Just been on a school trip and boy,you should have seen the crap that emerged form the lunch boxes....

[moondog]

Fruit Shoots,cheese strings,those cartons of 'meat'(sorry,industrial slurry) and cheese,weird yoghurts that don't need to be refrigerated and have a 'best before' date of 2018.
The healthiest thing was probably a plastic bread sandwich with some sort of processed chicken slice in it.

When I see their little shining faces and strong bodies,exuding energy ,and then see what they are fuelling themselves with,I want to take said cheese strings and garotte their parents.

no one knows martian

it's made of real bears

Well, I am a lousy mother in loads of ways (see sunscreen threads passim), but, after discovering DS1's many food intolerances, I have completely changed our shopping, cooking and eating habits to give him a diet that is healthier for him. So my views on packaged foods are not an easy smug judgement, but the result of a lot of research and effort on my part.

And honestly now I think a lot of packaged processed additive-laden food is not benign, but positively pathogenic. If it affects my DS so badly, he can't be the only one.

I would never judge someone else's parenting on the contents of a lunch-box, just as I would never judge their parenting on whether their child appeared to have sunscreen on; if your child doesn't react to sweeteners, preservatives, flavour enhancers, colourings, etc, that's great. But I can still look at those lunch boxes and be glad my children aren't eating them.

Surely there's a half way house. I would love my kids to eat the most wonderful healthy food, but sometimes they ask for a certain item because everyone else has it. I know it shouldn't matter, but I had a health freek mother who provided friends who came to tea with butter bean cutlets - imagine the stick I got. I'm still traumatised now. So when DD went on a recent school trip she had a tuna sandwhich with leaves as she calls them on brown bread. Juice, some blueberry's and .... a .... cheesestring. and... a small packet of jammy dodgers. Everyone happy.

Oh and surely if you totally ban something they only want it more they'l be teenagers before we know it. I rebelled big time and lived on chocolate in my teens, so much I had an impacted colon - so the bl*y butter bean cutlets didn't help in the long run either.

Having said all of that - I would have been shocked by the sounds of it too.

I give my ds healthy luncjes every day but do let him have crap on school trips as it is part of the day to him and his friends,he likes healthy food though and doesn't moan about eating it the rest of thye time.I have even allowed him to drink coke when England playand he never has it generally only juice or water so I think moderation is ok (I hope)It is usually the mega healthy no sweets brigade who go silly at parties etc

No-one has mentioned my nemesis, the snack size Peperami, yet (or the gibbons' penises as we prefer to call them).
Ds has lusted after these irrationally since the most popular boy in class turned up with one for a school trip, so I caved in in the end.
Cod made the point though - some stuff survives being hauled around for hours in a Buzz Lightyear rucksack better than others. We aim for real bread (Vogels) and a wholesome filling like cheese or hummus, but allow enough treats to deflect scorn from friends. Drinks are always water and juice though.
I must admit I was a bit taken aback at the stuff that emerged from the lunchboxes when I went on a school trip too. I do honestly think a lot of parents must pack a few extra treats and this is not typical of their usual diets...they'd all be toothless by now for starters.
I hope the chicken was cooked or at the very least already dead mb. A friend of mine had to find a new job PDQ after she discovered a colleague tucking into rare lambchops in the staffroom every lunchtime

Please please please can I add my story about my ds's packed lunch for a school trip. I made him a very healthy lunch incluing cucumber sticks (his favourite) and Orange juice etc etc.

BUT dh also gave him MY packed lunch which included pepsi max (only for grown up's) chocolate and fruit & sandwich. it was an honest mistake as he thought that was ds's lunch.

I apologised to the school later and they did giggle as I had obviously had the more 'interesting' lunch.

Singersgirl I think you have a good point, making a decision to feed you child healthy food is actually not easy. It does take time effort and research and most of all it takes a bit of education. If our government stopped listening to the mass food corporations and started educating our children in school about how to cook and eat and taxed crap food we would have a healthier, more intelligent future population.

