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?

Absolutely fine, do what it takes to get you all through the week.

Ham sandwiches (50/50 bread or a bagel) - ham, 50/50 bread and supermarket bought bagels are all ultra processed (and ham is carcinogenic) so he shouldn’t be eating any of those things regularly.
Crackers/rice cakes - not much nutritional value - will help eat them with cream cheese on?
Frube - these are over 7% sugar and have a load of other additives (Modified Manioc and Maize Starch, Stabiliser: Guar Gum, Acidity Regulator: Citric Acid). I wouldn’t buy these for my children. Won’t he wat real yogurt?
Smoothie - these are absolutely packed full of sugar. Some of the worst offender (Innocent) contain more sugar than a can of coke
Fridge Raiders - these are ultra processed and probably made with the worst bits of chicken that can’t be used for anything else. I wouldn’t feed these to a dog. Have you looked at the list of ingredients? Why don’t you give him real chicken?
Crisps (only give every now and then) - ok occasionally but full of salt, additives and vegetable oils
Cheese cubes (won't eat the cheese in the sandwich) - assuming this is real cheese and not cheese strings or similar, this is the only healthy thing on the list

I really hope this is a joke 🤮🤮

Don't stress about it. If you've been loving ham, it's been and gone (literally). I may not eat that much ham and my bacon habit is not daily (I go several months without either). But my fibre, fruit and veg intake is horrifyingly low (which puts me at risk) so I can't point fingers.

And here we all are, surviving 🤣

immediately adds penguins to the shopping list

@Dontwearmysocks the even better thing about penguins is they have a joke printed on the packaging 🐧

@Bewareofthisonetoo why would that be a joke?
It's a lunch.
Back in the "good old days" most families had their main meal at lunchtime and then tea at teatime which was bread and jam followed by cake.
Queen Elizabeth apparently had jam sandwiches every day of her (very long) life.

It's only one meal of the day. Just incorporate other fruit and veg in the other meals in the day. Try not to stress to much any food eaten is good enough.

As a former dinner lady I can tell the amount of food not eaten with school meals is astounding, very few children actually eat all their dinner.

My SIL had this with her DD. My BIL had packed lunch and put in a tiny easter egg as a treat. The school deputy head phoned to 'discuss' this very important issue. Unfortunately for the Deputy head did not know that my SIL is a nurse who has specialised in children with eating disorders for over 10 years at that point, my SIL carefully pointed out that A) lunch is just one meal of the day and the school had know idea what was being eating at other mealtimes and B) demonizing any type of food can lead to eating issues and any food eaten at lunch was good enough.

I also have a child who for last 4 years has had a dairylea bagel for lunch every day, but eats very healthy at home.

“The devil’s frube!”
🤣🤣 😈

Can you honestly not see past your own experience. Let’s say this is for a week

• Pack of blueberries let’s say 500g for a week £3
• Greek yoghurt about £2
• honey - this lasts longer so maybe 25p for a week.

Vs a packet of six frubes for £1.50

And that’s just a small part of a packed lunch.

As someone mentioned upthread - most children used to have a sandwich on processed white bread, a chocolate bar and a packet of crisps as lunch and managed fine.

There are far bigger issues around focus and concentration that someone having a flavoured yoghurt,

It's a lot of salt.
Frubes are high sugar..can't he have a yoghurt pot?

This!

DD took a packed lunch at secondary but also bought food, apprx 50/50. Sausage rolls or paninis mainly. Depending in the area of the school she was before lunch, she may or may not have been able to get her hand on hot food and eat it within the 45 minutes lunch break.

Provide decent and healthy food at home and a sandwich lunch with shop bought food is absolutely fine.

This completely misses the point. It might only be one meal per day but it’s EVERY day. And you can’t reverse the negative impacts of a lunch filled with ultra processed foods and sugar by having a healthy evening meal. That’s just not how it works.

What do you suggest when a child won't eat anything else? As in would starve themselves?

