Pastries and croissants will no longer be permitted in breakfast clubs. Sausages and bacon are allowed, but only once a week. Fried eggs are banned completely. Only breakfast cereals that are very low in sugar can be served. Teacakes, crumpets and unsweetened pancakes can be served, but only twice a week. Porridge is permitted but only if it is ‘plain’ and ‘unflavoured’ – no sugar, honey, syrups or sweeteners are to be made available.
For lunch, kids can no longer be offered fried chips or any other deep-fried food. Processed meat and ‘foods containing pastry’ can only be served once a week. Meals containing cheese, such as lasagna, are limited to three portions a week. Lentils and chickpeas are to be compulsory at least once a week. No foods containing chocolate are permitted. ‘Sweetened desserts’ can only be served twice a week.
As for the tuck shop, the government has decreed that the ‘only permitted snacks are plain fruits, vegetables, savoury crackers, breadsticks, yoghurt / plant-based versions (as per the dairy food group) and houmous’. Nom, nom!
The new rules go far beyond ensuring that kids have a balanced diet and consume enough calories to get through the day. They are a grab bag of arbitrary prohibitions on random food products and compulsory targets that seem to have been devised by rolling dice. Their only redeeming feature is that they will save the taxpayer money if children decide to eat their breakfast at home and take a packed lunch with them to school.
This is why Jamie Oliver was so keen to ban packed lunches 20 years ago and it is why nanny statists have been echoing his demand ever since. Only last month, the cake-promoting anti-obesity campaigner Prue Leith said the quiet part out loud when she called for packed lunches to be banned because the government ‘can’t police’ what parents put in them. The constant expansion of breakfast clubs and ‘free’ school meals isn’t about preventing children from going hungry. It is about control. The state doesn’t trust parents to follow the latest food fad and it wants to overrule the preferences of not just the child, but also of the child’s family.
Schools to police children’s lunch boxesSchools will be expected to tell parents what they can put in their children’s lunch boxes as part of Labour’s plans to promote healthier meals for pupils.
... From September next year, schools will have to publish their packed lunch policies online to “strengthen accountability and improve compliance”.
The DfE has also reiterated that teachers are encouraged to offer prizes or other incentives to pupils for bringing in a healthy lunch.
Schools will be expected to continue following guidance from 2019, which recommended restrictions on sugary and fatty foods.
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