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've learnt from shows like Rich Kids Go Skint that some people live miles away from a supermarket to be able to afford to travel there and buy those foods at those prices. They have no choice but to shop at small convenience stores where cheese is at least £2 and bread is £1.20.

No, but you do to make dinner the night before. If you bought a Happy Meal because you didn’t have access to cooking facilities and it went uneaten (for whatever reason) then the following day you might - if you are so poor that you can’t afford a fiver of gas - think “waste not, want not”.

But you wouldn't pay £2.79 for a Happy Meal if you were skint. You'd give them sandwiches for dinner

There are so many things that are cheaper than a Happy Meal.

I wish people would put as much effort into feeding their kids after the age of 1 as they do into moaning about BF vs FF.

You can definitely get pack lunch for the week cheaper.

People always miss this point. If you have £3, you might be able to buy a Happy Meal, or the ingredients for sandwiches. You can’t buy £13.45 worth of anything. Because you have £3.

Our school charges £2.10 for lunch, isn’t that average?

@QuestionableMouse
£4 for butter! Where the hell do you live?. Ive never seen anywhere that expensive and I work all over the country. in my local shop the cheapest is 68p

That's my village shop. There's a McDonald's four miles up the road. The nearest supermarket is 6 miles away in town.

@newbingepisodes 100% Agree

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

Which would make lunch for the whole week.

Lots of places have a little retail park with McDonald’s etc. but no supermarket without a long walk

Places like that often contain a Home Bargains, Iceland, B&M or similar, all of which sell sandwich food very cheaply.

WorraLiberty

I probably would, yes. But for some people the want of a hot meal seems worse than a slightly crappy meal. And for some people it’s not an option to walk to a supermarket, but it is to buy a Happy Meal. And for some people the Happy Meal might be something they begged, or were given. We can’t honestly all sit in our warm homes with our full bellies and pretend that nobody in this country is doing their best to stave off starvation. It’s simply not true.

BarbaraofSeville

Again, missing the point that if I have £3 I can’t spend £4.

Having read the article, it's not a cold happy meal. It's items from a cold happy meal. So presumably when kids don't eat the whole thing, the leftovers go in the packed lunch rather than waste it. If that's the case, actually it is cheaper to make the kid eat the leftovers than throw them away and use different food for the packed lunch.

It's still shit that anyone is in that position.

@QuestionableMouse if they can get to a McDonald's they can get to a supermarket! Asda (probably others£ have £1 delivery and Iceland delivers for free.

Broken appliances is an issue but sandwiches aren't cooked. Laziness is a real problem around here,

The food bank data is really interesting. People weren't starving to death before they were ubiquitous. The more food banks there are the more people use them, it's not necessarily a marker of rising need. It's not right the need is there at all of course, but people like to use the stats as proof things are spiralling out of control.

In social services we used to give out supermarket vouchers marked 'no alcohol or tobacco'. Now we give food bank vouchers first. I personally know two people (outside of my work) who have used food banks when they weren't completely in need - it was easier as they'd overspent elsewhere. One of them, a couple, happily accepted a 4 person family one when a mistake was made.

This moralising of the poor by right and left pisses me off. The right says they're feckless and useless, the left says it's all systemic and never ever due to individual issues. Obviously it's in the middle.

A cold happy meal for a packed lunch is lazy parenting, full stop. The parent might not be able to parent properly because of decades of undiagnosed or properly treated trauma, but that's another issue. It's not due to poverty. You can get a sandwich and a bag of crisps cheaper if pots and pans is your issue as one PP has suggested!

If you had £3 you could do better than a mc Donald’s and something that lasts more than one day I think the mc Donald’s element is laziness really. The half a sandwich on the other hand is a serious lack of money. Surely the children where the family can only afford half a sandwich qualify for free school meals?

@newbingepisodes agreed! So many people wax lyrical about their extended breastfeeding saga and then wean their kids into a diet of utter shite! And I'm not talking about low income families either.

Well you'd do without the spread then? If you only have £3 it's madness to spend it all on one meal for one person.

You'd get as much as you could, so a loaf of bread and something to go in it - a jar of peanut butter or something. But of course our mythical poor family are allergic to peanuts so can't have that either and the McDonalds really is the only food available to them.

And the child that had half the virtuos sandwich with good parents who chose to make a sandwich. Thats ok?

Lazy, selfish parenting.

Occasionally yes, but more often exhausted, disorganised, tired of trying to eke out the cheapest loaf of bread in the shop.... yet again, have poor role models so nobody's actually shown them how to create six packed lunches on a £3.50 budget.

The cold happy meal might actually have been made to last the child two meals, one parent might work at McDonalds and get a free meal which they save for their child's lunch. You really, really don't know what state somebody is in and this judgemental bullshit doesn't really help anybody.

If the Liverpool Echo are trying to cause damage to the Labour Party, they couldn’t have given a greater gift to the Tories to be honest.

A family where children go to school with cold McDonald’s is not political gold. The wider public sympathy for parents who need to resort to food banks but inexplicably spend the remaining money they have on hamburgers and chips is approximately zero.

Yes, it’s possible that in the midst of rural Liverpool there are no shops, supermarkets or Tesco deliveries and in MN land it will be a cold dark room with no plates, knives, forks or spoons, no microwave and no hob. But the most likely explanation is that they thought it was an acceptable lunch.

I live in one of the poorest boroughs in London, where child and adult poverty is at an all time high.

And I think it's an insult to all the decent parents living in poverty, to read so many excuses as to why a child would be sent to school with a stone cold box of junk food.

All these people who live miles away from supermarkets and can only spend £4 (???) on butter etc.

Most of the poor parents I know would have got a bike off of freecycle (excuse the pun), or at least worked out some way of getting to a cheaper shop.

How on earth do these people manage to get to McDonalds but not a cheaper shop? How do they get to the chemist/doctors/dentist?

@churchandstate if they only have three quid then that only buys one happy meal, what about the other four days of the week at school. At least the expensive food from the shop sees you through the week. Feeding the kids McDonald's everyday would cost £15 as apposed to your £13.40. So even with inflated prices it's still cheaper.

As Church said, it’s not necessarily a case of getting up and thinking ‘can’t be bothered to make lunch Have last night’s leftover dinner’ but, thinking, the only food in the house is dinner from last night which was not eaten. There may literally be no other food in the house, and lack of storage or cooking facilities may mean a takeaway was the only option. And if you have already spent the money, how could it be wasted? It probably means someone at home, probably the mother, is going without food that day.

Jam can be left on the side if the fridge doesn’t work.

And if someone is going 4 miles to a McDonald’s they can go the extra 2 to get some cheaper food at a supermarket.

It’s laziness and bad parenting.

Some supermarkets do free delivery slots. Iceland do free delivery over £25 I think as well.

if they only have three quid then that only buys one happy meal, what about the other four days of the week at school. At least the expensive food from the shop sees you through the week.

If you only have £3 you only have £3. If that’s not enough to buy sandwich ingredients then it’s not enough. Whether it’s cheaper overall to buy the more expensive ingredients only matters if you have the money to do it.