Vegan Kiddie Lunches

[MrsKC121]

We’ve decided to try a plant based diet as much as possible after watching The Game Changers on Netflix. In terms of recipes, I’m all set for dinners but I’m really struggling for school lunch ideas. Everything I’ve come across just doesn’t seem like it’s either very appealing or filling for our very active 10 year old. Does anyone have any school packed lunch suggestions?

@WellErrr
Fair enough. But the potential problem with veganism isn’t that some vegans (be they adults or kids) are not getting enough animal products - it is that they’re not getting a diet with the right amounts of vitamins, iron, proteins etc. Where those minerals etc come from is irrelevant - but vegans with poor diets are not getting them. They are not planning an effective diet for themselves which addresses their self imposed dietary limits. So you could certainly argue that it is “easier” for a vegan diet to become dangerously unhealthy compared to an omnivore diet (certainly in the short term at least) - because you are limiting the sources from which you can get essential minerals like iron or whatever else. But it doesn’t mean it is necessarily less healthy, it just means you need to be aware of work around the self imposed limits - And if you do that very well then most research suggests there is no detriment to health from a vegan diet , and moreover are even likely benefits in certain areas of health.

I didn't know that animals can be grass fed all year and thought that animal feed was supplemented. Is that typical for factory farmed animals too?

Yes it’s possible to grass feed year round. Depends on your system and what you’re producing. Animal feed is fortified, but for the animals gain, not in anywhere near high enough amounts to have an impact on the consumer.
There isn’t much factory farming in the UK. Stick with ethically produced UK meat such as farm assured/red tractor scheme/rspca freedom foods etc.

They are not planning an effective diet for themselves which addresses their self imposed dietary limits.

Which applies to consenting adults. Not kids.

But sorry for the derail OP. Crack on.

I actually mentioned in my previous comment that if he doesn’t like what’s on offer then we’ll feed him what he likes

Look on YouTube for ideas - off the top of my head Jess the beautician and pick up limes have good lunch box ideas.

Homemade potato salad with spring onions/ follow your heart or hellmans vegan mayo & a dash of mustard
Violife vegan cheese with homemade vegan coleslaw (or M&S do a ready made one), or marmite (source of vitamin b12), or Branston ( which happens to be vegan) Violife also melts really well so you can use to top pizza if your son likes
Pasta salad with peppers, sweet corn, chopped up vegan frankfurters, you can either dress with pesto, salad dressing, or a combination as you like
Tesco do nice soya yoghurts and fromage frais
Aldi vegan sausage rolls or Linda McCartney ones
Tofurky do a replacement which is like a smoked ham (available in Sainsbury’s)
Vegetarian jelly with fruit e.g. raspberries in
Alphonso chocolate pots

Good luck!

Not really relevant to the OP' s question, but chickens and pigs are naturally omnivores (not vegetarians).

My 11 y o son likes Sainsburys plant pioneers sausage rolls, Linda McCartney sausages, hummus, wraps, felafels, marinated baked tofu, chickpea "tuna", veg soups, nut or seed loaf, avocado, toasted seeds, dried fruit and nuts, flapjacks, farinata (like a frittata made with gram flour), tartex pate, cold lincolnshire Sausages from Holland and barrett, bean salad, alpro yogurt... That's the things that spring to mind. Not sure if all suitable for packed lunch but worth a try!

Oh and rice salad made with sacla vegan pesto.

Rice and sweetcorn salad

Pasta and tomato salad

Potato salad (with vegan mayo - now available in supermarkets, on offer)

Hummus and breadsticks / crackers

Vegan sausage rolls (you can make your own with ready-made pastry and a filling of sage & onion packet stuffing mixed with extra chopped left-over vegetables)

Vegetable samosas, or homemade filo parcels (again you can buy the filo pastry ready-made and add in mashed spud, peas and carrots with some spice e.g. mild curry powder)

I also like pots of cold baked beans with a salad.

