To not know what exactly passes as a healthy lunch for a 5 year old?

[DragginBallsEEEE]

Just reading another thread and opinions are mixed on whether OPs lunch is ok or too much which has made me question my own DDs lunch. I will say that I grew up quite poor and getting groceries was the highlight of my week and as such I am now an adult who is overweight so definitely don't have the best relationship with food and my children are larger than their peers. I don't deny them food and they do snack on things like fruit and yogurt or sliced meats but do limit their junk food and presently don't buy anything other than wotsits/quavers and fibre one bars as junk.

DD is 5 and on the heavy side. On a typical day for school lunch I will give her:

Either a ham thin OR cold pasta with ham chopped through it.
A banana or handful of grapes.
A cheesestring
A small yogurt/frube or custard pot.
A bottle of water or on the odd occasion apple juice.

I thought this was perfectly fine but after seeing replies on the other thread I am wondering if I should change what I give her. She eats the whole lot most days. She doesn't eat salad or veg which is frustrating but will eat fruit.

So AIBU to be worried about what I am giving her or does it sound ok? What do your lower primary aged children have?

God yes, there is nothing my children enjoy more than their once a year treat of a banana on Christmas day.

Yes, my children get a banana and a lump of coal in their stocking each year. Luxury it is.

Coal!....come on, destroying the planet and having a small lump in the house is the equivalent of smoking 60 a day healthwise.

OP - maybe go to the school/GP practice nurse or I think some pharmacists who will be able to weigh and measure your daughter. They will have suggestions and you could ask them about lunches.

You really can't look at her lunch in isolation. I know you realise that but while you are taking into account what she eats the rest of the day contributors to this thread don't know.

Since you are asking about lunch, for comparison, my DS has a small cheese sandwich, carrot and cucumber sticks, a carton of fruit juice (as in real fruit juice, not squash), a banana or a small orange, and a fromage frais tube.

When he was a bit younger he did get a bit overweight so I made a couple of simple rules. Firstly, that if he wanted a snack between meals it had to be fruit. Secondly that he wouldn't be allowed a treat after dinner until he had had his 5 a day, then it would be one treat and if he was still hungry more fruit. That was enough to make a difference and now he's not overweight at all. He's also much more active these days so I've been able to relax the rules a little (i.e. he might get the odd bag of crisps or a bit of popcorn or toast as a snack) but I still limit the treats and still insist on 5 a day.

I don't believe in holding back on the treats altogether because then I feel they become the forbidden fruit. It's how I was brought up and I have battled with my weight my entire adult life.

My 4 year old gets

Ham sandwich
Chopped cucumbers and tomatoes
Banana
Pom bears
Yoghurt
Strawberrys/Orange

She is super skinny!

@Deadringer @hazeyjane a child should have around 25 grams of sugar per day and typical medium banana has around 14g. Moreover, OP is giving her child either Frubes, children's yoghurts or custard on a regular basis which is also full of added sugar. I am not suggesting that a child shouldn't have a banana but simply highlighting that her lunch is full of sugar which isn't going to help her DD overall health, energy levels and her weight.

The number of people on the thread making jokes about those who are suggesting a healthier approach to eating and feeding children is why there are so many overweight and unhealthy people in the UK. There is nothing wrong with not wanting to feed your children (or yourself) a diet that consists of chemicals, sugar and flavourings.

Rosewater I am sure you are very knowledgeable and make some very good points but I do not and will never consider a banana a treat. Frubes, custard and yogurts maybe, but not bananas. As far as I am concerned whatever grams of sugar are in a banana, it is a healthy option full of fibre, vitamins, and potassium, and I maintain that they do not contribute to the current obesity crisis in any way, shape or form. Suggesting that bananas are a poor choice for a child's lunch box based on the amount of sugar they contain is very short sighted and a little bit silly imo, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

@Deadringer I never said that a banana is a poor choice. I said that a banana plus all of the other sugary foods means that OPs DD is eating too much sugar. It is my understanding that your body can't tell the difference between eating natural sugars (in a banana) and eating added sugars, like those found in yoghurt. Therefore, it is important to read labels and understand what your food is made of. A banana is a better choice over Pom Bears or yoghurt or any other processed food but that wasn't the point I was making. I was trying to explain that all the other foods the OP DD is eating + banana is way too much sugar.

Banana's are great (if you aren't also eating them alongside other sugary foods), but there are many other foods that have higher amounts of vitamins and potassium.

I'm not trying to be a wanker... but the health visitor told me years ago that fruit juice is bad. Laden with fructose and a problem for teeth and blood sugar. She said that water is best, and if not it should be very dilute squash of the full sugar variety. Low sugar variants contain aspartame, which is worse.

So you see.... no packed lunch is perfect. We're all just doing the beat we can do and this competitive parenting bullshit is just that!

When I was a kid my mum worked full time. Dad was mentally ill and too sick to cook. We literally had a chip shop dinner every night for years. I'm now a fitness blogger and run marathons.

I was the person who started the thread that spawned yours. It was a thread about a woman who gives her kids a jam sandwich and a biscuit, until some douchebag stared derailing it over the holocaust and posting pictures of concentration camp deaths.
It really puts things in to perspective though. We're all just doing the best we can. Stop stressing and being competitive about it all.

And before I fuck off I think people need to wind their necks in and stop being massive cocks about what other children have in their pack ups. Yes, well done. You sent your child to school with the perfect healthy lunch today.

You also spent all afternoon and evening arguing about it on mumsnet and forgot to do their reading, spellings or offer them more to eat for dinner than cold pizza.

