12 yo dd says her lunch is by far the biggest in the class

[Flamingoose]

She has much the same thing every day:

a sandwich - 2 slices of bread with grated cheese
an apple or a pear
a slice of cake or 2 bought biscuits (eg digestives or hobnobs)
a carton of milk
(Sometimes she will also have a small pot with an extra thing eg crackers / dates)

She also takes a pot of porridge for breakfast as she leaves the house very early for swim training and eats it when she gets to school.

This is what she eats until she gets home at about 4, and she'll make herself a hot chocolate or a piece of toast.

It's not that much is it? She's very active and a healthy weight, so I'm not worried so much as curious. She's rather young for her age and has started to notice how her friends are talking about how much people eat. Apparently the consensus is that she eats more than anyone else

Sounds a lot like the lunch my 7 year old takes to school!

It sounds as if your dd doesn't snack between meals too much and her lunch is quite average I would say- especially if she is training a lot. If she's a healthy weight I wouldn't worry. I wonder off the girls talking about what she eats is because they are overweight themselves and are envious of your dd's obviously sporty physique- because with that much swimming she must be lean and fit?

It doesn't sound the most healthy lunch (I'm not criticising, I have a fussy eater and he'd have jam sandwiches everyday if I let him ) and it doesn't sound very much at all really.

My biggest concern would be why your DD is feeling conscious about the size of her lunch. Something may have been said to her and you want to try and nip it in the bud.

The lunch is fine, be nonchalant about it, healthy lunch for the activity she does etc.

But don’t let it become an issue in the house or it could tip one way and open a can of worms you may never resolve.

I'd get her to tell them that her swim training burns up hundreds of calories so she needs to eat a healthy lunch to keep her going.

Is there something else going on between your daughter and the girls who made these comments? Sounds unusual to me as that is definitely not a lot of food at secondary level.

Agree with pp about crisps and fizzy drinks bought on the way to school. That is the norm. There is not a lot of healthy eating amongst the young people in my school. They are permanently starving and can’t wait for breaks and lunch time. Generalising of course.

This is about teenage girls, competitive undereating and pressure to be skinny. OP I would seriously sit down with your DD and have a long old chat about peer pressure, eating disorders and the pressure to be Instagram perfect. She is healthy. She is active. She is not overweight. She is eating properly. She doesn't know whether her friends with their tiny picture-perfect lunches are going home and bingeing on crisps and chocolate when they get home. She doesn't know whether at 12 they are already locked into a destructive cycle of food issues and self-hatred.

Educate your DD about these things and give her the tools to resist them. She is just fine the way she is.

@strawberrisc

You just described my school lunch! I couldn't wait either, then carefully flatten the Viscount wrapper out. Mint was always better than orange.

And OP I have a DD the same age as yours and she eats a hot dinner every lunchtime and another in the evening so definitely more. She is also an athlete and food is fuel and well as enjoyable. So crazy that these girls get exposed to these food issues so young.

That sounds like a perfectly reasonable packed lunch, it’s similar to what DS1 gets (he doesn’t have cake, but then he’s not doing the exercise your DD is doing).

It’s worrying that it’s been noticed though, weight issues/discussions need to be carefully watched.

My 12 year old dd is nowhere near as active as your dd. She takes a sandwich (cheese/ham/similar), but only one slice of bread. A packet of crisps and a satsuma. She will have a bottle of water with it. Afaik, (and she is quite honest) she isn’t pigging out on food from tuck shop or stopping at the shop on the way in to school.

For an active girl, her lunch doesn’t sound massive, but if she feels (honestly) that it is enough, maybe it is. (Obviously if the peer pressure is setting in, that will be harder to guage).
I know a couple of dds friends have started on the whole diet thing/cutting food groups out to try and loose weight and it’s quite worrying.

As a lunchtime supervisor I'd say her lunch sounds fine, it would sound fine if she was younger too. Some kids at the school I'm at have bigger lunches when they're in Foundation!

@GuestWW well it goes without saying it had to be a mint Viscount :-D

I also used to shrink my crisp packets in the oven!

If she is active and healthy it doesn't matter how big or small her lunch is and there is no point in comparing with others. Everyone's metabolism, muscle mass, exercise levels, calorie requirements and personal preferences will be individual.

My 25th centile 4 year old takes more than that in her lunch to pre school, and eats it all. It doesn’t sound like much for an active 12 year old.

They're probably just less active, smaller and so need a smaller lunch, . My 11 year old still has a childs body and a childs appetitie and just wouldnt be able to eat that lunch everyday.

Maybe she wants something differently but doesn't know how to articulate that.

I can’t believe your immediate reaction wasn’t ‘ 😂 Well, if they exercised/swam as much they’d need more FUEL too. If you don’t drive the car off the driveway, it doesn’t need the fuel tank filled. Simple really love. Comparing FUEL in & ignoring energy expended is really rather ridiculous don’t you think?! Far better to eat healthily and exercise than to nibble on lettuce and sit on your bum concerning yourself about how much everyone else eats’.

My niece and nephew both swim loads, they’d EASILY eat that and they’re 10 & 12. Plus then they eat after school & a good dinner. They’re always hungry, neither have a spare ounce on them.

She's a swimmer, have a look at what Olympian swimmers eat.

qz.com/753956/how-olympic-swimmers-can-keep-eating-such-insane-quantities-of-food/

And that is what she can tell her friends.

My daughter is also a swimmer. She swims for 12 hours a week. In addition to this she completes 1 hour of land training, 1 hour of spin, 2 hours of football and all school PE activities every week. Her typical days food is:
5am toast and milk
8am banana and strawberry smoothie and marmite breakfast biscuits
11am cookie
1pm full hot school lunch, eg roast chicken, sweet and sour chicken
4pm snack and milk
5pm evening meal pasta, sausage and mash, spag Bol
9.30pm milk and snack
One evening, after she had spent the day at a school athletics competition, just out of interest as she was having a really hungry day we added up her calorie intake. It came to nearly 4000 calories.
I would say that she averages 3000 calories a day. She has a fantastic. Figure, flat stomach with the start of abs, very toned arms and legs.
Your daughter will need to eat a larger lunch if she is swimming a lot. She will be eating more than her peers and shouldn’t worry about that.

Is it the norm at your dd’s school for the pupils to take packed lunch? It’s unusual after year 7 in my school and my dd’s secondary school too where they have a prepaid system and choose their own food each day.

Now doubt jealous of her swimming sucess and lovely toned figure .

DD and DS went to same secondary school (4 years apart) and the ‘culture’ there was to either just bring in something tiny and unhealthy like bag of crisps or chocolate bar from home for your lunch or get a snack from the canteen. Packed lunches weren’t really a done thing AT ALL as I found out when DD said people had been saying it was weird that she brought in a ham wrap for her lunch Drove me absolutely mad

Sounds normal.
Swimming always makes you hungry, I bet her friends don't swim nearly as often as she does. She needs extra calories, though regardless I still think her lunch sounds normal not particularly big.

That's really healthy. I can only dream of my DS eating that much food during the day when he's at school.
He eats an apple for breakfast then nothing until 3.30 when he might eat a sandwich, or might not. I make up a packed lunch but he never touches it or or even drinks the water. There's no school dinners here and they're supposed to eat in the classroom but no-one pays any attention to whether they eat anything or not. He's 9 and I've resigned myself to it for now. Really hoping he starts enjoying eating food soon.

Nevermindhey I also wonder if this is just something that these girls have decided to pick on and that there are other issues going on.