what do you put in your child's lunch box?

[DimpledThighs]

Was putting it together and just wondered how 'typical' it was. I must add that if it deviates in any way from the below I get repremanded!

Juice box (apple or orange)
sandwich - protein and a vegetable, usually tuna and sweetcorn
yoghurt (tube, was frubes, now yeo valley yeah!)
fruit (varies, kiwi today)
biscuit (usually jaffa cakes)

Doesn't seem like much to me, but they don't complain.

Be as critical as you like!

Nope, no ice pack ion my ds's lunch box- they're kept in an unheated corridor anyway.

Appreciate the allergy thing with peanut butter, from my perspective an autistic child who won't eat anything else also a very difficult one to solve. Its a no win situation really isn't it?

Water or diluted apple/mango juice
Breadsticks
Jam/cheese/ham (any combination of)sandwich made with a bottom slice of brown bread and a top slice of white bread
Apple/pear/banana
Superman yoghurts that have to be opened at home first as they are not allowed to bring in anything they cannot open themselves
Laughing cow cheese triangle
Cold sausage

Lunches must be healthy all week, treats are permitted on Friday. Golden time is earned by anyone with fruit in their lunchbox, which is extra playtime.

multigrain chicken sandwich (no crusts)
packet of crisps,
squeezy yog
apple
blackcurrant drink
2 cookies

madora, i totally agree. but my dd is vege and wont eat cheese. marmite contains zero protein. i often find it tricky to include any protein in her lunch without nuts. of course, this is a smaller problem than a nut allergy though.

I'm curious, if the schools confiscate food, what do they do with it? Does the child get it back at the end of the day?

as a schoolgirl, I used to get white bread jam butties every day. I threw them straight in the bin every day.

So I try to put variety in dd's lunchbox and she gets brown bread with different meats and salad type stuff. She won't eat cheese but I use different types of fruit, dried fruit, yoghurt drinks, cereal bars, rice cakes, usual culprits.

The other day she complained "mum, I'm fed up always having the same stuff in my lunchbox!". So I asked her what did the other kids have that she'd like? No answer. I think the other parents are just as uninspired.

banana and diced pears for morning tea

ham sandwich and crackers for lunch - no tuna here - too hot and it would smell to high heaven by lunch.

watered down apple juice for drinking

sometimes for lunch - crackers, ham and cheese.

dimpled thigh - check the dried fruit bar - often more sugar than your jaffa cakes.

do your kids really eat all that ? Mine is 5.5 and he usually says he doesn't have time to eat it all and some of it comes back. (At home he could happily eat much more). Time rather than hunger seems to be the determining factor

He usually has ham sandwiches, fruit (grapes, satsuma etc), sometimes a tomato or some cucumber, and sometimes a biscuit or a muffin.
And water to drink.

He has fruit from the school at morning and afternoon break. And milk at the morning break.

no cake, biscuits, crisps, choc allowed in school. If they take it in, a note is sent home with the child and the rude food left in the lunchbox! And I know that because.....
One girl got a slice of birthday cake from her own party the previous day "commented" upon!

I agre with healthy eating but children's stomachs are so small that they need quite high calorie things in their lunch boxes. When I tried to leave out the jaffa cakes and put in extra fruit ds complained and nearly chewed my arm off on the way home!

I agree with DT. Cakes/biscuits are not all bad and do have some nutritional value. DS has fruit as a mid morning snack and one other fruit or vegetable with his lunch. But I also think he needs a bit of banana bread or flapjack or oat biscuit or similar to fuel those lunchtime games of Dr Who and the Emperor Daleks. There is a world of difference between that and a fondant fancy.

i dont agree with confiscating food from chilrdrens lunchboxes, surely it about teaching them the correct decisions to make.

My ds goes to playschool one day a week so he has sandwich (usually marmite) cake (usually homemade as he likes those better) packet of crisps, yoghurt, fruit (either fresh/fruit bar/dried fruit) and apple juice. It sounds alot but he eats loads. He loves having his treats on his special day, if he was going every day he wouldn't get crisps everyday.

DS1 in reception today has:

1 roll or sandwich with butter
laughing cow soft cheese and breadsticks
carrot sticks
mini box raisins
tube of fromage frais
kit kat (Friday treat )

that's normally about it - other days he has a fig roll instead of the kit kat and a little pot of hummous and/or some cheddar and cucumber or a banana

He also has a cool pack in there!

TBH, that's all he will eat - he doesn't like fillings in sandwiches or cold sausages, pastry etc. At least it's quite easy to prepare!

• usually water but sometimes a small smoothie

-a sandwich (cheese or tuna & sweetcorn or egg)
or a hardboiled egg & crackers
or cheese & crackers

-a frube or a small piece or cheese

-some type of fruit or veg (grapes, cucumber sticks, carrot sticks, sometimes with hummous for dipping)

For her morning snack I usually let her take something slightly less healthy like a cereal bar or crisps or she buys toast at school. Or if she takes grapes for her snack she can have crisps or pretzels in her lunch. She takes a packed lunch probably 3x/week and buys a school lunch 2x/week.