To think that packed lunch containing a cold happy meal could be due to poverty?

[blubberball]

I saw on the news the other day, a story about school packed lunches. At one school, they looked in a child's lunchbox, and found a cold happy meal. People have obviously been angered by that, and are accusing the parents of being lazy. The first thought that came to my mind was that they couldn't afford to waste the food from the day before. I know that the particular primary school they looked at is in a very poor area. I just felt sorry for them.

Another thing is if you're really struggling and are having to skip meals or ration food for yourself so your children can eat you may not have the energy to walk longer distances to supermarkets.
Mercifully I haven't been in such dire straits since long before DS was born, but many years ago I was, and I collapsed and passed out in the street trying to walk the mile to a supermarket. I Woke up to find the tiny amount of money in my pocket had been stolen.

If the happy meal was going to be my child's only meal of the day, I would want it to be burger and fries, not chicken wrap and carrot sticks.

Would you? Why??

A cheap loaf of bread and packet of ham is fine if a) you can get to a supermarket that sells the cheap bread and ham, b) you have a fridge to store the ham in, c) you have the time and energy, d) you have the experience and education to know that it would be better.

Though a cold cheeseburger, in terms of its content, is not THAT different from a ham and cheese sandwich anyway. (And since when is your saintly weeks-worth of ham actually OK to keep open for a week? Even if you could eke out the packet that long, it always says use within 3 days max on the packets I buy.)

Poverty is about way more than the cost of individual items. Apart from anything else, it's fucking awful and depressing, and people tend to make decisions that will bring them pleasure in the short term because everything's fucked anyway so why not? Sneering from a position of relative security is pretty bloody distasteful to my mind.

Why??

Maybe because a chicken wrap and carrot sticks wouldn't provide anything like enough calories for a whole day.

I saw the article about the lunches in childrens schools.
Im inclined to believe that its mostly laziness and lack of know how to feed their children, even a happy meal is £2.50 ish. During incredibly hard times, I made lunch for the whole family for around the same amount.
I threw some pasta in one pan £0.30 ish for a bag
2 cartons of passata, again £0.30 ish a carton
Cheese £1.00- very small block but more than enough to grate on pasta each day.
Lettuce was about £0.49 at the time, cucumber was the same. £2.90 total, that was enough for the three of us to eat lunch for a week.

I think there was usually a frube for DD too, with enough in a pack to give her one each day, which were about a quid too.

Pasta salad was a healthy enough meal, which was cheap and quick to make. there are plenty of options, far before people need to send their kids in with left over mcdonalds.

Maybe the parent had got fed up with food being wasted and just sent the kid to school with it, to teach them about not wasting food (assuming the kid had asked for the meal the night before then didn't eat it for whatever reason).

Lots of people saying if they're in poverty they'd get free school meals, but you can't get FSMs if you get working tax credits. However, you can still be in poverty on minimum wage and WTC.

I'm on the fence with this one. I agree with those saying a loaf of bread, pack of cooked meat and bag of bananas would cost £2.50 and feed the child for the week, so I personally don't think it's a poverty issue. If they were in a rush and grabbed it on the way to school a 'better' option would be a £1 egg/tuna pre-packed sandwich with a banana. Where there's a McDonalds there's usually a supermarket nearby.

However, demonising the burger is maybe a bit extreme. It's literally white bread, beef and possibly (slimy) cheese and most of us will happily allow a burger/subway style meal now and again. My kids ate virtually everything cold when they were little, so is this really that much different from that? There are countless reasons why the child could have been given this. Personally I can't come up with a good one, but maybe the child has begged for this for lunch and the parents thought it would be a 'treat' for him. We don't know.

And this has been dealt with really badly. The head teacher should not have embarrassed the family, most of all the child, in this way. A whole school project, educating families on healthy eating, highlighting what a healthy lunch consists of, and so on, might have been a better way of getting their point across.

I threw some pasta in one pan £0.30 ish for a bag
2 cartons of passata, again £0.30 ish a carton
Cheese £1.00- very small block but more than enough to grate on pasta each day.

That's great work.

How much was the pan? And the gas to cook it? And the grater? And the fridge? And the electricity to run it?

