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?

churchandstate bit dramatic? We’re talking here about cold happy meal vs healthy packed lunch, and I hear the same excuse trotted out time and time again that people cannot afford to feed their family healthy, so have to feed them crap. I’m pointing out that that’s simply not true.

Livelovebehappy

What was dramatic?

As children get sent to DD's school with nothing but dry cereal for lunch, the congealed Happy Meal turd in a box does not surprise me. But then not treating nits is also a thing, kids riddled with the bugs and this is apparently not neglect, so nothing really surprises me.

The older i get the more i realise that children, like women, really don't matter. Safeguarding etc is largely lip service and job creation.

Of course it's much more complex than just the cost of the food and the practicalities of getting it. Dysfunctional, chaotic homes where lack of money is just one issue among many is more like it. Of course we can all sit here and list the things we would do differently but add in addiction, mental health problems, despair, generations of neglect and abuse and you just don't make rational decisions about lunch boxes.

This is exactly why my school does not allow packed lunches. We subsidise lunches heavily and several times we have funded families for a term's worth of lunches when we know they're going through a tough time. Luckily our parents seem to be pleased to know their children are getting a good meal every day. We offer 5 choices daily, all with unlimited salad. It is also nice not to have to explain to our parents (98% of whom do not have English as a first language) why a kebab wrap or fried chicken isn't a great lunch. I agree with PPs that lunches can be challenging for parents - no parent deliberately sets out to feed their child shit...but in a chaotic household with not much money coming in, it's easy to see how convenience wins over nutrition.

Anyone who doesn't understand how a child might end up with 'items from a happy meal' for lunch (so not a WHOLE happy meal) or half a sandwich for lunch needs to try being a single parent in poverty (inter generational poverty!) for a few grinding years. Then come back and have this conversation.

Dad died when I was 12, mum had multiple sclerosis and got the will to keep going by staring at the TV all day smoking. I did the shopping at the corner shop. The loaf of bread had to last all week and was dried out by day 4, same with the pack of cheap ham. I got some rather unpleasant health issues from my poor diet.

I used to blame my mum, I don't anymore, in theory she could have done better but she just didn't have it in her. She could barely make it to the toilet never mind the shops and cigarettes were the only pleasure she could access. Our heating bills were astronomical because she was always freezing, which also limited the budget for food and meant laundry was done in a knackered old twin tub and dried in the house during the winter and bad weather, clothes always smelt musty or of cigarettes.

A MacDonald s happy meal would have been a cause for celebration and no way would leftovers be wasted. Maybe this is the one frivolous treat they can afford a week, or maybe they just don't have the will or mental energy to do better.

Tesco/Sainsburys meal deal. Or same bits from Aldi or Lidl, they don't do meal deal but cost would be same or less

Its not poverty its lazy can't be asked parents because if you can afford the Happy Meal you can afford the meal deal. Stop making excuses for them.

You do realise that bus tickets have discount vouchers for Macdonald's or Burger King on the back?

I've been a single mum and whilst waiting for a job in MH to start was really struggling so a friend drove me to a Kwiksave. I went through my shopping list and realised I couldn't afford the items on my list to make home made meals by stocking up my store cupboard. This meant that I had to put the potatoes,carrots, oil,tomatoes,corned beef, cheese and stock cubes back and buy frozen chips and ready made pizza instead.

It makes me angry to hear others casting aspersions when if you've not been in this position you really have no idea of the decisions which have to be made.

No matter what the underlying cause is.

Surely they would be eligible for free school meals if they are that broke?

At local schools the people turning up with cold Happy Meals and other shit tend to be the kids of parents not entitled to any benefits (so high income families). The reason usually provided is lack of time not money, so all the comments about parents not being able to afford basic amenities wouldn’t apply.

but whatever the reason people are doing this is it because these people hate their kids.really?
once again we are shaming and newspapers are shaming the lower than or the people struggling or not doing what they should for the ir families
.so this article went from needing to leanr how people are struggling to thinking those that are are stupid,horrid,bad parents for giving their kids shit.
why dont we instead focus on how they need help.whateveer form that might be

@MuthaFunka61 and @MorvaanReed actually have personal experience of this situation and why it may come to pass. Perhaps some of you could jump off the high horse and listen to them. Your judgments actually mean fuck all, as much as they might make you feel better.

I have the misfortune of being in the distribution area for the once-great Liverpool Echo. It is an utterly garbage rag these days, and only appears to pay court reporters to chronicle the worst and most sensational of gangster feuds.

There is no doubt in my mind that this article has been completely fabricated cobbled together from an assortment of ill-qualified sources, and probably drew heavily on some syndicated work from elsewhere.

The "half a sandwich" claim cannot be taken at face value as an indicator of poverty either: plenty of KS1 & 2 children could only manage that anyway.

I am NOT saying that there isn't food poverty in the region, but that it would be foolish to expect serious or accurate investigative journalism from what is now little more than an advertising freesheet run on a shoestring.

Cracks me up Worra that you pick up on the poverty angle when I've listed a number of other reasons this could happen. And as middle class as I am (although I'm cringing I brought that in to it), I don't live in a "middle class" area. I live alongside families of all kinds and that is why I know - directly from speaking to them cos they're friends and neighbours - that there are many many reasons for people making decisions different to the ones you so desperately want them to make. You can decide they should have bought a loaf of bread as much as you like. When they don't do what you have decided is best for them, it isn't always because they are lazy, feckless, neglectful parents. The vast vast majority of the time they are doing the best they can. Easy to judge, try to be curious.

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

The reason usually provided is lack of time not money, so all the comments about parents not being able to afford basic amenities wouldn’t apply.

Lack of time? So time to drive to MCds before school but not time to hand £3 to the child while they’re getting out of the car and saying “have School dinners”?

So time to drive to MCds before school but not time to hand £3 to the child while they’re getting out of the car and saying “have School dinners”?

You think people who don’t have £4 can afford a car? Usually?

Well given the number of kids who apparently throw away most of their (free) school lunches, there seems to be a good bit of picky eating around. Perhaps the packed lunch bringers won’t eat school meals? It’s all very well saying the poor shouldn’t be choosy, but lots of them are. As pp said, it isn’t as simple as the Left would have people believe...being poor doesn’t preclude also being neglectful and irrational. What is cause and what is effect, cannot really be unpicked.

Sorry, Cheesecake: I can see that you might be disagreeing with the other poster without disagreeing with me.

The fact that people send kids in with cold macdonalds enables people to happily deny the existence of real poverty.

It’s real. People with their children have barely enough to live on. Easier to demonise those who send in kids with cheap cold macdonalds than face the fact that our society has failed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of kids.

Yes church, was responding to poster saying the reason wasn’t one of cost but time.

Bread in my local shop is £2 ish per loaf.
Cheese is £3 for a tiny block.
Ham is £2 for a small pack (4 slices)
Butter or spread is about £4 a pack

You need to shop better! 4 slices of ham for £2????

Surely they would be eligible for free school meals if they are that broke?

When I was about 14 I rang school and said I was staying home because my mum had Pleurisy. A teacher came round, saw how we were living and helped mum do whatever was required to get free school meals. As I said before, you need to have the will to try and sort things out.

Thanks EmmaOvary.