Is this a healthy packed lunch for DS9?

[mincepietwentytwo]

DS9 just switched from school dinners to packed lunch but I get stuck for ideas.

Won't eat:
Cucumber
Peppers
Tomatoes
Fruit (apart from raisins)
Tuna
Chicken (won't eat sliced chicken in the sandwich)
Marmite
Hummus
Nothing with a skin/pips

Will eat:
Ham sandwiches (50/50 bread or a bagel)
Crackers/rice cakes
Frube
Smoothie
Fridge Raiders
Crisps (only give every now and then)
Cheese cubes (won't eat the cheese in the sandwich)

He eats cooked vegetables at dinner and has a smoothie after school so not doing too bad?

DD survived on coronation chicken sandwich, maybe the odd salami one, some grapes or strawberries, a YeoValley squeezy yoghurt and some cake bar for year.

No way she would entertain cold cooked vegetables, cold quiche, pasta salad, cold chicken or a hot lunch in a flask. She would eat all these things at home at lunch or on a day out with us but definitely not at scho

@Laalaalaand no, Greek yogurt is just yogurt, frubes are not just yogurt, if you just read up on things like guar gum which is an ingredient which is ‘generally considered’ safe for human consumption you’d realise why it’s important to be more aware of what we are putting into our children’s bodies

It sounds not great to me. The only non-UPF is probably the cheese?

But if that's what he eats I'd try and get the least processed, highest quality versions possible.

Would he eat Greek yoghurt, maybe mixed with honey, jam or lemon curd or something?

Ready salted crisps are often non-upf.

Own-brand cream cheese is also often not upf. Would he eat that in a sandwich or to dip carrot sticks in?

I found a Morrisons brand of cracker with isn't upf either, other supermarkets probably have them too.

Pasta left overs?

Of course not! They gently rotted in several hideyholes. 🤣😂

I'm pretty sure plenty of dieticians can think of worse foods for fussy growing kids then one with calcium and vitamin D in that is well within a child's recommended daily sugar intake.

Its not just yogurt. Its full of sugar and gums which are bad for you. Just yogurt would have two ingredients, whole milk and live cultures and nothing else. If you need to add something to a yogurt so kids like it more then steamed apples is nice and small amount of local honey.

Anyway, things like fridge raiders aren't great, but if your child has a minimal intake, then you do what you have to do.

My older kids are teens...they don't want fussy things even though in all other aspects they eat and will try pretty much anything.

They tend to have along the lines of

• cheese and crackers/chicken mayo roll/cheese salad roll/sausage roll (normally home made, sometimes just bake at home)/cold meats
• 2 pieces of fruit
• packet of crisps
• couple of rice cakes
• mini biscuit/flapjack/mini roll or similar
• maybe a couple of cheese straw pastry things if I have them
• perhaps a bit of dried mango or a yo-yo
• mini pepperami

Younger one struggles with food and has a very limited menu, though luckily there are some decent options in amongst it...but packed lunches are very same same.

• ham sandwich/baguette
• chopped fruit
• multigrain crackers and butter
• mini pepperami
• crisps
• mini roll/flapjack or whatever we hAve in or have made.
• yoyo or similar
• little yogurt

@ThatAgileGoldMoose yeah I mean sure if your bar is there are worse things then fine but that would not be my bar for my child

This.

I would also follow the advice of others and put the cooked veggies in his lunch. Would they eat vegetable soup? We do soup a lot for packed lunches.

Lunch is only one meal. If he is eating balanced meals across the others in a day and week, then 👍

There is a recent podcast on Zoe where a dietician discusses packed lunches and gives ideas for things to put in. Managed to get my fussy DC to eat two new things on first attempt after listening to it - huge win!

Frubes are not great - so high in added sugar. I would prefer my child gets their added sugars in their sweet treat rather than through yoghurts and smoothies which can easily be sweetened with fruit

What will he eat for dinners and breakfast at home? If he eats healthy options for those meals then I would replicate those for packed lunches and use a thermos to keep warm.

Oh bore off. “A small amount of local honey”. Most parents don’t have time to traipse the farmers markets at weekends, nor do kids want to eat cold stewed apples on their lunchboxes.

My sons packed lunch has 3 pieces of garlic bread, 4 Yorkshire puddings, ready salted crisps, bear yoyo, and bear strips (both 1 of your 5 a day) its just compressed fruit. A mini bar of dairy milk and sometimes 2 cookies or jaffa cakes. He won't have anything else because of sensory issues as a result of his ASD. He's eating, and that's what matters!

Have you heard of Little Lou Cooks on Instagram? Lots of ideas on there. She also suggests batch making snacks, freezing them, then defrosting overnight.

I make sausage rolls, but mix the sausage meat with really cooked down carrots, onions & spinach (not too much else I can't sneak it past the kids!) But makes them healthier and the kids love them.

Could that work?

My 6 year old gd heaved when I tried giving her natural yoghurt sweetened with fresh fruit.. she has suspected asd/adhd and is a very limited eater.. we’ve all tried to get her to eat better but she won’t bless her. She loves fruit and cucumber,supernoodles frubes and Krave so that’s what she gets. She won’t eat packed lunches and school dinners are a nightmare for her

i dont think some posters really grasp what a truly fussy eater is on this thread. Kids like this will starve themselves rather than eat.

im well aware as im sure many posters are about UPF’s, my own diet is pretty good tbf and it worries me about my gd diet but heyho a supernoodles and a frube is the bomb when it comes to a full belly.

Butt OP didn't ask what you feed your child? Most of which is specifically items she told you her child won't eat?

Same! I worry my daughter (5) picks jacket potato 3 times a week for school lunch and then I remember I ate a ham sandwich every day, crisps every day, chocolate finger bar every day, and maybe some fruit! It's just what packed lunches were.

OP, sounds fine to me!

My son took every day throughout primary school.
Dairylea lunchable
Frube
Box of raisins
Fridge raiders
Ready salted walkers
3 Jaffa Cakes
If they are fussy with food it's better that they eat than have nothing at all.

It's quite amazing just how many hard-of-reading people there are on this thread, and just how few people really understand what it is like having a child with food refusal.

@mincepietwentytwo What you are giving him is fine in the grand scheme of things. He eats other stuff at home, so just let him have what you know he will eat in his packed lunch. No point in making an issue of it. My dd existed on marmite sandwiches, raisins, a little pot of fromage frais and a carton of fruit juice as a packed lunch for about 10 years.

You said that "no dietician would think frubes were a good choice for a child they’re just rubbish". I was pointing out that they have nutritional value, can easily fit within the RDA of sugar, and that therefore I'm fairly certain that plenty of dieticians would be happy for them to form part of a fussy child's diet.

I suspect that you don't really have much experience with either fussy children or dieticians.

@ThatAgileGoldMoose on the contrary, I have a four year old who has been under various dieticians since he was six months old as he carries an epi pen and has three extremely serious food allergies, I’ve never used this as an excuse to feed him rubbish. The OP doesn’t say her child is fussy either just that she runs out of ideas

There is ways of explaining your ideas about nutrition without sounding quite so insufferable and smug

@2024riot if you had read the whole thread you would see this was my response to that poster basically calling me an idiot for suggesting the OP might want to drop the frube, that was it and I think my response back was quite fair considering

Same 😆 and I think I'm doing quite well 35 years later!