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?

mathanxiety

^^

I don't see how a cold happy meal would ever be cheaper than packing a lunch. Even food from smaller corner shops works out cheaper over the week.

Maybe in an emergency, yes. But I can't see it as a cheap option.

I read this to mean that this is their only meal of the day.

The cost is and isn't the point.

A poor parent is trying to solve a problem with affordable name brand junk. The problem they have is one that a MC parent doesn't need to solve.

Both MC and poor parents do what they do out of love. In the case of the poor parent, the junk says, 'I am meeting your needs on one level. I am doing this out of love'. The MC parent offering organic steamed kale is also saying, 'I am meeting your needs on one level. I am doing this out of love'. Both parents are trying to feel adequate in their own circumstances. We need to respect the loving intentions.

The glib narratives surrounding poverty are the fuel for a certain political message. It's very easy to fall into a trap of assumptions, given how this message intentionally plays on so many of our worst instincts, that the poor are ignorant of good nutrition, or lazy, or disorganised. It's a short hop from scurrilous headlines to, 'Why should people like us pay for these lazy scroungers to feed their children junk?'

Yes, there are people with personal shortcomings who bounce from emergency to emergency and their children suffer. But mostly there are people who simply don't have enough money to ever see their way out and up from their inadequate home in a depressing area, either in terms of imagining a long term future or in terms of any single special occasion to look forward to. All the big occasions - Christmas, summer holiday, birthdays, going to school and providing uniform, shoes, bags - involve expense and stress and the underlining of financial difficulty. All the long term aspirations require sufficient income to support planning.

Poor people are not stupid to the point where they don't understand the reality of their own situation.

A McDonalds is woefully unappealing after 20 minutes, let alone the next day. Therefore, they must have been desperate!

Pigeon and math have hit the nail on the head here. I've lived in a dysfunctional and abusive relationship where food and fuel poverty was a daily reality. It's not always logical and sometimes the grind of it gets you down until you just need a break. Be honest here and imagine the following. It's winter. You're slightly undernourished having spent the last few months living on cheap bread and cheese and dry cereal, your home is freezing cold and dark from 4pm, you're hand washing clothes in cold water in the bath because often electricity is a decadent luxury, and then struggling to dry them. You find £10 blowing down the street. Do you a) plan a campaign of healthy batch cooking and pack up buying, bearing in mind you don't have transport to a supermarket or a working fridge, freezer or sufficient power or (b) go to your local shopping area and buy a tasty hot pizza or chippy meal, a copy of take a break, and put a couple of quid on the electric so you can have lights, a few days of hot drinks if you have some tea bags left, maybe even fill a hot water bottle or use the toaster to warm your hands over. Like I said, be honest. I am thankful every day that I now have a safe, warm, dry house with lights available 24/7, hot water, cooking and laundry facilities and plenty to eat drink and wear. This probably doesn't address the issue of happy meal components in pack ups but hopefully goes some way to explain why someone in poverty might buy a McDonalds meal over yet another 50p loaf or pack of super noodles.

🙌

@GreenEyeBlueEye - I would presume aswell as buying them McDonald’s you also actually bought them some real proper food that lasted more then one meal and they ate the McDonald’s straight away so no need to put it in a pack lunch the next day.

Of course we did. But my point is what if they didn’t decide to share this with me?

I think people are failing to realise, you are only suppose to visit food banks once every 2 weeks & if you have a mortgage you really don’t get much help

no one has mentioned fussy children yet. They might be eating leftover McDonald's food because they dont like sandwiches or bananas or yoghurts.
Some children go through fussy phases and I know parents who want them to eat so badly that even a cold happy meal is better than nothing

This is an old story, isn't it? I seem to remember posting on a thread about it a year or so ago.
And yes, it is most likely shitty lazy parenting. I have experienced the food banks/value bread/walking miles to the nearest supermarket just to save a few pence/having to sit in the cold, and all the rest of it. I don't care, that isn't your children's fault. They deserve better than a cold greasy leftover cheeseburger for their lunch.

I think people are misreading the article.

The 'not being able to afford more' comment relates to children being given half a sandwich for lunch. The article itself is about 'tragic packed lunches'.

It never fails to break my heart how many children in our country are going without a hot nutritious meal and a full tummy every day

This is my local paper. The quality of journalism has dwindled hugely over theist few years and upon reading the comments section below the article there are several mentions of this being a recycled story.

That maybe doesn’t matter because the issues are still important and children are still having crap lunches but this type of story sells papers. It fuels the many stereotypes of the feckless scrouger.

My sil is a dinner lady at my dd’s school. She has seen many examples of crap lunches, a pack of Freddo’s for lunch or a 6 pack of frubes ( yoghurt tubes ) and said she’s not shocked anymore. It’s not always the struggling families that do this.

