Veggie packed lunches for dd with ed

[achy135]

Hi, 15yo dd hadn't been eating lunch at school for ages. Now missing bfast too & losing weight, so one element of my plan is to give her delicious packed lunches. She's veggie. (Her old packed lunch choices were cocktail sausages...No good now!).

Anyone got good tips for veggie packed lunch that packs some calories?Ideally won't get too grim if in school bag for 5 hours. Thanks!

Sorry to hear about your daughter’s ED

I’m not much help on the ED front (as I suspect that I have binge eating disorder myself), but as a veggie for 2+ years I have some snack / lunch suggestions for her;

• Hummus
• Peanut / other nut butters (if allowed in school)
• Cheese (normal slice / grated or spreadable)
• Quorn ‘ham’ or ‘chicken’ slices
• Vegetarian sausages (the Linda McCartney ones are my favourite, but Quorn and Gosh do cocktail ones if you still wanted her to have small ones)
• Fruit
• Veg (like carrots)
• Pasta / rice / noodles with veg, sauce / flavouring and / or ‘meat’ pieces (like Quorn)
• Soup
• Cereal bars
• Cream crackers
• Rice cakes
• Ryvita
• Crispbread
• Cracker bread
• Little packs of veggie friendly sweets, biscuits or chocolate
• Sweet or savoury little muffins

There’s lots of different flavours and varieties of most these things available, so hopefully you’ll be able to come up with lots of meal ideas for your DD

As far as I remember, there’s a vegan section on here (in under the ‘Food’ talk section), so you might be able to get some more advice on there

There’s also lots of good veggie cookbooks out there (and vegan ones where you could swap the vegan ingredients for dairy / egg based ingredients if wanted)

Oh and

• Gelatine free / veggie friendly yoghurts
• Nuts (if allowed)

There’s probably loads of other things I’m forgetting, but hopefully there’s some suitable things for her on that list (especially since you can come up with endless combinations by swapping things around)

Sorry, but I doubt she's skipping lunch simply because it's not appetising or delicious enough, if she already has an eating disorder. Unless her lunchtime meals are supervised, you can't control whether or not she will eat them at least not based on the contents of her lunch box! Consequently, putting more effort into the meals and making them "delicious" is likely to result in very little change from her, and a build up of hurt feelings on your part, as your efforts go increasingly unrewarded: you may feel like your attempts to help her are being ignored, rejected, thrown in your face or interpret her continued weight loss as deceit or dishonesty on her part.

@CanIHaveChocolatePlease VERY belated reply, to say thank you - this was really helpful. It was early days in her ED so anything that kept her eating food at mealtimes was good. I didn't go the packed lunches at school in the end, as she found a breakfast she would eat, but your list has been useful for multiple other times when ive needed a packed lunch for her. Things are a bit better at the mo, touching wood ! Hope you're well.

You’re very welcome, that’s great to hear