Junk in schools - Healthy Snack - vent

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Forum -> Children's Health

View latest: 24h 48h 72h

what do you give your kids for school snacks?

mostly junk

[ 2 ]

mostly healthy

45%

[ 19 ]

something in between

50%

[ 21 ]

Total Votes : 42

amother

Thu, Feb 19 2015, 10:57 pm

I am so frustrated that my children get so much junk in school.
I am not the most health freak but I do feel its too much.
When they were little the teachers only allowed healthy snacks which was great.
Now most kids bring junk to school. I have enough parenting struggles, this ads allot of stress as my kids are always upset no matter what I give them. If it’s not junk like most classmates, it’s no good.
Teachers give the kids junk for prices, then there are birthday parties, syums, rosh chodes, therapist give it as prices, it just doesn't stop.
I wish there would be a no junk rule in all schools.
Cant they just buy silly cheap prices and give that instead of food?
Sorry, just needed to vent.
I would love a solution but I doubt any school would care enough to make it such a rule.
I guess I can keep on dreaming………..

amother

Thu, Feb 19 2015, 11:17 pm

Voice your opinion to the school. If enough families complain there might be change. Certainly nothing will change if you don't speak up.

blad

Thu, Feb 19 2015, 11:23 pm

It's understandable that you are angry and feel lost how to deal with the issue, but guess what the school is in the same situation and much worse, they would need to fight with every single child, parent and grandparent who disagree with this. I'm empowering my children with knowledge of eating healthy foods.

MagentaYenta

Thu, Feb 19 2015, 11:49 pm

My kids all went to public schools, there was no such thing as a candy bribe or candy reward for their learning or social skills development. I often wonder if this handing out candy is a disservice to kids in Jewish schools?

seeker

Thu, Feb 19 2015, 11:54 pm

blad wrote:

The schools will have to fight with all the parents and grandparents if they stop giving out candy as prizes? Scratching Head

Which parent is going to call the school and say "How dare you motivate my kids with gratification and appreciation for hard work and good middos? Shut up and give them candy, for goodness sake!" I can just see it now... irate parents whose homes are filled with sour sticks mobbing the school's phone lines saying "What's this Moishy says about popcorn and grapes at the class siyum? Where are the chips?"

chani8

Fri, Feb 20 2015, 2:21 am

Not to charedi bash, but in my experience, it is a charedi thing. My youngest is in the DL school system and I'm not seeing treats handed out. The classrooms seem noisier though.

rainbow dash

Fri, Feb 20 2015, 3:52 am

My kids school In Antwerp Yesod hatorah, the kids are not allowed to bring any nush to school.Even the cookies have to be plain. The only time there is nush is when a kid has a birthday and gives out pekalach.

Jewishmom8

Fri, Feb 20 2015, 4:42 am

chani8 wrote:

Not to charedi bash, but in my experience, it is a charedi thing. My youngest is in the DL school system and I'm not seeing treats handed out. The classrooms seem noisier though.

I think you may be right.
I cant stand it. I hate that my son gets all these taffies in school. I am not super healthy But taffies are terrible for teeth. my kids have tons of cavities and I am sure its because of all the junk they get at school.
Maybe its because its cheap?

chani8

Fri, Feb 20 2015, 5:18 am

Jewishmom8 wrote:

Cheap and effective. Wink

imaima

Fri, Feb 20 2015, 5:42 am

next thing xou know, you have to bribe them with candy to go to the dentist...

Ruchel

Fri, Feb 20 2015, 6:39 am

imaima wrote:

next thing xou know, you have to bribe them with candy to go to the dentist...

There are dentists who do

amother

Fri, Feb 20 2015, 8:41 am

amother wrote:

Voice your opinion to the school. If enough families complain there might be change. Certainly nothing will change if you don't speak up.

you have a point, but knowing how our school works and 'politics', they wont make such a rule.
but I will still try.

amother

Fri, Feb 20 2015, 8:59 am

Yes, this was one of my biggest pet peeves about schools. One year, my son's OT (who is sent by the county, but worked with many many children in the school) was feeding my son (who has ADHD) sour sticks and other candy, and then sending him back to class. As if he will then be able to control himself. When I spoke to the school about, they did not see the issue, which led me to suspect they also used candy way more than my kids let on. I think we need better trained teachers who do not need candy as a bribe, and a school environment where treats are fine, but not daily and not multiple times daily.

southernbubby

Fri, Feb 20 2015, 8:59 am

Our kids grew up in frum schools with lots of nosh and food everywhere. It was a challenge not to become overweight. A doctor once addressed the ladies and said that if a person eats at a kiddish, he or she should not eat lunch again at home. I once saw a young girl on her 3rd piece of cake at a kiddish and told her mother. The mother was grateful and stopped the child but now that child is a teenager with a weight issue.

