Are we overcomplicating kids’ lunchboxes these days?

[Alyah]

I’ve noticed lately that school lunchboxes seem to have become a bit of a competition. Everywhere I look online, there are perfectly balanced bento boxes with shaped fruit, colour-coordinated snacks, and little motivational notes.
When I was at school, it was sandwiches, crisps, and maybe a piece of fruit — simple and fine. Now it feels like if you don’t send your child in with a worthy meal, you’re somehow not trying hard enough.
I do understand wanting kids to eat healthily and enjoy their food, but is it just me who thinks we’ve gone a bit overboard? I sometimes wonder if it adds unnecessary pressure on parents (and maybe even on the kids too).
What do others think — is this just the new normal, or have lunchboxes turned into another area for quiet competition?

What makes you say the lunch is too big? My kids are far from overweight, so by what measure is their lunch ‘too big’? Says who?
They all do sports after school. I have one at hockey practice until 5pm today and one at football training until 5.30pm. You can’t fuel an active lifestyle on a jam sandwich and an apple.

My child has the same every day. Variation has been attempted and failed!

Cheese and tomato sandwich
A yoghurt
Fruit (either fresh or dried)
Veg (carrot/pepper/broccoli)
A treat (usually a mini choc bar/small biscuit).

School often write and say no chocolate in packed lunches and are ignored because the school dinner children get cake and custard so I don’t think a mouthful of chocolate is an issue.

The lunches on this thread are massive. A sandwich, yoghurt, fruit, crisps then 2 snack type things. It’s far too much in my opinion.

Chocolates ok in moderation. I would say a pepperami is worse - UPF red meat. Your lunch sounds good to me.

But if the child is a healthy weight, they’re obviously consuming the correct calories for their activity level.

Well, I prefer not to give my children crisps, but I don't think a sandwich of some sort, some fruit, some snack type item and maybe some extra protein is too much.

Also, my experience is that the sandwiches or wraps or whatever, are often quite small. this is a bone of some contention between me and DD admittedly, as I'd rather she ate MORE sandwich and less other stuff usually, but we've reached a happy medium we can both live with.

My son is underweight. I don't consider a sandwich, yogurt, fruit, crisps etc to be massive.

Like a pp said too, the sandwiches (and yogurts) are often on the smaller side too so they can fit in the lunch box. For crisps, My son usually has one of those mini pringle tubs.

No but underweight kids are very much less normal than obese ones. I’m not joking when I say some of the kids in DD’s class are the size of James Corden just proportionately shorter.

Did anyone watch Educating Yorkshire where the kid’s ‘ADHD’ turned out to be the fact he was eating chocolate cereal with sugar and coffee before school every day?

@ColdWaterDipper I’ve shared this IG account before on here. She makes good and healthy lunchboxes for her kids and herself which are still easy and tasty.

https://www.instagram.com/lalalunchbox

Her teenager started an account for her lunches when she graduated to packing them for herself: https://www.instagram.com/teenlunch

My ds has the same everyday due to ARFID. Some plain crackers , an almond muffin and cucumber sticks plus a yogurt drink. He’s had the same for 5 years ! I wish he would accept something else

I always sent mine in with a big dish of fruits de mer, a massive salad, a selection of fine cheeses and three different organic cordials.

Is that enough bullshitting for an MN lunchbox thread?

They got a sandwich, a bag of crisps, a piece of fruit and a drink. An elaborate packed lunch is just showing off.

Working in a primary school I saw the whole spectrum of packed lunches.
The poor kids who had cold McDonald’s or a Greggs sausage roll to the overindulgent parents who would ask their 7 year old each morning what they would like, then went shopping for ingredients and dropped off the freshly prepared lunch at the office 15mins before lunchtime each day.

Sure, you could just send your child off with a big sandwich and a chocolate bar, but it’s way more beneficial to mix things up with different types of food.

That said, making lunchboxes overly complicated is a real trap. I don’t pay attention to those colorful social media lunchboxes—most of them aren’t even healthy. I’m here to feed my child well, not to impress anyone with colors or shapes.

Variety doesn’t have to mean stress or hours in the kitchen. The main thing is just to include healthy options—they’ll get enough variety naturally if you keep it simple.

Why are people willingly responding to AI threads like this?

Mumsnet needs to get better at spotting these one-post AI OPs and delete them.

Smoked salmon is smoked as a method to preserve it, as well as for taste. There's no risk eating it at lunch, if it was made at 8am the same day.

Crikey, I hope not all lunch boxes are like this - I’m caught between very strict school rules on lunch boxes and an exceptionally fussy eater who is, by all accounts ‘off bread’ at the moment. He gets cold plain pasta, a tube yoghurt, some fresh fruit and that’s about it. Perhaps I should up my game and write a few inspirational quotes on post it notes.

Just feed your children what you know they will eat and is healthy. As for the "motivational notes" - really! If you must, just a smiley face or a daft emoji. A busy parent has far more important things to do every evening/morning.

Honestly my kids moan and moan about how many nice things other children get in their lunchboxes.

I mean they get a sandwich/wrap, piece of fruit and some decanted plain greek yoghurt in a small tub. Why on earth do children need so many snacks and the like? They are only consuming one meal in school. I get empty lunchboxes back and dinner is devoured. As they get bigger I'll add in an extra protein option and possibly some extra carbs but at 4 & 6 they do not need a packed lunchbox as if they are going off to camp.

Life has turned into one big competition since covid so I’m not surprised it’s reached kiddies lunch boxes. Blame Instagram. No one can be seen to be shitting out.

That's because you're getting your impression of what 'we' are putting in lunchboxes from Instagram rather than from actual kids in real schools. I've taught in schools for 30 years. I've very, very rarely seen a real-life bento box . Not even in the lovely independent girls' school I taught in! Maybe don't believe everything you see on social media.

Have a look at this bloke, this was the first post I saw and I assumed it was a parody account, but seems not 🫤

www.instagram.com/reel/DNTyYhzPcl7/?igsh=czl5ZWZkM2dmOGV4

You know what weird though, when I grew up packed lunches were crisps, chocolate, sandwiches and squash and there was one fat kid in the whole school.

I’m sure if parents saw what I packed for DS in primary some (not all) would roll their eyes and say I was doing too much - when it was simply choosing to make the sandwich from a ‘real’ loaf rather than regular Warburtons, putting lots of spinach leaves with the ham filling, adding some value-brand Brie and some cornichons or maybe a packet of seaweed, or by making things like onigiri because we had leftover rice. I know DS said his teacher would come and look at what he had, and I secretly worried there’d be sniggers in the staff room but hope it was just out of interest. Only did a hidden note a few times, when DS was having a bad time, or during things like SATs.

Having said that, my kid still raved about the packed lunches that consisted of various packages “Ben gets a pack of crisps, a little pack of cookies, a pepperami, two cheesestrings, a lunchable…” Heck, I’d like to eat Ben’s lunch too.

My kids are fussy Af (like most kids) so they get what I know they will eat. Sandwich, crisps, a chocolate chip brioche, fruit, little mini box raisens, frube, that kind of thing. I dont have the time or the money to be doing bento boxes even if they would eat that sort of stuff. The important thing is that they eat and dont go hungry. The concentration level for a hungry kid is minimal and they are there to learn. That's what is important. Just MHO. I did go through a phase of putting little notes in there (in yr 1 and 2) because my youngest was struggling with reading at one point so it was my secret way of getting him to read a bit extra without knowing it but I would put a little joke on there (alexa helped with that every morning lol) even some of his friends were asking what's the joke today and so it helped making friends too