The ‘S’ word

So the ‘S’ word, what do we all think? Ever since Jamie jumped on a bandwagon, which had been rolling for a while to be fair, it has been brought to the forefront of thoughts on food.

At the end of the last academic year, my kid’s school decided to remove refined sugar products from the menu. Gone was the cake and custard, gone was the ice cream and we said farewell to the biscuits my eldest certainly loved very well. In their place we have yoghurt, bread and, of course, fruit.

To tell the truth I was pretty happy with the change. Not because I have a particular issue with sugar (aside from the usual parental guilt) but because if we want to have cake and custard at home I can give it to them pretty much guilt free. Having said that the effect on kids on packed lunches has been much more wide reaching. And there was uproar over a decision to limit dried fruit.

To be honest there has been uproar more generally with lots of parents suggesting overkill and that the school is being too draconian in their approach. Cue lots of muttering in the park after school and various other locations, but very little actual action.   To be fair these parents are probably the ones who give their kids the right type of food, who consider the level of sugar in their diets and who cook from scratch avoiding all those nasty hidden things.

But what about the kids who don’t get that? Not because their parents love them any less but just because there’s a lack of understanding about where sugar is.   Does the school not have a duty of care to these kids? When I see 3 and 4 year olds with rotten teeth in nursery alongside my youngest I have to think that the policy is a good thing isn’t it?

When I was little we had puddings everyday as far as I can remember. But the puddings where homemade and sugar content could be controlled. We had custard to provide a hit of milk and, therefore calcium. And these homemade puddings followed a homemade meal which was always tasty and NEVER from a jar (those kind of things being quite limited way back then).

Nowadays sugar is literally everywhere and our kids are bombarded with it. It’s up to us to educate the kids (and ourselves along the way) to make the right choices. Not to demonise sugar, which in the right quantities is ok in my opinion, as long as it’s part of a otherwise pretty good diet (and of course pretty good teeth brushing). Overall, I think it’s going to take a long long time to change people’s attitude to sugar but where better to start than with our kids?