AIBU to say that you can make a good quality packed lunch for less than the price of a school meal?

[Cwtches123]

Inspired by the thread about compulsory school meals. Some posters were saying that it would cost as much or more to provide a good quality packed lunch!
My daughter has taken packed lunches since year 7 after trying the school offering and not liking it. It is much cheaper than the price of school meals and she can take whatever she wants. Today she has a homemade tomato pasta salad, banana, cereal bar and some nuts - cost approx £1.25. In the winter she takes stew /soup/pasta in a food flask (usually leftovers from the previous day) but sometimes she will take a sandwich, crisps/chocolate biscuit and some fruit but rice /couscous/pasta salads are her favourite.
I can't see how a packed lunch can be more expensive!
How much does a packed school lunch cost you and what do you put in?

I agree op. Ds's school has recently started offering packed lunches for the same price as a cooked meal. We've asked ds not to go for packed lunches because 1. We both work ft so having a cooked lunch term time saves us time in the evening and 2. We believe that school provided packed lunches are not good value.

Where are you based? My kids have been to school in the UK and Sweden and schools are nut/chocolate free zones at lunch time.

I agree most schools where I am are £2.50 a day for a meal at primary school that's £12.50 a week per child. Its obvious to everyone that you could easily prepare lot of delicious food for much cheaper than school meals but many children like the excitement of getting a school lunch with their friends. Plus there is no cost of EYFS and KS1 which means they almost all have school dinners until yr3.

YANBU.

School meals at our Primary School cost £2.43. They are not great to be honest, they are talking about getting rid of processed meat but the food is along the lines of breaded chicken, fish fingers, burgers, very overcooked veg. Also the portion size is the same whether they are serving a 5 year old or a 12 year old (we're in Scotland).

Today DS is taking leftover pasta from last night so you could argue that costs nothing, but on an average day he'll take a bagel and cheese (40p tops), an apple 20p), some grapes (25p), a packet of crisps (6 for £1, so 18p let's say) and a frozen yoghurt tube which will have defrosted by lunchtime (20p ish). Half the price of a school lunch.

Even if I was preparing him a hot lunch for him to take into school it would be better and cheaper than what is on offer in school. Nearly all the packed lunch stuff, except from fruit, is bought according to whatever's on offer, or yellow-stickered. Last week the supermarket had packets and packets of Frubes reduced to 20p a pack, whack them in the freezer and the kids take one out a day. (Or just eat them frozen as a snack).

You are right, I can make a decent packed lunch very cheaply.

@KC225 not all UK school are nut and chocolate free.

A bigger kitchen should be able to provide a better value meal but in practice I find this rarely happens as too many corners are cut.

Plus in my children's schools the meal included a compulsory sweetened drink in a plastic bottle or milk carton (only flavoured milk available.) Cups of water or plain milk from a jug being too messy to handle in their view.

So ime YANBU.

I think you need to count the cost of both lunch and dinner as a combined cost. So if by having a cooked meal at lunchtime means a lighter evening meal versus a sandwich lunch meaning a fully cooked dinner after school.
Of course some children have a school lunch and a cooked family dinner.

Of course you can - the school meals might have the economy of scale on their side, but on the other hand their cost includes staffing, utilities etc, whereas I assume you give your time for free and your kitchen would be lit and heated whether or not you made school dinners! It's particularly obvious if you compare the cost of a sandwich from home vs one from a canteen - even in a very cheap school (or work) canteen then it's going to cost more than the simple cost of the ingredients, which is what the home one would cost you.

You might think paying for school dinners is better value for money, though, in that it completely removes the task of planning and making lunch from the household, and that might be worth a lot to you. But that's not the same thing as it actually being cheaper.

Penny for penny you're right, but when you factor in the time / effort / mental effort of coming up with varied and enjoyable lunch boxes I think school dinners win for me.
As pp says lots of schools have the lunchbox police which narrows down what you can put in. My poor children would end up with the same thing most days, so are much better off with school meals.

