Opinion: 'Why parents like me are seeing red over the canteen ban on ham'
By Victoria Owens|
Opinion -- The humble ham and cheese sandwich is being banned from school canteens in Western Australia, with parents being forced to deal with even more restrictions when it comes to their kids' lunches.
Until now, the beloved sandwich filling has been safe in the amber category of the school traffic light system of colour-coded canteen menus.
But the WA government is putting an end to that, declaring ham is in the red and now parents are seeing red tooกญ and rightly so.
READ MORE: How one phone call to school can save parents big bucks
Aren't there enough restrictions already on kids lunches that we don't need to keep adding to the pile on?
It begs the question of why we always have to default to a blanket ban the moment there's a slight concern, especially over something as unnecessary as the canteen lunch list.
Are we so much of a nanny state that we can't even let our kids make decisions about what they put in their mouth?
I know the research is out there that ham has carcinogenic qualities and shouldn't be consumed every day, but can we give our kids and their parents some credit that the majority aren't doing that.
READ MORE: The budget 'mistake' most families make and how to fix it
How can our kids make the "right" choices if they're only offered the healthy ones, because what happens when they finally enter the real world and discover all the foods that we've been withholding from them all this timeกญ they're going to go crazier than a kid in a candy store.
Recent research tell us not to categorise food into good and bad lists for our kids จC so they can make good choices based on the fact that they know to eat a variety of foods from all the colours of the rainbow.?
I know back when I was growing up, I was never allowed juice poppas, rollups or even Tiny Teddies but the second I went to any birthday party, I sat there stuffing my face with as many sweet treats as I could manage, knowing my time with them was limited.
Surely the same thing still applies to kids these days.
READ MORE: Game-changing move could help slash your grocery costs
Any parent knows, the more you deny kids of something, the more they're going to want it, so this new government-imposed rule makes me think perhaps it's actually doing them a disservice.
But even if we take away the fact that ham isn't the healthiest thing on the menu, half the battle with school lunches is getting kids to eat at all, with many parents faced with a completely full lunch box at the end of each day.
Ham is an unspoken gateway food many of us tired parents use for getting calories into our fussy little kids' tummies.
Sure it might not be the top of the food pyramid, but teamed with some multi-grain bread, a slice of cheese and some tomato and you've got yourself a balanced meal and a full tummy.
Whereas the alternative is one hangry kid who's being denied the one thing he or she truly enjoys eating.
Fortunately or unfortunately, whichever way you look at it, while ham has been categorised into the red, it's actually part of a new category that's causing all this confusion.
It's called "selected red" and means while it's not a healthy food, it can be offered twice a week.
So kids will have two chances each week to order ham off the menu จC and I can only imagine how long the canteen line will be on those days.
So while parents can breathe a sigh of relief (for now) that the ham and cheese toastie won't be disappearing for good, they will have to add it to the infinite list of things to remember to ensure their kid doesn't go hungry at school.
