A school in Bradford has banned children from bringing sausage rolls and porkpies to school in their packed lunches. The move is part of a new healthy eating drive adopted by the school, with children being encouraged to show teachers the contents of their lunch boxes before they start eating.
The Guardian reports:
A school has banned sausage rolls, pork pies, pepperoni sticks and fruit squash in a crackdown parents have called “ridiculous”.
The new policy at Shirley Manor primary academy in Bradford states that parents will be called if the prohibited items are found in pupils’ lunchboxes.
Children aged three to seven will also be “encouraged” to show their packed lunches to staff before they eat, the rules state.
Unsurprisingly, this has caused some consternation among parents, not to mention provoked quite the furore online and in the media.
It's nothing we haven't heard before, of course, and no doubt there'll be cries for schools to stick to teaching kids instead of dictating to parents on the topic of what kids should or shouldn't eat / wear / do.
But I'm going to stick my neck out here and say I think the school has done the right thing. One of my children goes to a school with a similar healthy eating policy and I've got to say that it cuts down on the daily what-to-put-in-the-packed-lunch stress.
It's all too easy to shove the unhealthy stuff into our kids' lunch-boxes – not least because we know they'll eat it, but sausage rolls and pork pies do not a nutritious meal make. So if banning them from the lunch table at school means fewer kids begging their parents for high-calorie baked goods because 'so-and-so-at-school always has them' then I'm all in favour of this school's approach.
I loathe packed lunches at the best of times and have had years of experience of emptying lunch boxes of practically un-touched food at the end of each school day – but I'd still prefer to send my child to school with a healthy wholemeal sandwich that he might only take a nibble out of, than pack him off with pork pies and sausage rolls that he'll happily munch, and know that I'm doing his future health no good.
What's your view on this story? Do you think, like me, that it's a lot of fuss about nothing? Or would you be in uproar if your child's school banned baked goods from lunchboxes?
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