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?

Or just pay for a school lunch which is cheaper and easier than getting a MacDonalds.

Or even RTFT before wading in...

I imagine it’s cheaper to use up leftovers than to use new food is the thinking behind this. If you’re properly pennies in the bank, flat broke watching food go wasted would be soul destroying. Haven’t read the article but I’d imagine he families concerned need some serious family support and potential ally educating on nutrition rather than shaming all over mumsnet and Facebook.

But yes he was resilient and bloody determined that his children would have a different life. Is that luck? I don’t know. I am aware of the sacrifices they made for their family and I never take that for granted. But this is why I made the point that being poor doesn’t have to mean you can’t be a good parent, and I think my parents and grandparents would have been offended by that assumption.

Resilience makes all the difference, and you don't get it by simply splashing cold water on your face and telling yourself to buck up.

Being poor doesn't mean you can't be a good parent - that is indeed an offensive suggestion. Being poor does mean that lack of resilience can result in utter misery.

Often, being MC makes it hard to understand what being a 'good parent' means to someone who is dealing with poverty and the stress that goes with that.

Resilience is often the only thing standing between the poor and disaster. For people who are not poor, there are elements that mitigate the lack of resilience. It's not such a make or break trait.

At least a sandwich is designed to be eaten cold. A cold Happy Meal is not a pleasant thing to eat.

That's not why people are in uproar and being judgey about it, is it though? It's because Macdonalds is a particular target for class based snobbery, when in reality it's no worse than a lot of the junk we feed our kids. Not saying they don't deserve better.

Why is everyone assuming that the parents bought the happy meal? Maybe a friend or relative was involved, maybe they had a free voucher?
And people saying "it's £13.45 a week" are being goady, it was ITEMS from a happy meal on possibly one occasion, not a full happy meal every day!

Yet another thread where people just dont get poverty.

Dad has the kids, buys a Happy Meal, it gets used for school dinner the next day because Mum is skint.

You see how that works?

I once read about food poverty is not all about money. I don't know what it is actually called but there seems to a lack of education in deprived groups as to how to make most of their money...this includes making food and managing bills etc. It's a vicious cycle for them to break and they need financial education.

Food poverty is not all about money, its also about fuel poverty and white goods poverty.

Its only middle class do gooders who think poor people need educating about budgeting more than they need more money, and its been the same for over a hundred years.

Why is everyone assuming that the parents bought the happy meal? Maybe a friend or relative was involved, maybe they had a free voucher?

Why is everyone assuming that they are responsible parents and just not useless, let's be honest there is plenty of feckless parents about, I don't get this not being able to cook ect, any idiot can cook beans on toast jacket potatoes ect and they are really cheap.

If you have no idea about feeding yourself you certainly ought to think about not having kids.

It's sad but I think it's just laziness on the parents part. Can't be arsed to make a sandwich and pack up some fruit and juice so buy a shitty little happy meal. Poor kids.

Not one person could convince me that a happy meal a day is cheaper than making a pack up. And if they are struggling on benefits then the kids should be recieving a free meal anyway.

@notyetsleepingthrough yup I have. I once had to cut open the bottom of my sofas to find coins that might have dropped down through the seat so I had enough for milk for my toddler.

I still would spend my last £3 on enough cheap ingredients to get us through a few days rather than giving my kid one crap cold happy meal.

I don't think this is about money! It's about laziness.

So much drama over a cold chicken nugget!
I don't mind admitting that if there's left over take away at my house, I'm not above giving it to the kids for breakfast. Especially if I've been a bit disorganised and we have cereal but not milk or vice versa.
The kids get free meals at school but if I forgot to get crisps in, I'll put a piece of cold pizza in a sandwich bag for snack time.
Im not poor, just disorganised (the kind of disorganised poor people can't afford to be if I'm honest) but I'm not going to beat myself up over these occasional failures. I'm not going to beat up other Mums for it either.
I can easily see how a Happy Meal gets bought as a treat and some stray chicken nuggets get put in the lunchbox to avoid waste.
Its not the absolute cheapest food but its pretty cheap for treat food and I wouldn't begrudge it to someone. You even get a toy with it. They do indeed make kids happy. The article didn't link the Happy Meal to poverty anyway.
The half a sandwich is sad though :(

If you have no money, it is impossible to budget.

I grew up with cheap, good food. But it was cooked from scratch. Rice, beans, potatoes, eggs can be made into many delicious meals.

But budgets are useless if you don't have money.

My son takes half a sandwich because he asks for only half. He says he's not hungry enough to eat a whole one at lunch and doesn't want to have to bring the other half home. He gets other food in his bag but it worries me that half a sarnie makes me a bad parent/in poverty somehow

@purplebunny2012 same here. DD has moved to hot meals now it's winter but when she was on packed lunches in summer she was bringing home half a sandwich every single day. Eventually she said she couldn't manage a full sandwich so I started sending her with half instead to save the waste! Although she also had a portion of fruit, a yoghurt and some low salt crisps too.

Haven’t RTFT, so sorry if it’s been said, but a lot of the time, it isn’t actually “lazy” or “piss poor parenting. It’s lack of education.

And more often than not, it’s generational. If no one has ever shown them how to make packed lunches, budget their money, do the grocery shopping on the cheap etc, then they just do not know how. And you might be sitting there thinking it’s not rocket science, just common sense, it’s actually not to a lot of people. Especially those who may have low IQ’s, didn’t finish school, May have substance abuse problems, no family or friends, no access to places like mumsnet, the list goes on.

