School dinners & pack lunches

[Playball]

Help! i am am getting really concerned about what to do at meal times when little ones go to school. I have found a really good no junk no processed and packet school about 5 miles away but because they have wheat etc & milk intollerences i am not sure what to do.

Does the school allow you to look at the memu before hand and only have your children to eat on the days that suit their diets and then on the other days bring a pack lunch.

If your child has a wheat free diet what do you put in theire pack lunch. My bread needs to be toasted first and when it is stone cold they will not eat it.

Oh dear i do not know what to do.

Please give me some options...

Hi playball, my DD is on a wheat/gluten free diet and we are finding pack lunches really hard going. At the moment she's taking rice cakes or wheat/gluten free crackers. She also will not touch the bread. We have tried the various pastas too as a salad but they don't work too well either. Hopefullly when we eventually get to see the dietician they willngive me more ideas.

Most schools have a menu plan that it is repeated for several weeks (or at alternate weeks, or changed every month, season, etc.)

What I do is look at the plan and if something DS is allergic to is included I send something similar to replace what's in the menu.

Wheat is a bit of hassle though, I take a pack of glutten free bread to the school which the cook kindly freezes until it is neeand pops in the oven with the rest, she also lets me know when is time to bring some more.

There are many products (are you already know) that may contain hidden milk or wheat, so if your children intollerances are severe I would keep to sending packed lunches, as it would be somewhat problematic for the school to check every single packet they use (they do in mine, though, but it is a very small school, not sure it would work in a big setting with plenty of different demands)

Another thing to consider regarding packed lunches and multiple allergies... it is more difficult and time consuming to find a ready made lunch than to do it yourself from scratch

Anyways, what has worked for us is to cook a couple of extra portions of whatever we are having for dinner and freeze them in little containers, if we do that 2-3 times a week we soon have enough portions to send something different for lunch every day (and could be easily taken with us whenever we are eating out or saves us some time when we just want to have a take away without worrying of DS' allergies and intolerances).

Now, being a bit practical it may well be the case that your child becomes fully tolerant to milk and wheat before your child goes to school

DS1 is on a wheat,milk and egg free diet at the moment and is taking packed lunches. He doesn't like rice cakes and can't have gluten free bread because most have egg in, but we found some crackerbreads in Tesco that he can have and he has them with soya spread and ham on. The brand is Dietary Specials I think. He also takes a pot of jelly, some fruit or carrot sticks and a granola bar or maybe a tru free biscuit.

My friends son is lactose intolerant and the school brought in a dietician who planned his menu for the whole term and my friend then had to approve it before they could go ahead. Once we have found out which allergen is making DS excema bad the school have said they can do the same for him. Although I think if it turns out to be all 3 they may decide they can't help.

Maybe your school will do the same kind of thing for you, it may depend on the LEA though. HTH

Thank you all for responding.
Henni Penni - i would not hold out on your dietician, they really do not know anymore than the brands that are out there. I have had many appointment with no joy of any new ideas. Best bet is too look on the internet. My problem is that they do not like any of the alternative foods. The pasta is is really hard. The only foods we find are paletable are the breads, muffins, pancakesa and cakes.

I must admit i thought about sending them to a smaller school but around here they can not be bothered with the different menus and they have made it perfectly clear and tell me to bring in a packed lunch. They were also not keen on me preparing food and them reheatig it and they said i would have to cook more of less the same as to what was on there menue otherwise the oters kids may refuse to eat there dinners.

I think i will get a copy of there menus though but am stuck with the packed lunch and whether they would really tell me the truch of what they are cooking. I do find if you tell people they have allergies it seems to get heard more than just saying an intolerence. But it can still make you ill, its just not life threatening etc..

Metalmummy
Gosh it really does sound a nightmare for us!!

Playball, one problem of trusting the school with the food is that from time to time, a product would be unavailable, something is out of season or plainly expensive and they would look for an alternative for the day which may look similar but may be, or not, suitable for your child. Hence the need to send packed lunches, although being intolerances... you have more margin for errors.

DS is allergic to peanuts, nuts, soya, fish, dairy, wheat, egg, most legumes, etc. In his intolerances test he was positive for 97 of the 113 allergen tested. Obviously, in our case it is imposible to avoid everything that he is intolerant to without getting him severely malnourished or unless we brought him up in Neocate. We took the decision to avoid just those things that had +3 and +4 in his intolerances results and obviously the things he is allergic to.

He is fine although it took a lot of research at the beginning, a lot of extra work to learn to cook for him a completely different diet, but now we are used to it, it's second nature and probably through lack of options he is happily eating some things now that he hated in the past.