Mine eats...
A Sandwich (ham and/or cheese) on...Brace yourself... white bread 😱
A portion of fruit (whatever we have - apple, banana, pear, berries, literally the one thing he will eat a good variety of!)
A packet of crisps (quavers, skips etc)
A soreen fruit bar
A yoghurt pouch

This is basically lunch and dinner every day breakfast is cereal or toast (with butter, jam or honey).

What do you suggest I do differently that I haven't already tried?

P.S. Your privilege is showing

Edit: I forgot he now eats pasta. Plain pasta (penne only) with grated cheese. I cried actual tears of joy the day he ate a piece of pasta 🥹

Penguin straws 🤤

I could eat a whole packet in one sitting like that. Don't ask me how I know 🫣

Absolutely.

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

Whatever you need to do, to get through the week.

Is there any need? This child clearly has extra needs

Out of your list I'd say the 50/50 sandwich and cheese cubes are the best. The rest will have sugar or salt added with less nutritional benefit. The smoothies aren't so bad if they're homemade, if not will have added sugar. You might not worry too much about the sugar, salt if everything else in his diet is homecooked. Will he eat fruit?

Either way, it's a case of giving him the best he will eat and when it comes down to it, I'd rather have a child with a lunchbox of a couple of things that weren't that good, than a hungry one.

Honestly I do think it's a difficult one, because we are now living in an a society where ultra processed food is the norm - Britain is one of the highest consumers of UPF in the western world. It's got the point where kids yoghurt is full of extra sugar and 'gum', emulsifiers and other stuff and that's just accepted as normal, it's totally been normalised. So I think it's really hard to get away from it, and also many of us grew up on quite heavy UPF diets and are quite defensive about how it didn't do us any harm. The number of obese adults around suggests this isn't quite the case though!

But it's also very difficult with picky eaters because the consistency of UPF is familiar to them. It tastes the same every time, it's recognisable, etc.

I've made a big effort to cut out UPF for the kids, not entirely because I don't think that's reasonable, but I've tried to stop going for convenience over nutrition where I can. Sometimes there are simple swaps you can make, sometimes it's more difficult, but I think that 'it's only one meal a day' argument doesn't often hold up, as it's likely that children are consuming UPF at other times too, and it's all part of a larger picture.

Big corporations and what they've been allowed to do is the real scandal here.

On the Frubes topic, The Collective do yoghurt pouches which don't have anything icky in them and are handy for lunchboxes.

So much snobbery on this thread, as I knew their would be 🙄

OP, just do your best, which is what you are doing.

You've got your basics of what he will eat, just try swapping bits out for slightly healthier / less processed versions, or adding in an extra each day and seeing if he will try it.

But basically everything is carcinogenic these days. Most things can be described as "UPF" and people scream in horror, but actually, sometimes being "processed" doesn't even matter.

Just do what you can and keep trying to introduce little extras. And a multivitamin each day.

No everything is not carcinogenic these days and nor can most things be described as UPF.

While the media can spout out any number of studies linking an ingredient to cancer, correlation is not causation. It takes a huge amount of evidence and proven link for something to be carcinogenic and the evidence for red meat is significant whether you choose to accept it or not.

UPF also has a clear definition which is not the same as processed. Almost everything we eat is processed, be it by us or by someone who produced it but that does not make it unhealthy or bad.

I agree with the consensus that parents can only do their best and have a number of other pressures. Everyone who ridicules other posters does not recognise their privilege whether that be through education, time, finance or anything else. That doesn’t make it helpful to give inaccurate information as reassurance

No wonder there is an obesity and diabetes epidemic with people being complacent and plain lazy about feeding their children crap. Poor kids.

A just because someone is a ‘trained nurse’ does not make them an expert on nutrition -plenty of obese nurses just like any other job.

It's fine, he'll eat it and not be hungry.

But it's a very lazy and processed lunchbox and I wouldn't feed it to my kids. It's not the 90s anymore, we know better.

I find the snobbery comments odd. All these prepared packaged foods probably cost way more than fresh stuff.

A tub of 10% fat greek yogurt, potted at home, would be much ehealthier and cheaper than frubes. As would actual chicken rather than fridge raiders. An apple instead of a smoothie etc.