What does your secondary school child have in their lunchbox?

[RedSkyAtNight]

As title really.

DS's lunch options seem to be

• spend fortune in school café
• not eat packed lunch on the basis it is boring.

We've asked him for ideas of things that would be "non-boring" but he's not really come up with anything.

Dd is autistic so boring is good!

He usually takes a bread roll or crispbreads. Philadelphia or dunker, crisps, cereal bar & grapes or apple. Often supplemented with pizza, pasta pot or chips from the canteen.

A sandwich (roll, bagel, filled pitta etc.)
A portion of veg (carrots, babycorn, cucumber sticks)
Soft fruit
A cereal bar or occasionally a chocolate bar
DD complains it's too much, doesn't have time to eat it all

DD has a wrap, a yoghurt, cheesestring sometimes, an apple, a packet of crisps and occasionally a homemade cake She has had this all the way through primary school and is now in year 8! She did start year 7 having school dinners for 2 weeks, then went back to packed lunch so that she can go to clubs at lunchtimes.

Mine have a wrap/sandwich thin, fruit biscuit and packet of crisps.
It rarely all gets eaten as they don't have much time for lunch especially when clubs are on.

A big hearty sandwich (cheese and ham / cold fish fingers and tartare sauce / tuna etc,/ egg mayo and watercress) with salad, thick wholemeal bead.
Something like a chicken leg or half a pork pie or half a quiche (a broccoli one when I can find one), Scotch Egg, Baby Bels
Something like a brioche roll or flapjack

A packed lunch is not an occasion when I can pack in the fruit and veg, for Dcs. Any fruit or veg will come back uneaten. I give them fruit they will eat at breakfast, plus toms or mushrooms on toast, mashed avocado on toast or something, and then fruit and veg in the evening.

Other options that find their way in, if this helps:
Cold sausages
Cold felafels and some hummus to dip them in
Sausage rolls
Samosas
Cornish pasty
Cheese and onion pasty
Cold pizza slices

A round of thick sliced bread sandwiches: tuna or chicken with cucumber, peppers etc.
A chopped up whole ball of mozzarella with a handful of cherry toms cut into halves.
A small cake bar
a handful of grapes or blueberries.
A biscuit or handful of tortilla chips.
a mini carton of chocolate milk
water.
Year 8, smallest girl in class.

DS is Y8 and takes 2 full size wraps with ham, cheese and lettuce. A smoothie/fruit, crisps, small chocolate bar and a few chunks of chicken or cocktail sausages. Everything gets eaten and he complains he wants a bigger lunch box as he's still hungry! Preteen boy appetite! 🙈
Not all of it is eaten in one go at lunch though, he spreads it out through the day.

DD always had a sweet mid morning snack (typically biscuits), sandwich, pasta or cousous, fruit or veggie sticks, crisps, nuts, cereal bar, sausage roll.

Red, one thing which may sway his choice, is that his friends do. My DD was happy to have a packed lunch and many of her friends were, so sat down and had a good chat for their 35 mins lunch. A couple of the group had a cooked lunch on different days and totally missed out on any time with their friends.

DS is a lunch box refuser on the basis that they smell (I've always washed lunchboxes so they don't) and eating food that's been in your bag all day is gross and weird

Instead he takes lots of snacks like fruit, cereal bars, crisps and sometimes gets something from the canteen. He comes home ravenous so this clearly isn't enough.

DS year 9 coeliac and vegetarian

Carton of orange juice
1 1/2 thins with either cheese, cream cheese or quorn slice, biscuit and packet of crisps
Also takes a bottle of water and sometimes choc milk as he is underweight

Sometimes has a fajita wrap and nachos or thins made into pizza sandwich

Always refuses fruit but sometimes has carrot sticks and a mini pot of passata

DC1: marmite sandwich, babybel cheese, strawberries, raisins, fruit bar, yoghurt, oat bar, crisps, cucumber. Always eats it all and hungry when he gets in.

