School snacks feared unhealthy
The CCSDM gives away free snacks to the kids, but an investigation shows that they’re unhealthy, being mostly made of ultraprocessed food. There are photos of bars, cookies and sweetened yogurts, but talk about fruit and veg.
La Presse also talked to various experts on what kids eat and how bad this is.
Meezly 10:51 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
This is so true. Probably because ultra processed foods are relatively cheap.
jeather 11:27 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
They also last longer.
It’s interesting because I know EMSB parents who have been chided for letting their kids bring homemade cookies (but not homemade “granola bars” aka some version of a cookie bar), no matter what else is in the lunchbox.
Kate 12:12 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
That’s the thing. Those cookies and bars are shelf stable. Serving up fruit and veg sounds great, but the schools would have to install fridges, arrange regular deliveries, employ people to do basic food prep, manage possible allergies, clean up a lot more mess…
CE 14:18 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
Why would parents be chided for giving their kids homemade cookies?
Ian 14:21 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
My kid got chided for having popcorn (homemade, no salt or butter) as her lunch snack. Some teachers think it’s their business to bother the kids for eating what they perceive as “unhealthy” foods.
CE 14:34 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
Oh, they chided them for being unhealthy? I thought it had something to do with the homemade part. What do the teachers say to the kids who, like me when I was a kid, show up with a bag full of Oreos? Homemade cookies were a rare treat but there was always a bag of some sort of cookies in my lunch.
jeather 15:14 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
They’d do the same for Oreos as homemade cookies at the schools where the teachers comment about healthy food.
Kate 16:07 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
CE, maybe the schools are afraid of parents sending in cookies containing peanuts or other allergens? A commercial cookie would have a list of ingredients. A homemade cookie would be an unknown quantity.
jeather 16:28 on 2024-05-06 Permalink
If you buy a big case of prepackaged cookies and dole them out in ziplocs, no one can see what is in the food; similarly, if you cook food in peanut oil and give that to your kid, no one will see. I don’t really see that homemade cookies are higher or lower risk than anything else homemade. At the EMSB elementary shcools I am aware of this happening in, this is very explicitly part of their healthy foods curriculum which also uses somewhat dated ways of teaching about food.