Ah here's folk crying about how unhealthy cheese , fruit and yogurt is then there's me remembering how piss poor we were growing up on our unhealthy packed lunches. As I remember mine comprised of

1. Panda pop
2. Plastic ham sandwiches or cheese singles

3 . Usually a packet of walkers crisps

1. Either a club or penguin biscuit .

Now that's embarrassing, I think it was in the early 90's not a eyelid was batted by the school . Good memories....

I think it sounds a very normal lunch for her age is it the healthiest possible option no but It's certainly not the worst. My little boy is the same age he's small he doesn't eat loads at school eats more at home but he's not the fastest eater and I know he likes to go to play with the other reception children after lunch. His isnt super healthy either just normal.He has one of these cheese sandwich ( one slice of brown bread ) beetroot wrap with cheese , savoury pancake, wholewheat crackers , corn thins, puff pastry roll up very occasionally a croissant, I have sent pasta and Fritata but he doesn't love them cold. He then has one of these cheese cubes , boiled egg, rice cakes, hummus crisps, He then has 2 veg and one fruit he doesn't eat all of these i always find a little bit left over. Then he has a yoghurt usually but sometimes he has a little gingerbread man or if ive made a cake or crispys he has that. I would try looking at all her meals but i imagine shes pretty active at school at my sons school they dp the daily mile, PE twice a week and have time on the play equipment a few times a day. We take my sons scooter to school could you do that or her bike if you think she needs a bit more activity? I also think you have to look at things luke bone structure I have a small bone structure I've got friends who even if we were exactly the same weight would just be bigger their hips ate bigger , shoulders wider ECT so it may not be that she is overweight I would get her weighed and meassured as you say she's tall.

Only on MN are bananas a treat, ham the food of the devil (even naice ham) and Swiss chard a suggestion for a five year old's lunch box! 😂

My almost 5 year old is a nightmare to feed.
His lunch sounds very similar.

He will either have a small wrap with cheese spread and ham or a sandwich thin and ham.
Grapes
Yoghurt
Quavers
And occasionally I’ll put a small kinder chocolate in as a treat. He’s absolutely tiny.

half a peeled grape

Grapes are dangerous little pockets of sugar.

OP don't ask for advice about food on MN it's always batshit.

When people say half a packet of crisps do you literally open a packet and decant half into a sandwich bag?!

I would be careful of being too restrictive with treats - it just means when your child is old enough to independently buy food they may well over indulge. I know from experience!

These posts always crack me up

Anyway my ds is 7 so a bit older but his packed lunch consists of:

A sandwich with two slices of bread he eats either tuna mayo, egg mayo, ham, cheddar or cream cheese. So a different filling each day.

A piece of fruit either an apple, banana, grapes, kiwi or an orange again mostly a different one each day but sometimes will choose the same piece of fruit two days in a row.

A small yogurt

A cheese stick

A bottle of flavoured water or Capri Sun water.

Once a week I will put a small treat in such as a few Roses or a small milky way etc

Some days hes eaten everything and others he might have eaten just the sandwich and one thing

I recently had a close relative pass away after suffering from a painful illness that was the direct result of a lifetime spent eating a diet that wasn't healthy. She died a horrible and painful death--a death that could have been prevented.

Therefore, I am very conscious of the food I put in my body and what I feed my family. In my family, we talk about what makes us feel good in our bodies, and how the foods we eat make us stronger and healthier. I don't care how much swiss chard (FYI to those sneering about it--swiss chard looks like pesto when you chop it up and lightly sautee it with garlic, and it tastes amazing) a child eats but the point is to continually expose them to new foods so that they hopefully become comfortable with these foods. We do have treats in our family but these treats aren't going to negatively impact health because the majority of our diet is healthy. Therefore, there is never guilt or shame or negative feelings when we eat a cookie or bake a cake.

There is a direct link between what you put in your body and how healthy you are. I am sure someone will come on here to say that their grandmother lived to be 102 and ate nothing but pizze and ice cream but the fact is that 62% of the adult population in England are overweight. This means that we have a serious issue regarding health in this country. What the OP puts in her child's lunch might be what the average kid is eating but average in England equates to over half the popultion being unhealthy and overweight. This should not be good enough for our children when it comes to health.

People sneering at sensible, moderate dietary advice are clearly in denial. Just because your child wouldn't eat Swiss chard, that doesn't mean that they have to have jam sandwiches and cheese strings.

And people laughing at the proven link between processed meat and bowel cancer and saying that it can't be right because otherwise everyone they know would have died of bowel cancer clearly doesn't understand. Regularly eating it raises your risk of cancer. Who would want to do that when it's so easy to cut that risk? Cigarettes are highly addictive. Ham...not so much.

I didn’t say my child wouldn’t eat Swiss chard I said I wouldn’t 😂

To be fair, there is a fairly strong proven link now between processed meat and cancer. I am totally relaxed about food (and other 'chemicals', alcohol, etc) but I have massively cut down on the amount of processed meat that we consume as a family.

Well you sound like a very caring and conscientious parent so I hope you don't let health freak threads worry you too much.

It's always good to go with food in as natural a form as possible but please don't beat yourself up over a cheese string or whatever.

I didn’t say my child wouldn’t eat Swiss chard I said I wouldn’t

I wasn't commenting to you in particular. Whenever there is a thread about food we should/shouldn't be eating, there are always people who seem to think it's hilarious and unbelievable that anyone or their children would actually voluntarily eat vegetables. Or think that even things as comonly eaten as hummus or aubergines are preposterously middle class and exotic. It's tedious, small-minded and a feeble excuse for feeding your kids (and yourself) crap.

Yes I get your point, there is definitely the idea of ‘kids food’, which is odd. I do love aubergine though.