I dont really go for all that 'fitting in' tosh...
my ds 14 (almost) gets the piss ripped out of him for being'healthy'
The dinner ladies love him though - he just rises above it...They will be laughing on the other side of their faces when they cant pull cos of wobbly bellies and spots

I agree, if you teach your children that they have to be the same as everyone else to be liked, you are doing them a disservice. Why are we all so scared of people being different to us? A huge proportion of threads on here are discussing the shortcomings or otherwise of people who are different to the original poster - I think a lot of it begins in childhood when adults start to pass on this fear of being different. Teach your children to respect others and stand up for what they believe, instead.

Also, when I let the kids have something unhealthy I tell them that its rubbish, so only allowed occassionally. They have been known to ask excitedly, Please can we have an unhealthy tea today. Not sure if that's good or bad really.

It's not even that I think all of ds's food should be 'healthy'. The vast majority of it should be, but of course there's room for chocolate and cakes and all that sort of stuff. God knows, I'm addicted to that stuff so I can hardly deny it to him

It's crap food that I object to - non-food food. I wouldn't eat Lunchables or whatever they're called - why should a 3-year-old?

Count yourself lucky you just havr to think about the food..........
DS was on a school trip today (is it National School Trip Day or something??) and not only did we have to adhere to the usual 'packed lunch guidelines' (no sweets, chocolate, fizzy drinks) but as it was a trip focusing on the environment, we were also asked to pack it using only packaging that could be reused or recycled (so no cling film, juice cartons, disposable packets etc) . I tell you, that challenged my sleepy brain at 7.00 a.m. this morning....

For the record here's what he had:

'Proper' ham & cheese & pickle sandwich, in a reusable plastic sandwich box + extra cheese cubes
Carrot & cucumber sticks (plastic tub)
Crisps (from a big bag at home) in a plastic tub.
Oatmeal cookie, in tin foil (with strict instructions to return foil for recycling...)
Banana
Raisins (recyclable carton)
Organic strawberry & granola bar (in greaseproof... may have failed on that one...)
Water in school drinks bottle.

I have to say, this is one of the pro's with (some ) As kids, DS and his recently acquired also-As friend both have it set in their heads what constitutes healthy food; and will point blank refuse the rest. We can't keep up the fruit supply in this house (no greengrocers in the village), it just gets wolfed down, but crisps can be ignored for weeks..... or until Dh spots them.

I did notice however that at their last school, whoch was in a poverty area, the snacks were significantly worse that at this school, where us poorer parents are in a minority 9ie there are two of us, both student families).

p[asrt of it was eduication- there was no excuse for the fat kid having a mars barfor snack every day- but a lot of it is cost, a sausage roll is much cheaper than a sarnie if you get caught on the run (as we all do), and why oh why can't Asda do savers wholemeal? OK a few pence more than white, but we would buy it, on those weeks when cost is all.

Isn't Billy Bear officially sausage, not ham BTW?

Lunchables look truely repulsive don't they, but ds still thinks that the boy who brings them to school has the best lunch. I think he would change his mind if that's what he got in his box - for one thing he would be very hungry! I like to give them food that I know they will like, and that will fill them up until the end of the day. dd has a school trip coming up and I'm not sure what I will give her. She usually takes hours to eat her lunch, so I might need to think about what would encourage her to eat faster, as school trips usually have a very short lunch break.

Wtf do you mean by this comment justified and ancient??????????????

By JustifedAndAncient on Monday, 19 June, 2006 8:32:13 PM(And he is NT btw....)

(mind you after the home made low fat spag bol, Dh has gpone to get proper chips for a buty! LOL!)

EXACTLY snafu, it's what St. Jamie of Oliver referred to as 'fake food' that I find so objectionable for kids (bear shaped ham for instance!) People would only have to see this stuff made to realise it is nothing to do with real food!

blinkin Jamie Oliver.

hmmmf. I'm not jools or anything, honest, but you have to admire his commitment and his wish to help kids in this country, and no other TV chef has screwed any money out of government to improve school dinners, have they?

of course, but the kids don't like it do they?

actually I watched the programmes and there was a huge success rate for the kids liking it, given a bit of time and familiarity.

Why on earth would children not like good, proper food? Where on earth has this presumption sprung from? They just need to be given it!

there is too much choice now, we had great school dinners, very plain though, and had to eat all of it!

Fascinating but can I just ask what 'plastic' bread is please?

You tend to find it in the home corner in nursery and reception classes. The slices are smaller than average and sometimes there is velcro on it...