QWent on another school outing today.All the kids had packed lunches.Oh my giddy aunt.......

[moondog]

Someone had a half litre of what I can only assume was anti freeze.
The place was awash in Muller lite cartons and meat substitutes.

There was even a......

yet another thing you and dh have in common

hmm yum

pepperami is NASTY! gives you heartburn from hell, too.

yucko!

give 'em a cheese and pickle roll.

been talking to my sister about packed lunches. she reminded me of the mortification of healthy packed lunch back in the days where NOONE except us has homemade wholemeal bread (rock-like) plus an apple. and nothing else. everyone else always had crisps, drinks, chocolate to share round.

would rather mine had some half-crap items in their lunchbox really, than stick out like we used to as weirdo family.

I went off Pepperami in a big way years ago when it was announced in the media that they were contaminated with botulism. Never ate one after that and it must have been about 20 years ago.

did you get a Fanimal for the world cup cod? it was v popular round here - it's a life like peperami - incredibly phallic (luckily this was lost on the kids) that even felt sort of rubbery

you had to enter a code from a peperami pack on their website and then they send it in the post

Oi Fio.

Allein een glas bedandkt. Droog witte.
Proost!

I really try not to give DD processed food. Not because I'm smug (that doesn't work in Oz, they don't have ready meals here) but because I want to teach her to appreciate normal (ie unprocessed) food. It's so easy to think that all of this junk is normal, but it's not. It's processed crap made by companies who only have their profits at heart.

I've lived in many places and most people would be horrified by the shit we have for sale in the UK. It seems normal because everywhere sells it and everybody buys it.

FIS - we got one of those (won in a pack we got for the dog). Ds is very perplexed when it starts screaming & shouting! (the peperami thing, not the dog)

Fennel, we had lunches like that too. Including cheese and pickle sandwiches expat! My mother was a Tupperware Stalinist but did not see the inconsistency in regularly offering Butterscotch Angel Delight with Dream Topping after we had all gnawed our way through one of her healthy stews...

Not to mention the lurking cobbles of Branston Pickle Fio.

It's the teachers that you should feel sorry for - imagine the 40 or so little darlings in a couple of hours time tearing around and climbing the walls in a blue drink, e number, 'gibbon penis' fuelled rage.

I have too laugh again at the idea that because a parent packs a carton of juice and a packet of crips along with a sandwich means that that parent has no idea of healthy eating and some socialwork type has to have a class to teach them all how to water down organic herbal tea and make lental and tofu cakes for birthdays.

A balanced and healthy diet can include all sorts of foods including cheese which strangely enough is all processed, flavored drinks amd all manor of things, god forbid even a sausage rool and a scotch egg, mmhh yummy.

I must admit to finding Peperami Firesticks delicious

I have only had them twice though, once on my birthday and once on Christmas Eve - and I would NEVER eat one in front of the children.

Only got halfway through this thread but ha ha ha ha. Wtf is Powerade? And I do judge people who feed their children shite but not as harshly as I judge the companies that peddle it and the supermarkets who want us to buy it because it = high profit.

PMSL - Moondog you really must stay away from these school outings - they are bad for your stress levels

I must be the lowest of the low, I feed my kids mostly good stuff and they gobble it up BUT I do buy a pack of 10 mini peperamis every week! DS and DD both love them

The roll doesn't go soggy as fast. And I pack the cheese and pickle in the cool box, then assemble the roll on site so it's nice and fresh.

Roll on the new school term food-wise - even the secondary schools are attempting to make some improvements. It drove me mad that I'd send a reasonable compromise of cool v healthy food, but she could go and buy cr*p out of the vending machines. I don't look down on anyone's choice of food - a year working the evening shift at Sainsbury's and I saw that £50 could buy you a basket of "wholesome" food or a trolley of cheap stuff. But as someone said earlier, cheap is not necessarily bad so long as you balance it out. (How many bags of cheap apples/oranges cancel out a bag of processed meat shapes?) The problem is that no one is taught what food is anymore, and the marketing powers are telling our kids that food = fun = packaged conveniently. My dd age 3 has only eaten "normal" ham, but she will still spot the pretty packs of Thomas/Dinosaur extra processed meat and wants to know why we don't eat it. (And in some ways, I'm not sure - I grew up with luncheon meat/corned beef/tinned ham) So who the hell is going to want to turn up at school with an Annabel Karmel concoction? Only the teachers!

Sorry, got a bit lost there - anyone know what I was trying to say?

kindof housemum

i read something somewhere the other day (guardian or observer...) someone suggesting that instead of calling food "food" and "healthy food", we should actually call healthy food "food" and the normal rubbish "junk food".

I am slightly embaressed as I don't buy any junk at all - no cheese straws, pepperamis, fruitshoots - nothing. My kids have the normal narrow range of foods they like but favour things like brown rice, brie and tomatoes. Apart from not buying much processed food I am not overly health food oriented (have never eaten a lentil rissole). DS will have packed lunches at school next term and I just know it is going to be a real eye-opener for him. And he's never heard of McDonalds.

I am not being smug about this - just waiting for the moment at which he suddenly realises that I have been sheilding him from things that are totally normal for a lot of his peers.

I have to admit, we don't have any "banned" foods in the house, but certain foods appear less often. With a 13 and 3 year old, it's impossible (well, for me it is) to avoid contact with sweets, convenience foods etc as the teen will bring stuff in. However, the evening meal is pretty well balanced 90% of the time. Sweets are around occasionally, but they are not treats, just something that may or may not be in the house in the same way as you may or may not have apples in your fruit bowl. The only "forbidden" is Coke (or similar) as I see no value in it, I just tell her it will give her a sore tummy. At the moment, 3 year old will just as often pick a piece of fruit as a cake or biscuit, as she has attached no symbolism to any foods. And it's great when we go to friends' houses to watch the eybrows raise when she asks for some lettuce (or for mayonnaise rather than ketchup - which she has asked a waitress when we were out and she had been given a sachet of ketchup - she doesn't like the stuff!). I love the smug-smuggity-smug feeling at the mo but am sure it won't last past school......

DS hates potatoes which means he will not eat chips or smiley faces (hence the brown rice thing).

Oh gosh may I be smug to if my DD likes mayonnaise better than ketchup LOL. Its funny how we decide these food hierarchies.

Soybean oil, distilled white vinegar, whole eggs, egg yolks, water, salt, sugar, mustard flour, onion powder, lemon juice concentrate, calcium disodium edta added to protect flavor, natural flavour

Tomato concentrate made from red ripe tomatoes, distilled vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, salt, spice, onion powder, natural flavouring.

You pick!