As we know, not all weight issues start from nosh as school or kiddish in shul. Mothers often feel that they have to serve 3 types of kugel to guests (and that is in addition to tons of challah) and not cut things into smaller portions. Our ethnic foods are among the worst foods for the health. Hamantashen are full of fat and sugar and kreplach, the same. Matzoh is pure carb and matzoh balls are full of oil and salt, and so on. We are not like the French or the Greeks in our eating patterns. People can live to be 100 if they don't ruin their hearts first.

Our culture is very centered on eating and the children in frum communities know that their school is in close proximity to the doughnut shop or bakery and the nosh store and pizza place. I see so many kids who are not simply on the high end of the charts but who are dangerously obese and who could benefit from bariatric surgery before the die of heart attacks chas v'sholem.

And I am not sure why this is, and don't all bash at once, but I see much more extreme obesity in the girls than in the boys. Maybe boys don't help cook as much and go outside and ride bikes and play ball more but some of these girls who are seriously obese (in our small shul I have see 3 like that who are close to or more than 100 lbs overweight and several more who are significantly overweight but not morbidly obese) have a greater risk of serious health issues.

In NY, when I drop off my granddaughters at school, I see loads of seriously obese children. We as a community cannot ignore this issue.

seeker

Fri, Feb 20 2015, 12:41 pm

By the way, I'm not an extremist, while I do think it would be ideal if we all ate healthy all the time I also wouldn't object to an occasional sweet treat in school. My issue is that I feel it's excessive. Someone mentioned "only" on birthdays - do you realize that for a typical class "only birthdays" could be 20-30 times a year, for an average of almost once a week (I'm thinking 52 weeks per year, minus about 9-10 for summer vacation, another 8-9for miscellaneous other vacations/holidays, leaving about 33 school weeks for 25 birthday parties) so that's usually each time a cupcake as well as at least one candy type thing to go. Then in ADDITION to that in younger grades there is Shabbos party every week. That does not consist merely of crackers and grape juice, dd comes with tales of all kinds of sugar. Then there are ALSO special treats for every little thing they learn. This seems to happen most often in preschool-kindergarten but on Fridays when everyone gets out at the same time I notice the older kids emerging with nosh all the time too - a parsha project involving marshmallow fluff and sour sticks, hamentaschen for Rosh Chodesh this week ok I get that but when it's something else every week I stop hearing the reasoning and just see sugar everywhere. That's besides siyums and rewards.

So while I do see the value in marking a special occasion with ice cream or something, it also seems that it is so excessive that there's hardly even such a thing as special anymore, and a line needs to be drawn somewhere. And if the only way to break this pattern is to aim for e opposite extreme, so be it.

In my experience, candy all the time is not only bad for ones health,it turns kids into whiny entitled pests too because they want candy for everything.not to mention that it gives them a sweet tooth so they enjoy healthy foods less.

amother

Sun, Mar 01 2015, 8:51 am

ok all, get ready for purim Wink

more junk.............

southernbubby

Sun, Mar 01 2015, 8:55 am

I wonder of the food banks would take the unopened packages of packaged goods.

amother

Sun, Mar 01 2015, 10:28 am

I am almost sure they would, specially the ones in frum neighborhoods.
question is more how to bribe your kids to give it to you in exchange for something healthier.

seeker

Sun, Mar 01 2015, 11:01 am

I would not bribe kids to donate their snacks to a food pantry. I would much rather encourage them to look at how much they have, choose some to enjoy, realize that they have more than can possibly be good for them, and choose based on that what to give for people who have less than them. We do this with toys and books a couple of times a year. I might guide them to choose one thing to eat now, one thing to put aside for each Shabbos until Pesach, and maybe something to share with a friend if desired, and then consider everything else excess. In my ideal world anything consisting entirely of sugar, food coloring, and nothing else would go straight in the garbage, but my child covets those things so strongly that I'm choosing not to fight that battle now, instead I just educate her that it is not good for her, we never buy it, and when we happen to receive it we enjoy it for a few minutes and brush teeth well right away.

smss

Tue, Mar 03 2015, 1:34 am

whether you think kids should eat candy and junk food sometimes, always, or never, one thing that is for sure is that food should NEVER be used as a reward. that is really just setting a person up for emotional overeating.

many schools have in fact implemented a "no food as prizes" rule. if enough parents complain, you could get your school to do that. and to create rules about siyums etc.

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