to think this is a perfectly good sized lunch?

[FenellaFellorick]

For my 15 and 16 year old sons?
(If not a very healthy one but that's not my question )

Ham and cheese salad sandwich, a frube and a wafer bar.

I am doing the next 2 weeks packed lunches for the freezer and this is being hotly contested in my house right now

I have a 15year old ds who is also gf. He is slight but not excessively skinny anymore.

If he takes a packed lunch it would be 4 slices of gf bread (toasted - that makes it more palatable according to him) with ham and cheese. A pot of cucumber or carrot sticks, piece of fruit, some sort of biscuit or flapjack thing, gf pretzels or Doritos or bread sticks. He might also take a babybel cheese. The pretzel stuff tends to get eaten at break time. So depending on the size of the roll I'ld bulk out the meal with fruit and veg and bread sticks etc rather than another sandwich.

YANBU, for lunch, that seems like plenty to me.

Isntthatafont, RTFT. op specifically said she wasn't looking for nutritional advice and has patiently explained a few times why she makes their lunches...

I do think people lose sight of portion sizes. The maximum a teenager needs (very active, male) is 3000 calories. My v v tall DH should be eating about 2500 calories (literally double what I need!) I know each DC is different but some of these lunch boxes sound very large!

I'm saying this because I totally lost my appetite due to medication/illness, a couple of years ago, and look back now with horror at my portion sizes before. I think my stomach must actually have shrunk as I have (sort of) regained my appetite but physically can't eat the amount I used to. it was a huge eye opener.

Surely the point is that if the 15/16 year olds are active and not overweight, they are perfectly capable of judging how much food they need to eat? If they say it's not enough then it probably isn't!

My 12 year old DS (average height, slender but not skinny) seems to have a much smaller appetite than many of his peers but he would probably eat that much for lunch.

Doesn't it depend on what they are doing? Some days that would be fine for ds- on the days when he does 4 hours of sport it wouldn't be. And see my earlier post about teens making their own lunches.

"I regularly ate like a horse"

They trickle feed and graze all day. Proportional to their overall size they have very small stomachs and most of their digestion takes place in the hind gut. They don't, or at least shouldn't, binge eat large amounts. I think you were drawing on the expression "so hungry I could eat a horse". Here endeth the lecture

Bertrand - I think you have missed OP's post about her teens having what sounds like pretty serious SENs and not ever being expected to live independently. No need for comments about teens making their own lunches here.

"Bertrand - I think you have missed OP's post about her teens having what sounds like pretty serious SENs and not ever being expected to live independently. No need for comments about teens making their own lunches here."

Wrong person. My previous post was about it being OK for teens not to make their own lunches! Even if NT.

Bertrand - I agree with your previous post. I come from a family where the children were a bit indulged by our parents. We got away with doing barely any chores and were quite pampered.

All of us stepped up to the plate when required in our lives and it hasn't resulted in any of us being unable to live independently or form meaningful relationships.

It's meant that we all look back on our childhood with fondness and gravitate (along with our spouses) towards our parents constantly. They are surrounded by their adult children and it's where we want to be.

"Bertrand - I agree with your previous post. I come from a family where the children were a bit indulged by our parents. We got away with doing barely any chores and were quite pampered"

Thwt's not quite what I said.Or if I did, it's not quite what I meant! I talked about learning about doing favours and being kind to each other. Not indulging or pampering- but cooperative living.

Sorry to misquote you - I guess I sound like quite a brat from my post!

All I can say is that a group of very industrious adults emerged from that upbringing.

No way is that enough and they should most definitely shop for (within budget) and make their own packed lunches fresh every day. They would learn a lot and no whining to you about inadequate portions!

Fucking hell.

Can people actually read?!

I'm sorry OP, I am feeling quite irritated on your behalf.

As an aside though, it's interesting though how people automatically default to assuming everyone's DCs are NT. It grates on me how there is so much eye rolling at the "what if they have SN" questions, and how "professionally offended" gets trotted out on MN, yet here we have a thread where OP repeatedly explains her DC have SN, yet posters still call them "whinging" and "little buggers" for not making their own sandwiches. People DO need their eyes opening sometimes.

Sorry for getting on your thread, Fenella.

It depends: how big is breakfast and how soon/how mich will they eat between school ending and the evening meal? It's kind of snacklike, for an active teenager, girl or boy, but could be fine in context.

However, if the idea is being contested, give them the budget to sort it out and let them be responsible for their own lunch.

Sorry Bertrand, you were the wrong person to get annoyed with!

That would be fine for my tall sporty 12 year old

What is truly astonishing, NoIsNotACompleteSentence, is that you posted and then someone else has said' 'give them a budget and let them be responsible for their own lunch' immediately after.

RTFTRTFTRTFTRTFTRTFTRTFTRTFT ec

Maybe it's difficult to see how many posts there are on a thread if you're reading this on a phone. I don't know as I only look at MN on a laptop. On my laptop I can see very clearly that there are 168 messages on this thread. My settings are to show the whole thread in one go, not page by page, so I don't have the problem of not seeing the last page before I reply. In any case, if I can see that dozens and dozens of other people have already replied, why would I assume that the most obvious point has not already been made?

How could a five year old possibly eat more than that no wonder so many children are overweight now.

For a teenager I think it's fine. I ate a sandwich and a piece of fruit even lunch at school, with a chocolate bar for break.

Can someone who buys Frubes tell me how long they are, to give me an idea of scale for the roll? Initially I thought it was huge, like a Subway 12", and all the people saying their five year olds eat more than that were alarming me. But thinking about it, the cereal bar is probably about 3" long?

I think that is a perfectly adequate lunch - my teenage DS just has a sandwich and probably leaves the crusts. He doesn't take anything else to eat.

Most people in this country (yes, including myself ) eat far, far too much.

OP I think you should ask MN to alter the heading so it says "and no, they are not making their own fucking lunches, how many more times".

Can you bung in a GF cake or something with that lot? I know, I know - but if they won't eat fruit, preferring the arse end of a frog then maybe some banana loaf (GF) would work? Or carrot cake? Raisin bread - Genius do a really nice raisin loaf, don't know if it's in the UK or not though?

That's smaller than what my 7yo takes to school every day, he is also GF but I can get quite a decent bread over here (Australia) so he has sandwiches (just one round though), a yoghurt, a banana, carrot sticks and a box of small fruit, strawberries/blueberries/grapes/cherries or whatever. He could have crisps and cake as well but he started having lunches like that at pre-school and tbh I've never seen the need to change them

if anyone could see me measuring a sandwich, they'd think I'd gone bonkers.

The roll is about 16cm long, 4cm high (filled) and 4.5cm erm, front to back I can't remember what they call that

the frubes is just under 15cm long.

the wafer bar is 9cm long

It would be so nice if people read the thread- in fact not even the whole thread but the OPs comments. It's not hard to read the OPs posts and realise that there might be other aspects of the situation is it?

I think it depends on the child

Dd (17) would be happy with that lunch.
Ds1- dear god if I posted on here what that boy eats for lunch I dread to think what reaction I would get.
But he has football training for 3 hours a day every day. So I pretty much let him get on with it.