To not understand how it's cheaper to send dc to school with a cold happy meal than a packed lunch?

[bobstersmum]

In the news this week, an article about children in deprived areas being sent to school with a cold happy meal. Then parents in another article defending the reasons for it, saying that sometimes it's all they can afford. I just can't understand it? A happy meal is 2.99 I think? But a cheap loaf of bread is 50p, a cheap pack of sandwich meat or cheese is less than a pound, bag of bananas a pound multipack of crisps a pound, that's lunches for the week for around the same cost?

I really don't get the big deal....it doesn't say anywhere that a kid had a happy meal every day for lunch ....we are meant look at what a kid eats over a week, not 1 lunch. Most people give their kids a happy meal at some point, why not for lunch? It's not great but better than a bag of oreos or something.

I'm going to take another view and imagine the kid begged for a happy meal then refused to eat it so this was a lesson. Poverty makes no sense. I can't afford happy meals, I can just afford bread, school dinners are cheaper than a happy meal anyway. Of course it could also be lazy parenting. That does exist!

The story talks about reception children, I thought they all got free meals?

Bread and cheese etc is much cheaper, I'm not far London and I've seen much cheaper bread etc than quoted above.

I think people from naice supportive backgrounds with reasonable education, no real MH or addiction issues, even if they do struggle financially fttt, have no idea just how hard life is for some families.

IME some parents get things badly wrong but very few do it deliberately and the vast majority are getting through each day to the best of their ability with the skills that their life experiences have given them. They hate that they can't be better parents.

Of course it makes no sense to say the happy meal is cheaper but it might be all they can provide for a whole variety of reasons.

It takes a village to raise a child, it would be so much more helpful if society would support and nurture these families rather than vilifying them and making their situations worse.

A lot of it comes down to lack of education imo. Parents who don't know how to cook on a tiny budget or how to source cheap foods or they have their priorities wrong buying McDonalds and takeaways and cigarettes for themselves etc some people are just really dumb and rubbish with money like that and its the kids that suffer.
I have £15 a week to feed myself and my local shops are quite expensive especially the co-op who charge silly amounts for the bare basics but seem to be on every corner these days. I shop online at the cheap supermarkets where i can get it delivered for £1 and eat a lot of beans lentils and tinned things i slow cook but a lot of parent's don't have this knowledge or know how to do this or they just think McDonalds and beige crap tastes nicer i see it in my area all the time and I've worked in fast food restaurants when i was younger and have see the parent's who fetch there kids in for a happy meal each night

The article is basically made-up bollocks, and not really worth the earnest debate.

I get most children in these circumstances wouldn't touch a bean that wasn't baked or a lentil. So for comparison i did a basic list of what a kid might take for a packed lunch with price breakdown of that vs the cost of the happy meal each day
16 slices of bread 55p (800g)
825g Mild cheese £3.65
12 bags of crisps 80p
6 cartons of juice 80p
600g satsumas 80p
10 bananas £1.60
5 apples 69p
500g spread 84p
Grand total for about 2 weeks worth of lunches there is £9.73! Plenty of nutrition and variety in it where as a happy meal is apparently £2.69 and would cost £13.45 per week to feed a child 1 everyday so i stand by what i said in my previous post regarding lack of education and laziness.

The McDonalds closest to my home (which is close to a very deprived area) does a voucher drop at least once every other month where you can get free meals or big meals for a quid.

So I could see how family’s really struggling with money, and there are many, in this area might be drawn to use these instead of spending 3/4 pound on the makings of a sandwich! Especially for the children who have just aged out of free meals and families are maybe still adjusting their budget.

This bjt everyone carry on frithing about feckless poor.

But. Frothing

Are there really people who only have access to either takeaways or shops that make Waitrose look cheap?

I am having to restrain myself from ranting! To me, this is like asking "is the grass really green?" it seems so obvious. But I do understand it's not obvious to everyone.

Yes, many, many people in this country, have no access to supermarkets. Especially if they can't afford a car. Bus fairs to town are pricey. (Where I live it's £3.80 return. If I have to take the kids, it's £6 for a family ticket).

