tuck shops

The government is preparing a proposal that will ban "junk food" in school canteens. personally I think this is fantastic. as schools, we should be educating children, and providing the best food choices for lunch is part of that. Sure, kids will bring in other foods, and that their choice, but i think schools should be setting this healthy example.

i also don't think this will stop obesitiy, but i think it is a step in the right direction. what does everyone else think? listengin to the radio this morning, most people thought it was a stupid idea.

I think its a great idea, for some kids, it will be the only healthy meal they get!

Oh, Nat said the other day that some of the new stuff the college tuck shop is offering now tastes like cardboard! He said that healthy options are only any good if they actually taste good... and that most schools already have a healthy food policy in place, so the possibility of legislation isn't going to do much.

Ideally I think they should offer a good variety of both. Simply because (we have been going over this with the boys school) Kids need to learn to make healthy choices themselves not have it forced upon them.

There are not always going to be adults around to tell these kids what to eat so they need to learn to make the right choices on their own. As far as it being the only healthy meal these kids might have, they will just go somewhere else and still miss out on what they need.

I don't think it will do anything towards obesity at all, and it feels like yet another way the government are telling us what we can and can't do with our children!

At the boys school they have a one treat policy in lunch boxes treats include:

Chocolate muesli bars
cake
biscuits
roll ups
Strings
Chips

And chocolate, lollies and fizzy are banned

And this was working well until some teachers went on power trips and started adding:

Jam
Nutella
Boston buns
Le Snacks
THe list goes on!

They were also checking lunch boxes and taking food out!!So we as parents had to ask them toback off a little as kids were getting scared about taking lunch to school.

You have to encourage healthy eating but at the same time make children responsible for their choices. I now give the kids a choice about what to put in there lunch boxes and have been really surprised by their choices. We have a green pile an orange pile and a red pile. They are so eager to make the right choices they very rarely ever want to things from the red pile. And I have no complaints about what's in their boxes.

My only concern is that tuck shops in a lot of schools have the proceeds going to the school, if healthy options are substituted and then the tuck shop no longer used that will cause a dent in the amount of money a school obtains from the sales and schools have enough problems with budgets etc as it is