Other sandwiches / wraps I like are falafel, tomato & cucumber; hummus & grated carrot; and marmite.

It’s so disappointing to see people try and turn this into an ‘omg your children will die of a deficiency if you force them to be vegan’ post. Last I checked everybody has to force their child in a million different ways to do a million different things. That’s called being a parent and having to make decisions in the best interests of your child based on what you think is best. Kudos to you OP for being able to sift through the BS scaremongering industry funded marketing scams. I have been vegan for 6 years and so has my partner. I had a vegan pregnancy and I have a vegan 2 year old and many friends with vegan kids. Health wise my pregnancy was fantastic with my midwife repeatedly telling me how shocked she was at my iron levels even with no supplementation after the first trimester. I was comfortably in the gym and exercising and still able to do press ups and pull ups (albeit only 4 instead of 10) right up to 40 weeks and 6 days which is when I went into labour. My daughter was born healthy with no issues and ended up crawling at 5 months and walking at 8 months and 3 weeks old. Something she clearly wouldn’t have been able to do if she was a deficient vegan. She’s extremely talkative and uses complex and long words and sentences at 25 months. Something she wouldn’t be able to do if she was a deficient vegan because her brain would obviously turn to mush. She’s the happiest liveliest child wherever we go. Like almost all vegans I know, I don’t eat what a tv advert tells me to eat or an industry funded nutritionist who’s overweight themselves tells me to eat; I actually heavily research everything and care way more than I ever used to about what I’m eating and where I get my nutrients from. Sorry to go off rambling, I just get so upset when I see such misinformation spread. At a yoga group once, I had a mother try to critique my parenting out of nowhere based on her belief that my child might be iron deficient and it’s all Vegan propaganda. This same woman went on to discuss with other mums how she was going to lie and hide the fact Peppa Pig is also the Class 1 carcinogen bacon that she forces her daughter to eat.. it’s absolutely mind boggling.

Anyway, to answer your question - it depends on how adventurous you want to get but my favourites are

-tofurky and violife vegan cheese sandwich with added avocado and salad if they’ll eat it. Follow your heart vegan mayo for some omegas.
-houmous and onion chutney and/or grated carrot on burgen bread for more omegas and calcium and iron

-a good mac and cheese recipe that still tastes good cold (there’s a lot of recipes out there!) good way to sneak loads of veg in the sauce and a great source of vitamin a from the veg and calcium,iron,iodine,vitamin d3 from the plant based milk depending on which one you use.
-any other pasta recipes. (Again, loads out there, it’s down to preference)
-Homemade or shop bought granolas/flapjack bars. Contains oats as a source of beta glucans and some omegas if you sneak in hemp seeds, chia seed of ground flaxseed etc.
-alpro yoghurts/puddings or coco colab or loads of other vegan yoghurts out there as a yummy snack and a source of calcium and other vits depending on what’s fortified.
-taifun do some amazing flavoured tofus which taste amazing on their own or with homous for an extra protein kick in a sandwich
-real easy stir fry noodle salad that taste great cold. Loads of recipes online depending on your preferences of nut free etc but cauldron tofu pieces are great to throw in for more protein and calcium. Throw in some edamame beans. Cheap from the frozen section in Tesco.
-wholemeal pita bread, houmous, olives for vitamin E, calcium, wholegrains etc
-healthy nacho chips and black bean dip with carrot sticks or red pepper sticks
-Moroccan style couscous With loads of veg and tofu or tempeh thrown in

I’ve tried to avoid a lot of processed junk even though I’m guilty of very much loving the stuff before and after being vegan 😬 but I hope those ideas help. A lot of it is a learning curve of finding what you personally like. I’m half Iranian so we love having vegan versions of almost every Iranian dish out there but I’d be crazy to recommend those things as it is daunting enough to start from the basics!

