feels somewhat appropriate, although it's not veggies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5diMImYIIA 0 -
Making the cookie a reward rather than simply a reasonably portioned snack may be misguided. Instead of enjoying some apple or whatever it becomes something to get through to get to the dessert lesson learned is not necessarily healthy.
Instead present a small cookie portion. And apple or popcorn or whatever. That's it for cookies so if you need more food eat what we have.
Making treats something one deserved or earns gets problematic. It ends up assigning a value to a food above just a small indulgence.4 -
I think school and home are two different things.
My school has a "healthy snack policy" which I am fine with; the kids aren't offered sugary snacks or treats outside of 2-3 classroom celebrations for years. Even a kid bringing in birthday treats has to follow the healthy snack guidelines, so now cupcakes or cookies. (However, they also don't police what is sent in the kids' lunchboxes, and I am fine with that, too, since I think it should be up to the parents.)
At home, I do get the reasoning that you don't want your kids thinking of healthy foods as something to choke down so they can get dessert. That said, I don't offer dessert after every meal and if the kid hasn't eaten what's already on their plate, I take more the "You don't need more food if you haven't eaten what you've already been given?" approach.0 -
All I have to say is mealtime is not the place for the battle of wills.0
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