Local shops are extortionate compared to supermarkets. It's expensive being poor. Things you take for granted - popping in the car and driving to the shop to access a wide range of food at multiple price points is a luxury not everyone enjoys.

Surely the point is that it is an absolute disgrace and tragedy that in a first world country in 2019 that there are children who aren't being adequately fed. The thought of children going hungry breaks my heart.

Quite, Northernsoulgirl.

A cold burger is no real difference from a meat sandwich really in its components is it? Cold chips must be same nutritionally as crisps?Same as cold pizza is the same as a cheese and tomato sandwich.

Ds1 has 2 peperamis, 2 dry wraps and an angel slice for his lunch every single day and ds2 has Pom bears, 2 cold frankfurters and 2 digestives. I expect a cold happy meal has about the same nutrients!

Grand total for about 2 weeks worth of lunches there is £9.73! Plenty of nutrition and variety in it where as a happy meal is apparently £2.69 and would cost £13.45 per week to feed a child 1 everyday confused so i stand by what i said in my previous post regarding lack of education and laziness.

Yes, I agree there's a lack of education and laziness going on here. But by you, LucaFritz.

You have failed to grasp the barriers poverty puts up and are being incredibly lazy in not challenging your own thinking here, nor reading PPs posts explaining how this works.

Please add to that £9.73, the 2 x bus fairs needed to take a family to the supermarket once a week. In my town, that's £12. So your £9.73 would be more like £21.73 in my town.

You're also failing to understand that if you have no money, you make do with what you have. A child might end up at school with a happy mean because that's the only food in the house, not because someone regularly goes and buys one for packed lunch. It might be that a friend treated the child the night before and bought extra, so that was the best there was.

Or that it was on special offer and so the mum bought it for lunch as she only had £1.

Yes, it could well be the result of bad parenting but your assumptions and judgements show your lack of thought and understanding about the reality of poverty in this country.

bread 55p www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/288406949
spread 69p www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/300346593
Cheeses £2.25 www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/299970891 ( I would always buy the strongest one available and grate it that way a little goes a long way )
Meat paste 27p www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/299970891
Onion 9p www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/253557034
apples £1.60 www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/284475890
Crisps 77p www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/254927010
Water £1 www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/301456829 ( save bottles and refill with the below )
Squash £1 www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/263588926 ( 60 servings so one bottle should last 3 months or more if it is just used for lunches )

Total = £8.22 .
I realise that it is easier to find a £3 for a happy meal than it is to find £8 all at once but saving a few pence each day will make it possible

Aldi and lidl may be able to do this cheaper but not eveyone has access to them

I have no issues at all with giving kids ( and adults ) McDs particularly when out shopping and you need to get them food quickly that you know they will eat, but sending them to school with it for lunch is poor parenting imo unless it is purely left overs that had been bought and not eaten but that would not be a reg thing

SamBeckett and how do you propose families with no car and no Tescos nearby, get to one?

As I explained above, for me that'd be a £6 fare. Your £8.22 is actually £14.22 for me. And others live further from supermarkets or have more DC they have to drag with them, and therefore pay fares for.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I think sending DC to school with Happy Meals is a good idea (Personally, I won't even set foot in a McDonalds unless it's to sneak to their loos!).

But it's infuriating how little understanding about poverty there is on this thread.

Being poor means fewer choices. It means life is harder. It means that things that are so easy for you, you don't even see them as a thing - eg accessing a supermarket so you can buy 55p bread - can be a logistical nightmare and/or have extra costs attached that you don't ever have to consider.

many, many people in this country, have no access to supermarkets. Especially if they can't afford a car. Bus fairs to town are pricey

Do these people never leave their immediate area? Do they not go to work or school? The number of people that only have takeaways or the most expensive kind of convenience store within say a mile of their home, school or workplace must be vanishingly small.

I realise that it is easier to find a £3 for a happy meal

And I've just read it was leftovers. So, no one, as far as we know, is buying Happy Meals intended to be packed lunches.