Oh another one is red lentil pate! With sun dried tomatoes blended in. Great recipes everywhere and it tastes bloody amazing. Otherwise if you can’t be bothered to cook much, there’s a lot of reasonable pre made stuff like the quorn vegan pieces and Linda McCartney bits and bobs and all the supermarket own make stuff. Kids really need the calories so I’m guilty of caring about ramming the calories in before the nutrients. I’m comfortable with this because I make sure my daughter has a vegan multivitamin liquid that’s on amazon with basically everything she needs in it. B12 and vitamin d3 are important for EVERYONE including vegans. I also keep iodine in the back of my mind too but it’s in her multivitamin and plant based milk and she loves dried seaweed snacks. Oh another idea sushi... Waitrose do a good pre packed version you can pretend you made yourself.. and that concludes my essay! Sorry again 😬

@Drizzzle chickens and pigs and not natural anything. They’re heavily inbred animals that don’t exist or look or act anywhere near what they were bred from I.e. guineafowl and wild boars. Pigs and chickens are entirely capable of living off a vegan diet and almost all of them do unintentionally because it’s cheap feed on the factory farms our country is filled with. Factory farms account for over 70% of the farms in this country. Nowhere would be able to sustain our demand for meat and dairy and eggs if they were slow growing, large land using farms. It’s not profitable or possible.

Mini pots of hummus and mini packets of breadsticks
Bagels with dairy free cream cheese alternative
Vegan cocktail sausages and a little pot of ketchup
Falafel in a wrap
Pasta with vegan pesto
Vegan sausage in a roll
Marmite sandwich
Munchy seeds
Alpro soya chocolate/strawberry shake

Some ideas:

• Linda McCartney sausage roll
• Hoummus & breadsticks
• Soup in a flask
• Cold pasta, passata, sweet corn and sliced vegan sausages (my DC love this).

I never give my DC sandwiches because they don’t like them.

A simple everyday lunch could include:

• sandwich or roll with marmite, nut butter or avocado
• Crackers or veg sticks with or without hommus or other veg/bean dip
• fruit
• a dairy-but-not-dairy option such as chia pudding, coconut yoghurt, choc flavoured almond/oat/soymilk - all available as single serves or make your own
• muesli bar or slice

@WellErrr
The single letter you've posted as 'evidence' of the implications of veganism describes a child in a heavily restricted diet fed primarily donkey and goats milk (neither are vegan). It is not representative of a balanced vegan diet.

Also you say factory farming doesn't exist in the UK - actually the number of intensive farms in the UK has risen by a quarter since 2011
www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-07-17/intensive-numbers-of-intensive-farming

Also you conflate a wide variety of farm assurance schemes and suggest that these represent good welfare - they vary enormously - schemes like red tractor are not welfare certifications in the same way that RSPCA freedom food is - Red tractor simply shows a farm is operating to uk legal minimum standards. May red tractor farms will be intensive or 'factory' farms.

I'm not vegan and it's fine to be sceptical about veganism. But at least get your facts straight before you start derailing threads in the vegan topic.

Remember most schools are nut free. Houmous and salad was our go to (not vegan but dd is fussy).

My dd has a sandwich or wrap with
Houmous and grated carrot
Chickpea mayo
Grated violife, carrot and onion with mayo
Violife cheese & pickle
Sage & onion slices (a fake meat slice thing)
Or occasionally leftovers from the night before.
She loves quiche made with chickpea flour instead of egg although I can rarely be bothered to make them!
Sometimes a couple of falafels or veggie sausage rolls
She likes the ‘coconutters’ yogurts that come in a wee pouch, or occasionally a jelly.
Carrot, pepper & cucumber sticks.
Fruit, and a carton of juice or smoothie.

Dd is 8, allergic to nuts, and veggie not vegan but eats vegan at home generally (also pretty healthy, as am I inspite of having been raised vegetarian from birth...)

Wraps are nice with protein being either fried smoked tofu or fried caramelized tofu (higher in salt and sugar but good for converting children to a love of tofu) .

www.deliciousliving.com/recipes/caramelized-tofu-and-avocado-sushi-rolls/