Packed lunches - am I the boring mean mum?

[rumpleteaserspaws]

I hate doing packed lunches with a passion and am dreading doing them daily when the DCs return to school!
My DC's have had a few days at holiday club over the past three weeks, and I've had to do their lunches for that. They have been complaining (albeit nicely ) about them having a "healthy" lunch, because their HC friends have nicer (so read more sugary) stuff in theirs.

So, I'll tell you the contents and you can tell me if I'm boring;

Sandwich of choice, usually tuna or egg mayo, or cheese w/ tomato or cucumber.

Veg pot - carrot, cucumber, tomatoes.

Piece of fruit, sometimes two.

Squeezy yoghurt of some kind.

A treat type item, either crisps, a club-type of biscuit, mini Soreen loaf.

To me that seems like a perfectly normal packed lunch, mainly healthy but with a bit of fun stuff. We are not a mega healthy household in that they get sweet stuff more often than I'd really like. They certainly aren't deprived of anything. This type of packed lunch is what they'll be getting daily when they return to school, but I can already envisage the complaints I'm going to get, argh!

That sounds a normal healthy lunch, OP. Maybe you could try different breads occasionally? Like pitta, wrap or bagel? It’s good that there’s fruit and a healthier sweet treat, like soreen.

My kids both out of school now but I discovered over the years when asking kids friends ( when they visited or got a lift in our car) things my kids were complaining about their friends getting this or that, it wasn't in fact true, my kids were pushing their luck, clever

I don't see how fruit and veg aren't treat enough as it is

Veg as a treat 😂 no kid is going to believe that one. Nice try though.

Fruit and veg a treat? Seriously?

I mean at a stretch cherries are a treat if you usually get an apple, and plenty of us like veg.. but yeah even I like a proper treat with my lunch (and I’m decidedly older than OP’s DC 😂)

I grew up in poverty and honestly didn't get enough to eat at times though my parents obviously did their best and I was really fussy. Being hungry doesn't always make you a non picky eater, I often went without rather than eat what there was.

All through my early teens I would have two thin slices of white bread with a processes cheese slice for my sandwich and nothing else for lunch.

I was tall and skinny, when I started working weekends in a restaurant kitchen at age 15 and got a full lunch and snacks there, I grew another 2 inches even though I hadn't grown much since 13.

So, upshot is, try to make sure that there is enough food that your child will eat that matches their appetite and activity levels, if you can get all the healthy stuff in as part of that then even better.

Nice berries are certainly a treat. My kids would rather eat raspberries than a penguin bar!!

Nice berries are certainly a treat. My kids would rather eat raspberries than a penguin bar

It wouldn’t have caught my notice if they’d just said fruit. But veg? C’mon, no kid is realistically going to see veggies as a ‘treat’. So ridiculous 😂😂😂

@UsedUpUsername

Nice berries are certainly a treat. My kids would rather eat raspberries than a penguin bar

It wouldn’t have caught my notice if they’d just said fruit. But veg? C’mon, no kid is realistically going to see veggies as a ‘treat’. So ridiculous 😂😂😂

I dunno... DS2 (13) said about an hour ago that he was hungry and what could he eat. I told him there was plenty of fruit. He said he meant something exciting like a 'treat'. I said no, he's already had crisps and iced gems and its almost dinner time, if he's hungry he can have fruit. He looked in the fridge and I heard "Yes!!!! Tom-toes. My favourite treat"

Disclaimers... I know they are called tomatoes. He's called them tom-toes since he was tiny. And we always have tomatoes in the fridge. They are not a treat. I buy them specifically for ds2 and he eats them most days!

Omg! penguin bars... has totally forgotten about those beauts!! I used to get one in my lunch box on a Friday at primary schools!!!

Anyone with young adult children will tell you that children always, and almost without fail, say that their friends get x, do y or don't have to do z. Just ignore and carry on!

My relationship to food wasn't great so can't use that as a normal example. However my friends (who are and always have been healthy BMIs, no teeth issues etc) had the following
Sandwich, wrap, roll, pasta
Crisps
Cheese string/baby bel/cheese cubes
Chocolate bar
Juice box

@mathanxiety I appreciate that. But the people on this thread that said sausage rolls and cocktail sausages also said sandwiches, fruit and veggies.

No kids needs that and crisps and biscuits in their lunch box. And I say that as a parent who has a child with special needs that has high food aversions.

That crap is just so unhealthy!

After reading this thread I’ve tried my hardest to make my DS sons packed lunch more ‘exciting’ ... turns out, he likes his boring marmite sandwiches, cucumber, cheese, tomatoes! 🤣

Meh, food is food, imo, @Heismyopendoor.

In the long run it's balance that counts. Eating in a little community like a school or a summer camp has an important social aspect to it. Focusing on individual elements of a meal - like crisps or fruit - and looking at it only from the pov of physical nutrition is missing the point of the social aspect and also losing sight of the balance.

@mathanxiety food is fuel.

When I fuel up my car, I usually choose premium. It makes my car run better and I still go to the petrol station like everyone else. Sometimes, if they don’t have Premium then I’ll take the not so good stuff, but it makes my car not run as well and clogs it up, it also needs to get serviced more when I go for that option.

Eating crisps, a chocolate biscuit and half a dozen cocktail sausages as part of one meal, every day, is not healthy.

Can those foods be part of a healthy diet. Of course they can. But every day? The cocktail sausages alone are a quarter of the salt a young child needs in a day! Then add on the salt from the bread, the sandwich filling, the crisps and you could be easily at your full salt for the day. Not even talking about the excessive amount of sugar, fat and just pure processed rubbish in the rest of those lunches.

The children that have better choices in their lunch boxes will still be experiencing a social aspect. I was always told school wasn’t a social occasion, can’t count the amount of teachers that told me to stop chatting and get on with my work, hurry up and eat my lunch etc. My kids were the same when they were at school, no time for talking as lunch had to be eaten quite fast for the next lot of children to come in a use the dining room.

If people are feeding their kids a large amount of crap every school day for many years, it’s not going to be good for them. Balance is a wonderful thing, eating a lot of crap every day is NOT balance.

The fact that children are hurried up to eat lunch is school is a real hindrance to the development of any sense of eating as part of a healthy lifestyle. It cancels out any alleged advantage more 'healthy' food offers. It's not a simple case of gulping down the contents of your lunchbox - 'fueling up' - and getting the hell out of Dodge.

Regardless of the appalling hurry, children are going to chat a little, to see what others are eating, and to wonder what is going on with their parent who insists on non-stop wholesome fare when others seem to be getting on just fine with far more sugar and salt and fats.

I am 55 and I have seen the effects of poor choices among my classmates from the 70s - poor choices when it came to drugs and men have been the major killers so far. Not cocktail sausages or Cadbury's chocolate.

Orthorexia is not at all healthy. Sadly, it's also very socially acceptable. We are not cars. We are social animals. The nutritional value of a child's lunch is not more important than the pleasure of eating it.