What was in your childhood lunchbox?

[DukeofEarlGrey]

Inspired by the 1980s lunchbox thread about the actual boxes... what did you have in them??

Mine was extremely consistent: sandwich, piece of fruit, carrot sticks and a ‘treat’ that varied but was always some kind of biscuit. My favourite were these things called Huggy Bears which was a little bag of biscuits with chocolate goo inside and bears stamped on the outside.

My lovely dad was in charge of lunch boxes and did this for me every day as well as a lunch for everyone else.

Sandwich fillings were either cheese and ham, cheese and lettuce or cheese with this pickle/salad cream type filling. It was delicious!
An apple and a tangerine.
A packet of crisps a couple of days, otherwise it would be carrot and cucumber sticks
A penguin or a club bar
A flask of orange cordial.

Sandwiches - egg, cheese, sandwich spread, meat spread, tuna - and a chocolate biscuit. Squash or sometimes tea in a roughneck flask.

I had school dinners at primary and Middle school .
Secondary school I had a penguin bar for morning break and sandwiches for lunch . At my own request I had crab spread sandwiches for pretty much one whole year; and cheese and potato sandwiches with Mayo on for another school year . I have no idea why! I guess my mum did me the preferred sandwiches one day and I liked them so much I asked her to do them every day !

Ooh I think I occasionally has Heinz sandwich spread too - maybe with cheese .

@Thebookswereherfriends

Cheese and marmite sandwich, crisps, apple and penguin bar/club etc. I only drank squash, too! Bloody unhealthy and I don’t have a particularly good relationship with food in part because of this sort of diet as a child, I think.

I don't understand why a diet like this would give you food issues? Sounds like the kind of food most people grew up eating and not that far from what my DC would have got either .

@dorothygaleandtoto

Milk roll definitely still exists! I used to work in ‘home care’ visiting the elderly to care for them (baths/food and all that) and lots of them had milk roll bread! Not sure why, perhaps because it’s smaller?

Sandwich. Crisps. Choc bar like penguin etc. Fruit. Yoghurt. Huggy bears or cookie.

Primary - Darylea or paste sandwich, trio/penguin/club, golden wonder crisps, satsuma, orange squash
Secondary (probably from year 9)- darylea and lettuce sandwich, harvest crunch, trio/gold bar, crisps, banana, apple, 2 satsumas, chicken drumsticks/sausage roll, sometimes cold new potatoes in addition, and a litre of lemon squash - and I was STILL hungry all the time, I had massive growth spurts and reached 6ft by year 10. I didn’t get any money for the canteen so I took a banquet in.

My mum was also into healthy eating/barely eating. If I didn't make my own food I didn't eat.

I usually made myself a sandwich with whatever we had in, which wasn't much. She used to make her own peanut butter without salt and it tasted like cardboard. We only had brown bread so it was a double cardboard sandwich.

I was always always hungry.

Luncheon meat or beef paste sandwich on white sliced bread
Packet of crisps - sausage & tomato, salt & vinegar or salt & shake
Blue Riband or Taxi biscuit
Carton of squash

@Thebookswereherfriends

Cheese and marmite sandwich, crisps, apple and penguin bar/club etc. I only drank squash, too! Bloody unhealthy and I don’t have a particularly good relationship with food in part because of this sort of diet as a child, I think.

I'm confused by this - isn't that a normal packed lunch for a child? I'm not sure what's so awful and unhealthy about it?

Never had a packed lunch at school, but for summer camps I used to take a cheese and mayo sandwich, Capri sun, an apple and a kitkat or some pringles in a little container.

A tuna sandwich at the start of the month, marmite by the end. Club biscuit.

Mums in the 70's loved Tupperware so everything went in Tupperware. I can still smell Tupperware now.

Liver pate sandwich on white bread wrapped in foil and an apple. Pretty well everyday - I used to envy my friends with their nice lunches and lunch boxes. When my brother said it wasn't enough and could we have something else as well he got a second liver pate sandwich

Marmite sandwich
Salt and vinegar crisps/Frazzles
Kit Kat
Satsuma/apple
sometimes a boiled egg

In my primary school, only juniors were allowed to take packed lunches. Infants had to have (horrible) school dinners. So I couldn't wait to start Junior 1 with my Muppets lunchbox, and I vividly remember that every day for the first month or so, I took:
Egg salad sandwiches
Golden Wonder cheese and onion crisps
A Lakeland Creameries banana yogurt
And a dark chocolate Club biscuit

Throughout the juniors I always had a sandwich, often that horrid tinned ham in jelly, occasionally leftover roast chicken. Always a bag of crisps - Wotsits, Skips, Space Raiders or Smiths Square Crisps were favourites. And always a chocolate biscuit - mostly Club or United, occasionally a Trio or, memorably, those packets of multicoloured ET biscuits!
We weren't allowed to take drinks and just had jugs of water on the table, and I don't ever recall anyone take fruit in their lunchbox!

A quid. My mum wasn’t really bothered about making sure I had lunch. My brother went home at lunchtime but I wanted to stay with friends and a 20 minute walk each way then trying to make and eat something in the 10 minutes I’d actually be home wasn’t appealing.

Cheese sandwich, penguin, some sort of fruit that I used to stick straight in the bin. Ribena in a flask.

I went to a tiny village school and we were allowed to go home for lunch if we wanted. I only lived down road, so little six year old me would skip out of school and home for a hour, or just long enough to eat lunch if I wanted to play (can you even imagine!), where I would always have potato waffles and beans.

1970's.

Sandwich made with white sliced bread, butter and fish/meat paste/sandwich spread/marmite.

Packet of crisps with crisps usually ending up in the sandwich because crisp sandwiches are the food of the gods. Fact.

Sometimes a pork pie instead of the sandwich, with jelly removed and discarded because it's disgusting. Hate pork pies now.

Penguin biscuit/caramel wafer or similar.

Drink? Can't remember what drink I had.

Same every day - early 1970s

Hard boiled egg in its shell
Tomato sandwich
Home made cake
Fruit squash to drink

Sandwich - cheese, tinned ham or occasionally corned beef with either tomato or beetroot. To my mother's despair I didn't like potted meat, or tongue, or luncheon meat. Did get quite a taste for the particular sogginess of beetroot or tomato sandwiches though
Plastic lidded beaker with squash. It did once leak all over my bag, causing havoc with the German text book.
Apples, plural - we had three apple trees which at this point were producing masses. For most of the year I would take 5 to school each day - one at morning break, one at afternoon break, and 3 at lunchtime. (That's after the ones on my paper-round and after breakfast, and before the ones after school and after tea...)
From about Y9? onwards a pack of KP crisps as well.

A ham sandwich
Packet of cheese and onion crisps
Wispa
Milky way
Carton of Ribena

Every day. Delicious!!

Cheese spread (bright orange) sandwich and a drink. I cannot recall anything else (assuming there must have been crisps and maybe a biscuit bar)?

I was also permanently hungry as a kid. I went to this awful childminders after school until my mum got home from work at about 6pm. She would feed her own kids snacks/dinner and not give anything to me. I was starving.

It definitely played a part in my unhealthy eating habits as an adult, having a 'fuck it' attitude to food. If i'm hungry, I gorge myself as I'm scared to not feel full up/satisfied

@Siriisatwat I had forgotten being allowed home for lunch too!