Parents frustrated as teachers send home yoghurt, calling it ‘junk food’

HIDE your sugar, ditch your dairy, and can the cruskits too because the lunch box police are on patrol. This time an Aussie favourite and even yoghurt are on the hit list.

• Susie O’Brien: Enough of overzealous food policing
• Push to ban junk food at schools
• George Calombaris bans his boy from eating McDonald’s

HIDE your sugar, ditch your dairy, and chop that chocolate cake too: the lunch box police are at it again.

Parents are venting their frustration as more schools and kindergartens crack down on the junk food scourge by enforcing strict — and sometimes over the top — lunch box rules.

Carrots and hummus dip, wholemeal zucchini muffins and homemade vegetarian sausage rolls were among a litany of foods deemed questionable or ‘off limits’ by overzealous schools and kinders, according to mothers in a Melbourne online parenting group.

Have you been lunch box shamed? Tell us in the comments below.

Note sent home by a kindergarten to a South Australian mother who put cake into her child's lunch box. Picture: Supplied

Would these pass the test? Hard to know these days. Picture: Anna Rogers

Apparently even the Aussie classic Vegemite and cheese cruskits are a no-no.

Melbourne mum Aleesha Sinclair couldn’t believe it when her daughter’s kindergarten sent home her vegemite and cheese cruskits, and organic Greek yoghurt pouch, with a note from staff that these were considered ‘sometimes foods.’

According to a facebook post by Ms Sinclair, her daughter went hungry because she was not allowed to eat the food she had been sent with.

“Seriously, where do you draw the line,” Ms Sinclair wrote.

The replies to her post, in a south eastern suburbs parenting group, came thick and fast.

Mothers from across Melbourne were quick to share their stories of lunch box shame.

Many parents said they felt that schools and kindergartens were taking the ‘healthy guidelines’ too far, setting unrealistic expectations.

Others said it was not up to the staff to dictate the menu.

Kirsty Moorhead said, “I am a kinder teacher and a mum. I wouldn’t dare tell parents what to feed their children. Not my business!”

While others suggested the level of policing put kids at risk of developing unhealthy relationships with food.

Australian icon, ‘sometimes’ food. Some kindys don’t want parents sending Vegemite cruskits for lunch. Picture Roger Wyman

Even yoghurt is bad apparently.

“Can you imagine telling a 4 or 5 year old that they can’t eat their lunch because it is supposedly ‘unhealthy’? It is an eating disorder in the making,” said one member.

It comes as a South Australian mother-of-eight made headlines when a slice of her three-year-old daughter’s leftover birthday cake was sent home by her preschool, accompanied by a stern warning.

A friend of the mum posted a photo of the note online which encouraged her to ‘re-evaluate her food options’ and stop sending foods from the red category — which according to the traffic light system is considered the most sinful of food groups.

But despite all the lunch box rules and healthy eating guidelines which are driving parents crazy, if there’s one thing that doesn’t belong in a kid’s lunch box — this Mum has probably found it.

A mother has poked fun at herself and her “epic lunch box fail” in which she sent her daughter to primary school with a frozen vodka slushie in place of her usual frozen juice pouch.

“Made for a veeery interesting phone call from the teacher,” the mother said.

@GenevieveAlison