Montana Brown sparks heated school dinners debate after spotting 'excessive' habit
The debate has divided her social media followers
Ella Scott
Montana Brown has called out school authorities, questioning why children are provided with dessert every day.
Nutritional standards are in place for state-funded school meals in England, ensuring the food served to students is high-quality, balanced, and nutritious.
In primary schools, the lunch typically consists of a two-course meal: a main entreé with a starchy carbohydrate, vegetables or salad, as well as dairy and protein, and a pudding.
While confectionery, chocolate or chocolate-coated products are usually avoided by cooks, desserts, cakes and biscuits that are low in fat, saturated fat, sugar, and salt are on the UK Government’s inclusion list.
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However, former Love Island contestant Montana Brown, 30, has debated whether or not kids should be getting a sweet treat with their school meals.
“Why do children need desserts every day at school?” she said in a social media video.
“Like why do they need a sticky toffee pudding every day?
“That would be strange if you went to work and one of your colleagues was like tucking into a sticky toffee pudding and like custard every lunch.”
The mum-of-two continued, alleging that this would be 'excessive'.
She further claimed that it was ‘difficult’ for adults to wean themselves off sugar.
“You’d have pudding after pudding after pudding and I am a firm believer that just kids shouldn’t have pudding.”
Instead of cakes, Brown reasoned that pupils should be handed yoghurt and fruit if they are still hungry, and that ‘extra protein’ should be on hand to fill them up.
“And I know you guys hate it when I talk about this but this is genuinely how I feel,” she concluded, adding: “I’m not even rage baiting.”
The video, which has already surpassed 162,000 views since it was posted on Tuesday (3 March), has caused heated debate.
“Why are we shaming kids/our colleagues for wanting to eat cake?” said one TikTok user.
Another replied: “Completely agree but it starts from nursery and it drives me mad!!”
“If you want to control what they eat, you just send a packed lunch. Its that simple,” reasoned a third viewer.
Someone else wrote: “I kinda understand understand what she's saying for children who are well fed at home, especially with so many kids being overweight in schools which is partly why PE and healthy eating policies exist.
“But some children might not get sweet treats or desserts at home at all, and school could be the only place they experience that. When I was a child, I never got sweet treats like my own does. But my daughters school doesn't do puddings everyday fruit etc.”
Brown has previously been blasted for ‘guilt-tripping’ parents following a rant about feeding children processed food.
The 2017 ITV star, who shares her two kids with rugby player Mark O'Connor, informed her followers that they shouldn’t fall into the ‘trap’ of buying ‘kiddilicious wafers’ and ‘chicken casserole in a little squirty thing’.
"I hate them, I really hate them, I think, they want it to be so easy for us they want it to be so convenient that we buy them every day and feed them to our kids because it’s healthy and easy way to, you don't have to make them a chicken casserole. It's full of c**p.”
She added that she would look at the ingredients on the ready-made baby food and think ‘Oh my gosh I do not want to give [her son] this stuff ever’.