To think a leftover happy meal isn’t the worst packed lunch you could have?

Having seen the portions at my children’s school for school dinners I can’t believe they’re any more (quantity and calories)

It looks terrible and tastes awful .

A nuggets HM contains under 400 calories. If it’s a left over HM, then it could be less than 200 calories. How is a child supposed to function properly on a woo calorie lunch? Of course it’s unacceptable, verging on neglect.
A ham sandwich and wagon wheel is approx 500 calories, so clearly much better nutritionally.

@x2boys if a one off it really isnt like they sent the kid in an arsenic bloody sandwich.

Its a crap lunch regardless of any circumstances.

And what if the chikd had eaten all of the happy meal ?
Then they wouldn't have any lunch
Honestly I have bern really skint if I only had £3.60 to feed my kids i wouldn't be buying a happy meal,
You can get frozen pizza, s for less then£2 in Iceland etc.

I don’t fancy a cold McDonald’s.

Also leftover Happy Meal…surely can’t be very much food at all? Even for a child, half a Happy Meal can’t be that filling?

I also have an autistic child that eats the same thing every day. Cream crackers, berries and a cupcake. That’s all she’ll have. Occasionally she might have grapes instead of berries.

Cold McDonald’s is pretty much inedible - I’d be more concerned about that.

The one line that stood out for me was this: Staff in primary schools monitor packed lunches. Unfit or inappropriate items can be seized and returned to parents at the end of the school day – in their place, children receive a free school meal.
So little johnny wont take a sandwich or a bottle of water and a carrot to school, mother in desperation goes fine take the ginger snap biscuits. School see this and replace biscuits with proper meal. It could be a handy scam.

If this was a handful of kids over the course of a school year then hardly neglect sending in a cold happy meal one time via granny who minded the kids the night before however if this is on a more regular basis yes it is neglect. Also are these actual 100% the lunches parents packed OR could little Johnny have dumped a pre packed lunch and tried his hand with older brothers can of red bull? I mean one of mine went back to school one summer and having been asked did anyone do anything fun over summer he said 'mum brought us to aldi'. That specific summer we had been in the south of france for a month but that was what came out of his mouth. Kids sometimes should be made to sign non disclosure agreements at home lol

If this was EVERY day or even once a week yes its horrendous and great that can be swapped out for a school lunch but if its one child of 400 once a month thats a lot different.

This made me chuckle as my little one didn’t eat her happy meal the other day, just not in the mood. I hate waste so I boxed it up and put it as part of my husbands pack up for work the next day. He seemed fine with it.

Same my 4 year old is likely autistic. He eats 3 fruits and I take that as a win, no veggies.

Packed lunch is a cheese pizza cooked in the morning and then goes in the thermos, a flap jack, some raisins, a bears fruit roll up, apple, strawberries,or watermelon, a yoghurt and some rice cakes, every single day.

funny, since you are the one unable to elaborate or explain it 🤨

This is in America?

Actually just nipped out and found it. It's chapter 15 of Ultra-Processed People. It explains that when a company creates a novel kind of molecule that will be put in something humans will ingest, there is meant to be a rigorous set of tests to show it is safe. But there is also a big loophole which allows companies to basically self-certify that the chemical compounds they are adding to food to bulk it out, give it a certain texture etc, are safe.

No, I didn't specify that particular brand. I said fast food/ UPFs generally. Although I am sure it is true of them too.

A number of additives put into ultraprocessed foods have not been subjected to the testing we normally require for stuff we put in our bodies. (In the US, this would be testing by the FDA.) They are not food in themselves and we thus don't fully know the longterm impact on human bodies of repeated ingestion. There is some evidence that some of them interact in unexpected ways with human bodies.

I am busy cooking right now (!) so cannot find chapter and verse, but Chris van Tulleken's book is good on this, albeit a couple of years old.

Then you don’t know what safeguarding is.

But it was bought for the previous days dinner? It was only chance that the child hadn’t eaten it.
If the £3.60 was all the parents had, they bought a happy meal knowing the child wouldn’t eat lunch the following day.

A happy meal is £3.60.

A loaf of bread, pack of ham, some sort of spread, and cheese slices, is over £6. Now yes, that will last for several lunches, but if you only have £3.60, thats no use to you. That would get you the ham and the bread, and that is frankly as miserable a sandwich as the cold happy meal.

unless the family had suddenly found themselves in a financial crisis and had no other option its not acceptable
Anyone in financial crisis shouldn’t be wasting what they do have on McDonalds.
You don’t veer into bankruptcy between dinner and breakfast the following day. There is literally no excuse that makes this ok.

I didn’t say what I thought the school would do, my point was that it’s easy to judge without knowing the full facts.

If any school is concerned they have procedures they will follow.

A shame to waste it?! Do you normally save any remnants of uneaten dinner and produce them again the next day, rather than put it in the bin like normal people?
A happy meal is a load of shite to begin with, never mind 12 hours later.

Leftover? A happy meal barely counts as a meal of any kind when complete and warm. If there's any missing they are eating little of something not amazing to start with, and that tastes vastly worse cold.

Is it really the worst of edible things you could take? No. And in the end better than nothing. But pretty bad.

Are you suggesting there are additives in McDonalds that haven’t been tested for human consumption (what does that even mean- approved? Legal? They’re clearlytested every time they’re consumed)

Of course it's not just "fat and salt ". Not an ideal meal though!