I liked the way my children would try new things with their school meals. It definitely encouraged some variety as they refuse flasks of food from home.

I can buy the ingredients for a week of packed lunches for around £4 far cheaper than school dinners. Plus it's food I would buy in anyway, just use abit for lunches every day aswell so it's a win win.

Absolutely. A big tub of pasta with some veg chopped into it, maybe some cheese, olive oil...not expensive per portion. That along with some fruit and maybe something biscuit-like and you're done. Otherwise the good ole sandwich option isn't really expensive. Homemade stuff goes down well. Leftover meals are good too like pasta with a bolognese-type sauce or pesto.

My kids have been to school in the UK and Sweden and schools are nut/chocolate free zones at lunch time

That's not a blanket policy in the UK. My sons' secondary school is not nut-free; and their primary school didn't have a policy of packed lunch policing (although we were asked to avoid nuts and sesame).

Plus we try to avoid single use plastic. I imagine school meals use more of that, but also a lot of packed lunches would include single use plastics. I like to try not to though.

It's not about the money for me, DD is only 11 months old so is fed absolutely everything by nursery but I am already dreading her wanting a packed lunch for school. I have enough on during the week without having to prepare more food.

I'd rather pay more and her have a hot meal, which will then make tea as easy or as hard as I want to it to be, not because I'm obligated to have a hot meal inside her.

Having seen the portion size of school meals, and the quality, coupled with the fact that my DC would probably not eat all of it, I have always provided a full evening meal for them regardless of whether they have had a school dinner or not. If I am cooking a meal for DH and me, I cannot see the point of giving them a different meal anyway.

My kids packed lunches usually comprise:
Sandwich say cheese/ham/egg 30p
Piece of fruit 20p
Other thing eg little cake 10p
Tap water

So about 60p a day. A lot cheaper. And usually homemade so very low salt/sugar.

DS' school is very small, so does not have a kitchen. He has taken a packed lunch with him for all of him primary school years (now finishing Year 6) and I have tried lots of different things so that he has variety.

I agree with the examples you've put forward, they seem cheaper to me than an individually priced school lunch.

Today, DS has taken in a tuna mayo sandwich on wholemeal bread (half a tin of tuna, he will have tuna pasta bake tonight with the rest of it - £1 tops? probably a bit less), some carrot sticks (one whole carrot - 10pence?), squash in his water bottle (pennies), an apple (15pence?) and some BBQ flavour hula hoops from a multi pack (20pence ish). He eats it all.

I mix it up a lot so that he has variety. Leftovers work well for us, and would cost less. The thermos food flask that I bought him years ago is still working perfectly, and opens the options up further. Its just a pain in the behind having to do it each day. Roll on secondary school.

Tap water here too.

The bottles of water are ridiculous here. I'm expecting a big green flourish in newsletters shortly as the local authority rediscovers tap water.

Tbh at their secondary there are too many pupils for the dining hall so it is nigh on impossible to get a school dinner past first year.

Well I try but school is nut free & chocolate free andd I have a fussy eater...so it's usually the same thing every day. Also, they're discouraged from bringing in crisps and cartons (other than fruit juice).

I think it’s sometimes not that much cheaper to make a packed lunch. Especially if you add a yoghurt for example.

I don’t follow the dinner argument, I’m not going to give the one child who’s had school hot meal at lunch a sandwich while the rest of us eat a hot meal.

It is certainly possible. It relies on time, organisation and a small amount of creativity. I think about £2 a time sounds about right to me.

I think school dinners work out a little bit cheaper for us and definitely saves a lot of time. We pay £15 a week for ds1, £12.50 a week each for ds2 and ds3 and younger 2 are free. Then they only need sandwiches/cheese on toast or similar for tea.

I suppose it depends as much as anything on what sort of cheese/bread/pasta etc you actually buy. I could make stuff a lot cheaper if I didn’t mind the cheapest sort of bread and cheese, but I do.