DC2: Bread and a slice of cheese (won't eat a sandwich) or pot of tomato pasta, 3 slices of lemon (?!), sometimes red pepper, crisps, oat bar, fruit bar. Rarely eats more than a couple of things and has to be reminded to finish it when he gets home. He is extremely fussy and won't come up with any other foods he likes.

A sandwich or two of some sort
A bag of crisps
A piece of fruit/veg
Chocolate biscuit or grain bar
Water and a yogurt drink

Nothing that requires cutlery or that can't be eaten on the go.

2 chicken drumsticks/chicken breast kebabs, an apple and a bottle of water.

Likes a bit of protein, some fruit and not a lot else right now, she is always on the run.

neither of my dc like sandwiches and both prefer to be doing stuff rather than eating. They take sausage roll or pasties or occasionally a wrap/pitta/pasta plus a cereal bar and a piece of fruit. Occasionally crisps or something else. All has to be easy to use and require minimal prep as they make their own lunches. If I make lunches and put more in, it comes home mostly uneaten. Tbh, they've both been like this since year 1/2. Both come home and have fruit, toast or make mini pizzas (use pitta bread or naan as a base) or make homemade pot noodles. They have a large breakfast and then rest of what they need nutrient wise but at 4pm.

Wrap with chicken lettuce mayo. Sometimes cheese too if I'm feeling frivolous
Crisps
Apple - pink lady, mo substitution allowed
Some form of cake bar
Water

DD 15:
Sandwich
Banana
Cucumber sticks
Satsuma
Yogurt
Snack bar
Water

DS 15:
Crisps
Malt loaf slice
Grapes/Banana
Water

DS is really picky. Doesn't eat bread, milk, cereal, butter, most meat, fish, yogurt, sweets, most fruits or most veg.

What do his friends eat? If they all have thing from cafe, then that might be the reason he doesn't like the packed lunch.

I found that strictly limiting the amount DD2 could spend in the canteen quickly motivated her to take packed lunch some days! DD1 came to
the same conclusion when she got fed up of waiting in the queue.

We've settled on a pattern of packed lunch Mon-Thurs and canteen meal (fish and chips) on Fridays. They normally have a wrap, small juice carton, some sort of fruit/veg and something snacky (crisps/cereal bar/flapjack). They are free to supplement from the canteen, but the financial limit remains in place!

DD1 has a broken plastic lunch box that she refuses to be parted with. DD2 insists on shoving all hers in a plastic bag. Apparently her friends are currently playing "what mad bag will DD2's mum use next?"

I tried everything with DS and we settled on jam sandwiches every day. Every single day for about 4 years. He also took an apple, just for appearances, it went back and forth every day for a week .
He was happy, he ate something at school and I got the vitamins down him at home.

Wraps/bagels/subrolls all get eaten instead if boring bread! Tuna or cheese and ham ir Philly. D's loves a sausageroll/pepperami/Scotch egg. Lower calorie crisps or popcorn. Bag of fruit, grapes, blueberries . A frube or a gold bar/penguin/twix whatevers on offer.
They LOVE the occasional lunchabke or attackasback packs!

DC3: 1/2 ham sandwich, yogurt raisins, pepperami, yoyo.

DC2: 1/2 ham sandwich, mini-cheddars, feckload of biscuits.

Thanks for the ideas, I will run some past him.
His friends have a mixture of packed lunches and stuff from the cafe and they always sit together regardless of what they are eating, so not a case of he is the odd one out (and I've asked him what his friends have in their packed lunches, but you guessed it - it's "boring").

The only way of limiting the amount he spends is to send him with cash on school meal days (which we did last year) but it was a huge palaver to always have the right change in, and I really hoped he would be better at budgeting now (he's not).

He gets pretty much free choice what he takes in his packed lunch (any semblance of it being even vaguely healthy is long gone) but he will very rarely eat any of it. Which is possibly not an issue,but I think a teenager should be eating something at lunch time!

More and more kids at the school I teach in are now bringing in noodles, soups, curries etc in food flasks. Our canteen food is pretty good but a lot of the kids seem to want a hot lunch but don't want to spend 10 minutes in a queue. Could something like that work?