Six-year-old schoolboy suspended for having Mini Cheddars in his lunchbox

[Ticktock]

Little known fact that carrots can make your poo go red too.

[DirtyDog]

A nice carrot.

Except there's sugar in those as well.

Help you see in the dark, though

[TheBigD]

There's a lot of sugar in an apple.

Cue someone blithering on about it being "natural" sugar in 3..2..1...

Yes there is. But this is a healthy eating policy for a primary school. I don't think a general teaching of...

fruit/vegetables/salad = good
processed crisps/biscuits/cake/chocolate = bad

...is worth getting your knickers in a twist for. As they get older, the teaching of nutrition should (I hope) be tailored to a more advanced level.

[d000hg]

There's a lot of sugar in an apple.

Cue someone blithering on about it being "natural" sugar in 3..2..1...

[TheBigD]

They're teachers, not nutritionists. They've implemented a policy of healthy eating, and the children/parents should stick to it.

Sure, you may be able to pick holes in their policy, but if the parents follow it reasonably, the kids will get a balanced lunch, which was the original goal.

Replace the mini-chedders with an apple. Probably the same cost and no additional effort.

The parents are making an issue out of somthing trivial, and the lad is paying the price.

[d000hg]

How boring this thread is becoming.

You know, mini-cheddars are all well and good but I much prefer



I really liked the crinkle-cut mini-cheddars, but I haven't seen them for ages.

[DirtyDog]

They had a meeting with the teachers. According to the schools own procedure there would have been several such attempts at contact.

Reading the Mail article and pictures of the letter from the school, they had a meeting with senior staff. Staff explained the policy. Dad said that he would send the child to school with just a banana and water. School explained that was not a healthy lunch. School asked whether they would send him to school with a healthy lunch, and Dad replies "You will have to wait and see". Parents obviously then didn't send a healthy lunch, so school excluded the child because his parents put him in a position where he kept breaking the school rules.

If I tell my children not to do something or there will be a punishment involved, and they continue to do the same thing, they get punished. There is clearly an asymmetry of power here, but if there is no punishment, there is no incentive to do the right thing in the future. The only difference here is that the parents in the news have the ability to take their child out of that environment and move him anywhere else that will take him.

[DirtyDog]

That is pure straw man. Those are all reasonable policies. Banning arbitrary foodstuffs on "health" grounds without reference to their nutritional value isn't reasonable, especially when the school is required to teach about nutrition. If they had a no parents in jeans policy, that would be unreasonable too and I'd expect parents to tell them where to stick it.

So, because you think a policy is unreasonable, parents should be free to ignore the rule and there be no consequences.

Obviously most of the parents think that the new policy is reasonable, or there would be more than one family complaining about it.

The parents are free to tell the school to stick it. I absolutely agree with their rights to do that. However, to tell the school to stick it and not expect any repercussions of that is foolhardy.

[DirtyDog]

From the article:

"The school, near Slough, had implemented a healthy eating plan from the beginning of term, which asked parents to provide a balanced meal and refrain from giving their children chocolate, sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks."

I haven't personally verified the facts.

I suspect that the policy contains more information than one line of "provide a balanced meal and refrain from giving their children chocolate, sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks"

[cailin maith]

He's not the most attractive kid. I've changed my mind - guilty as charged. Throw him out of mainstream schooling and give him an early leg up for the life of delinquency that his visage promises.

Katie Hopkins.... is that you?