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School Food Policies

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  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,728 Member
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    Relser 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?
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,020 Member
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    stanmann571 wrote: »
    Relser 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.
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
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    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.
  • StarBrightStarBright
    StarBrightStarBright Posts: 97 Member
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    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.
  • TR0berts
    TR0berts Posts: 7,739 Member
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    This feels somewhat appropriate, although it's not veggies.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5diMImYIIA
  • kenyonhaff
    kenyonhaff Posts: 1,377 Member
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    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.
  • macchiatto
    macchiatto Posts: 2,890 Member
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    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.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    All I have to say is mealtime is not the place for the battle of wills.

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