Schoolboy Blues

Sometimes schools just make silly rules*.  Added to the no-nut (fair enough) and no-pork (culturally fair enough, though really if Lightning eats a ham sandwich is anyone gonna know?!) rules, they've added no-chocolate.  In the guise of encouraging 'healthy eating'.

And that's what hacks me off.  It's not like my kids would take in chocolate bars to school anyway - at least not chocolate chocolate bars like Mars or Twix, mini or otherwise, though post-Christmas some chocolate coins definitely found their way in to their lunch boxes - but the fact that basically no snack they can eat at school can have any hint of chocolate in it, irks me.

Take Lightning for example, who has dealt with (more so than the girls, anyway) the no chocolate rule every day this week.  He wolfs down two Weetabix for breakfast along with a cup of orange juice (though every morning asks if it's a weekend because then he's allowed his coveted Coco Pops), always has a glass or three of milk for his tea and loves a good ole' Granny Smith or plum or some other fruit for his morning snack.  So for lunch I pack him two slices of bread with cheese and ham or Philadelphia or turkey or tuna or whatever, and another tub of vegetables, always including the peppers that he loves, which he washes down with his bottle of water.  So where is the harm in him having a Barni after all that?  A Barni Bear that is basically a bear-shaped sponge with like a teaspoonful of chocolate tucked in the inside.  Or a Quaker's Oat Cookie with miniscule amount of chocolate chips (I am honestly trying to stick to the rule).

I guess I could give him a cereal bar every day instead, which would be healthier (I'm assuming, but I am not one for reading the labels of food), but most of my kids don't like them and fair enough, neither do I so I'm not gonna force it on them.  Or perhaps I could pack a youghurt which we decided today he might like, the issue of it staying cold aside.  But back to my point, what's wrong with a Barni if they've just eaten all their healthy lunch and snack?

I totally get encouraging healthy eating: if a child brings in nutella sandwiches every day for lunch, fine, talk to the parents; or if a 4-year old only eats the chocolate bar in his lunch box, then okay; or even if melting is the issue with chocolate, then say that.  But to blanket chocolate as bad, and not the 101 other things that I'm sure contain just as much sugar, fat, and whatever else is supposed to be bad for you, in my irked opinion, just isn't right.  Would it be healthier to send all my kids to school with a pack of crisps every day?  Or Teddy Grahams??  Or a couple of Custard Creams?

Stupid is what it is.  Stupid.  Like their car parks, but that's a whole different, never-ending, totally-justifiable, have-to-experience-the-stupidity-to-believe-it, rant.

* Turns out I blogged this particular stupidity before.