I used to know someone who bought her kid a sandwich every day for lunch at the local shop, for about $7 each. She was always complaining about the cost, and I got so fed up one day I took her round a loaf of bread and sandwich fillings for about the equivalent $7. She was shocked. She literally just didn’t know.

Education is the key.

To everyone banging on about foodbanks.

You can only go every two weeks. At mine you would need to be rerefered after two months. So four visits. You don't get bread, or anything perishable. So unless you're going to send them with a tin opener, not actually very helpful for pack lunch.

@churchandstate Sat 16-Nov-19 18:02:58
"And no, in my local store, the ingredients for a sandwich would cost at least £4: £1.60ish for bread, £1 for cheap cheese, £1.50ish for spread."

Maybe the ingredients would cost £4 at your local shop, but you'd get more than one sandwich out of those ingredients, 5 at least, bringing the cost of a sandwhich down to 80p.

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

You need to be within walking distance of a shop that sells things for those prices, my local shop charges £1.10 for bread.

You need to be able to store the bread, cheese/meat and crisps. Bananas go off in a week, the meat needs to be refrigerated, not everyone has a fridge. Your home needs to not have mice or rats so that you can store the bread. If you are in a B and B you may not be allowed to store food, if you are in one with a communal kitchen then food will be stolen.

You need the physical ability to make the sandwich.

You need to know you can keep the food away from any hungry children or a partner who is possibly drunk or has the munchies.

You need some form of container to put the lunch in and somewhere you can wash it out.

You only need one of the above to not be able to provide a packed lunch.

There is a reason the most stolen food is cheese.

Read the article,
it says 'items from a Happy Meal'. They've purchased a HM as a treat, I guess, and then used leftovers for packed lunch. Or they've purchased a HM for multiple children to share as a packed lunch

Some nasty, judgy comments on this thread. Compassionate MNs can always be relied upon to show the caring side of human nature.

As a last minute meal, a happy meal is cheaper but obviously over a week, planning and sandwiches are cheaper. Schools make things tougher for the poor by banning crisps and chocolate which were a staple when I was young because mum bought multipacks to feed everyone. I despise people saying go to lidl for cheap food. They assume I can afford a car. I live near the centre of town so a bus anywhere to a supermarket costs me £5 and I cannot carry much back. Tesco express , Sainsbury's local and 'corner' shops charge a premium and do not stock value ranges. I do an online shop but have to spend a minimum. A packet of biscuits to give everyone a snack costs less than an apple which feeds 1. That is why the poor eat badly.

God this thread is depressing. So many posters falling over themselves to find as many excuses as possible for shit lazy parenting. Even if the article has been misrepresented and it’s the ‘half sandwich’ kid the teacher is saying relates to poverty rather than the cold happy meal, the fact remains that some parents are so appalling for various reasons they do send kids into school with cold greasy chips for lunch. It’s not acceptable and no matter how many times the claims of ‘but they might not have pots and pans! Junk food is cheaper! They may not have legs to get to the shops!’ are disproven, it doesn’t change that it’s just appalling.

Half a sandwich, with other items in the lunchbox, is plenty for many kids. A full sandwich is overly filling for a lot of adults so why promote waste by sending one in if as PP say it’s not gonna be eaten? A sandwich versus cold fries and nuggets (seriously, I dare any of the apologists on this thread to go buy a happy meal today, leave it twelve hours then eat it and report back), I know which I’d have preferred as a child.

Things seem to have swung so far the other direction you can’t ever acknowledge or argue that someone who is poor might also be a crap parent, lazy, selfish etc. it’s almost like if you’re poor you’re automatically virtuous and any decision you make has to be endlessly reworked and reimaged by middle class people until it’s acceptable or justifiable, it’s patronising bullshit and an insult to the many, many parents on very low incomes who still manage to feed their children food with some nutritional value, who learn how to cook or assemble basic meals so their money goes further, who would rather have a 19p packet of instant noodles for dinner so they can afford the £2 for sandwich ingredients for their child to eat an adequate lunch for a few days.

When you have children part of the deal is feeding them adequately and it’s your responsibility to do that. Someone sending a cold happy meal to school is failing their children and I hope that it serves as an alert to the school to investigate further.

My husband grew up in a deprived area. His mum has always been in benefits and his siblings at home work cash in hand what I have noticed is that they sometimes dont have money but then when they get money they will buy takeaways ect rather than working out a budget and getting a weeks shopping. So they have the takeaways for 2days then are skint again. We have every type of shop in town home bargains,Iceland ect plus supermarkets in walking distance. I dont know if it's just they want a treat or the dont think further ahead than that day. They also buy stuff on credit ( not urgent things ) that really are very expensive and the payments are a struggle for them with the high interest. I don't know if it's just they struggle wants treats ect then dont think through the consequences of the decision so are sort of stuck in a cycle.

The thjng jsthough the cold McDonald's mesl might not rven be abiuf poverty. It judt may be as the article losely suggedys about the fsmily not wanting yo waste the food..
The half a sandwich is about poverty and that is reslly sad.
The media seems to twist the facts to propagate the myth that these things are down to piss poor parenting and not genuine poverty. The truth is ut is probably a bit of both.
After sll if Tarquins mum sent him in with a serving of Risotto or ehayever from the prrvious evening she would be congratulated on her zero food waste.