I have a friend, a good friend who can’t cook by her own admission. She and her husband are on good money. They have take aways every other night ( 2 kids ) and eat pretty terrible. They’re all stick thin though which surprises me and I’ve tried to help her with some meal ideas but she’s sadly not interested. Her situation is not at all about lack of money.

As stated above you get free school meals after y3 but only if your universal credit claim is less than £7400 a year (£620 a month) which if you live in the south east/London you know you spend more than that a year on rent.

So the family works in McDonald’s and chooses their free meal as a happy meal and you wonder why this and not a bigger meal? Because the happy meal comes with a toy and if you have no money even if your working and you want to treat your child but can’t you pick the happy meal because then your child gets a toy.

Another way to look at it is
When you have no money everyone in the house knows so when happy meals are brought they are a treat because even people in poverty are allowed treats but if they not eaten they get used again as you don’t waste food. It says no where in the article the same child is having happy meals every day but they may not of eaten it and so
It gets reused as leftovers. They may of even not eaten it as dinner specifically and gone hungry so they can bring it to school and show their friends they have it so they can be the same as them.

If you’ve never been in extreme poverty you can not judge them.

If you’ve never lived somewhere where the shop in 30 minutes away but McDonald’s is around the corner you can not judge them

Also just so you know you can’t order groceries online if you have cobbled together £3 from 5ps/20ps you’ve been collecting and that’s all the money you have for 2 days.

You can not order groceries online if you don’t have any Wi-fi/data on your phone

I know Vampy but we don’t have enough resources to ensure parents step up and ensure that happens.

Having children is a huge commitment, not just financially but emotionally not to mention time and effort.

No child should ever have a cold happy meal for lunch, rather than food poverty it is likely the child is a fussy eater, asked for them, or just laziness by the parent.

I know a few children who only have a packet of crisps or a chocolate bar for their packed lunch every day, nothing else, just one item. Even when the school was notified they were unable or unwilling to help.

Schools should be in a position to ensure children are helped and provided for, if their parents are genuinely unable or unwilling to do so.

Good to see the twatty posts passing judgment have stopped. There are so many reasons for not feeding your children nutritious food. Poverty isn’t the only one. But people in poverty face additional difficult challenges on top of anything, which people with more money face.

MIL was a deputy head - middle school. She has said many times how they knew who the really struggling families were and made sure those children got a good lunch/seconds - food available for those with a "forgotten" packed lunch, etc

People do realise that hostels aren’t hotels with mini fridges and hobs in them? All this talk of buying cheese and petit filous is hilarious. I live in a hostel currently, there’s one communal fridge, no lock etc. Leave those items in there and someone will have taken them within the hour. I have a lockable cupboard which has been pried open several times, the cheap tins of food that I had in there taken. I share a room with a stranger. So yes, sometimes I buy fast food that I can guarantee that I’m going to be able to eat rather than buying food that’s going to get stolen. You people have no idea.

This thread is so upsetting. Instead of our smug outrage at people who can't afford to properly feed their children where is our outrage at a broken system which allows this to happen? Where is your fucking compassion? It is much easier to judge than to try to understand. Poverty damages the spirit. The grinding stress of not enough gets in to your bones. It's not like just having no cash for a day.

I am ashamed to live in a country with children living in Dickension poverty. Caused by decisions made by a pack of old Etonions.

laforza
Yes, and do people realise that even when housed with a flat that's all they get. A flat. There will be a cooker-but that's limited use when you haven't any equipment to cook with.

A conversation sticks with me we had in work one time.
Lady came to the desk and smiled, truly happy smile. She told us she'd just been housed in a flat. She had her own place and it was wonderful. But as she told us about her we found that was all she had. A flat.
She was sleeping on the floor (no carpets either) as she hadn't a bed. She didn't even have a chair. She couldn't cook anything hot as she'd no pans, not even a knife and fork. My co-worker's lunch arrived in that time, and she handed it straight to her, and it was gone in about 2 minutes flat.

But, you know... she had a place of her own and she was genuinely crying with happiness.
We were thankfully able to put her in touch with a couple of charitable organisations which deal with grants and white goods/furniture.

She came back in a few weeks later, still amazingly happy and said to us, that she could now afford to eat properly because she could cook now. She looked so much healthier and she told us she had so much more energy, and was applying for a better job.
A month later she came in with a pile of food for the foodbank. She wanted to pay it forward.

YANBU I am often short of cash end of the month & kids would not get a happy meal if that was the case. It would be toast/pancakes/pasta - all cheap to make. Lunches for whole week would be same price as the happy meal.
I feel sorry for these kids. It's crap parenting. When you decide to have children you take on that responsibility tbh

There is a vast, vast difference between 'short of cash at the end of the month' and living in poverty. Surely you understand that?

I am ashamed to live in a country with children living in Dickension poverty.

Yes. Abridged :-

"Are there no prisons?... And the Union workhouses? ... Are they still in operation... The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.

...

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.