It's said so often that it's a cliche, but it's expensive to live on very little money!

Sometimes, maybe once a term, DD takes Dominos pizza left overs the next day to school instead of sandwiches. But thats out of choice, we don't force it on her, but don't stop her either. They are a rare treat, so she wants to enjoy them again the next day.

Should we be saying no you cant?

Why??

Because I would want their only meal of the day to be high in calories, especially if they had to walk long distances because I couldn't afford transport, or if we were living in unheated accommodation.

😂 at all the people horrified at a child eating a hot dog for lunch. There are plenty of decent hot dogs out there that aren't made from ground up testicle and eyeballs or whatever you imagine they're made of.
Also, in what world is a sandwich of value white bread and a couple slices of value ham, plus a packet of crisps, more nutritious than a McDonald's burger? Slightly less fat I suppose, but still negligible actual nutrition and sky-high salt levels. Chuck an apple in and I guess you get a little fibre but it's still not a healthy lunch.

Maybe because a chicken wrap and carrot sticks wouldn't provide anything like enough calories for a whole day.

A quick look shows me that what I listed from the menu has more calories than a hamburger and fries. I could be wrong though. Plus, there's no point in eating hundreds of empty calories with absolutely no nutritional value and telling yourself that it's better than veggies!

I'm not saying the family should be demonised. But someone made the point that they could have McDs vouchers and I'm making the point that there is still a better and somewhat healthy option.

Poverty? The cost of a happy meal is on average £2.40. i could buy a loaf of bread, bag of apples, cheese spread and yogurt and crisp for 5 lunches at Aldi for that!

I would much prefer if my childs only meal between 8am and 6pm was a 530 calorie cheese burger happy meal than a 270 calorie chicken wrap with carrot stick meal. Plus wraps were only recently brought in here. its all very well saying well my child would only get a wrap and carrots sticks but if its the only food you can provide for your child in the day is about 230 calories (cause lets face it kids wont eat all the wrap or carrots) then to be honest I think you would give them a burger and fries also.

The point I am trying to make is no one knows what goes on behind closed doors. There could be a number of reasons for that meal

If the chicken wrap is more calorific then that's a fair point - but there is a point in consuming empty calories, it's called not starving. We all spend so much time thinking about the obesity crisis that we forget it is still possible not to get enough food in this country. Nutritional value is important, but the biggest reason for eating is keeping yourself alive by taking in calories. There's no such thing as valueless food. The only reason we think there is is that most of us have plenty to eat.

I think because she was in the city centre so no supermarkets

Are you at all familiar with Dublin? There is an Aldi, a Lidl, a Tesco and a Dunnes all within a two/three minute walk from Penneys on O'Connell St. All large fully stocked supermarkets. There's also a fruit and veg market where you can get plenty of cheap fruit and veg if you have time to browse and haggle. I have no doubt that your sister in law's experience was horrendous and cooking would have been impossible but it's just not true that the only cheap food option on O'Connell St is fast food.

A small wrap cut in half with one small piece of chicken and a lettuce leaf is not more calories than a cheese burger with chips. Lets be real. My 8 year old loves the wraps and fruit bags. But she is very active, its a treat and she would be starving an hour later.

If you voted Tory you voted for cuts. That means kids getting whatever free food their parents can get

If I'm not mistaken, that story was from a private school.

SpringerS, you missed the part that the she had no money and only a voucher for fast food meals. Of course I am familiar with Dublin. Where is she putting all the food she had no money to buy when she is in a tiny bedroom in a hostel and is on buses out of the city centre all day? I mentioned she could steal the food off the shelves but she had no buggy to put the food under to hide it. Shame

A small wrap cut in half with one small piece of chicken and a lettuce leaf is not more calories than a cheese burger with chips

I'm not sure about that. Wraps are full of calories, often one wrap is the equivalent of 5 slices of bread. Wraps are really a treat food rather than a daily alternative to bread.

Oh fgs. Now this parent has weighed up the nutritional content of the beefburger and chicken wrap? Perhaps they googled the calories so they could make an informed choice. You are talking bollocks vandree. In the UK at least supermarket vouchers are given never fast food vouchers.

Funnyonion really?