The number of people that only have takeaways or the most expensive kind of convenience store within say a mile of their home, school or workplace must be vanishingly small

What world do you live in? JFC. Loads of people live in areas without access to supermarkets without a cost involved in getting htere. It's pretty normal.

More than a million people in the UK live in “food deserts” – neighbourhoods where poverty, poor public transport and a dearth of big supermarkets severely limit access to affordable fresh fruit and vegetables, a study has claimed.

Nearly one in 10 of the country’s most economically deprived areas are food deserts, it says – typically large out-of-town housing estates and deprived inner-city wards served by a handful of small, relatively expensive corner shops.

Public health experts are concerned that these neighbourhoods – which are often also “food swamps” with high densities of fast-food outlets – are helping to fuel a rise in diet-related conditions such as obesity and diabetes, as well as driving food insecurity.

The most deprived areas include Marfleet in Hull, Hartcliffe in Bristol, Hattersley in Greater Manchester, Everton in Liverpool and Sparkbrook in Birmingham. Eight of Scotland’s 10 most deprived food deserts are in Glasgow, and three of Wales’s nine worst are in Cardiff.

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/12/more-than-a-million-uk-residents-live-in-food-deserts-says-study

@BarbaraofSeville have you not been to rural Britain recently?

Plenty of people have no supermarkets for miles around. I work in a town with a small Tesco Express and a Spar - the nearest ASDA is 25 miles away. Same with Tesco. There is a Sainsbury's local but again that's eight miles away. So your nearest big supermarket is the ASDA. To get there without a car is a 45 minute bus ride, or a bus, a train and then another bus. Even the Sainsbury's is a good 20 minutes on the local bus route through the villages.

Plenty of people rely on public transport or walk and cycle everywhere. Not everyone lives in nice little market towns with excellent transport and plenty of cheap local grocers on their doorstep!

I read the article and the teacher was saying that parents were expecting to have the Happy Meal reheated. So I don’t think it was necessarily due to poverty (unlike the half a sandwich).

Also children up to Y2 get free meals, and school lunches are less than £3, (and free for those on low incomes), so I don’t accept that the Happy Meal is the only option.

When I was growing up we weren’t in poverty, but money was definitely tight - my mum made our clothes, or were hand me downs from cousins. My clothes and toys were often from charity shops, my dad also made us toys, and we went to the library every week rather than buy books. My mum cooked us meals from scratch. I remember going on the bus with her to markets to get cheap bags of vegetables, making big pots of vegetable soup, stews from cheap cuts of meat, and baking loaf cakes for our packed lunches.

Yet my parents would have been so embarrassed to send me to school with a cold happy meal. I never ate in a McDonald’s or any other fast food place until I was a teenager. We very rarely ate out at all in fact.

My father grew up in poverty - his own father died, and there were no benefits. As a child he remembers chasing after the coal lorry for dropped coal, and not having any presents for Christmas. However he had a strong work ethic and sense of right and wrong and was determined to make a better life for himself and his family.

I think I was fortunate in that my parents passed on to me the skills and knowledge to raise my own family. I know how to shop and cook cheaply. I am now in a good position where both me and DH are working so we don’t have to worry about money any more, but I am still careful and would rather do without than get into debt.

So I just don’t agree that just because you are poor you don’t know how to care for a family. It must be down to lack of knowledge? My parents’ generation were war babies, there was still rationing, a lot of poverty, and you had to learn to manage on very little. What happened to those skills?

It’s not just about the money and availability of supermarkets. You need to consider carrying it all back by foot or on the bus. It’s heavy. And you probably can’t carry a week’s worth of shopping for a family in one go. So that means further expense and time, which you may not have, on more bus trips to the supermarket or top up shops at expensive convenience shops, if you have them closer.

I am surprised by the number of people who only have very expensive convenience stores and are unable to get to supermarkets. Is online grocery shopping ever feasible for you if you are in this situation?

How can you shop online if you don’t have broadband or WiFi, or don’t have a computer or smartphone? I’ve never shopped online.