Parents: School Lunches

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I rarely remember eating school lunch, I was always picky. My parents did something similar, we could have one "hot " lunch a week if we wanted it and a milk to go with our bag lunch. I ate PB&J and pretzels for probably 4 years straight. :laugh: Even in high school I brought my lunch. I usually packed a bagel with peanut butter and pretzels because that was the only thing the would keep me full from lunch time through the end of dance team practice at 430 or 5 pm. if I wanted to buy a lunch I would bring my own money and get one of those giant pretzels with cheese sauce. :noway: Looking back it was a wonder I didn't weigh 1,000 lbs but then again I was dancing 18 hours a week. lol

I don’t allow my children to eat school lunches either. I find it odd that your school would let her do that for a month. My daughter’s teacher knows why I don’t allow them to have school lunch and they make sure to call me if she forgets her lunch so I can bring her something if I am able. We have to fill out a form at school to preorder our children’s lunches and sign at the bottom if they have hot lunch. If we don’t get those forms filled out and signed then the children must call before they get a lunch. I guess this is the schools way of helping parents control what they eat. I have seen their lunches and it also brings the lunch price down. I do not let them eat the lunch because it is pre- packaged trash with very little nutritional value. I am 100% positive that it contributes to childhood obesity.

On a recent visit to my daughter’s school I made sure I said to my daughter in front of everyone very loud that the hot lunches that the other kids were eating looked gross. They all thought it was funny because the kids all think it is gross too. The girl that had the hot lunch had brought her own healthy lunch to school to eat despite the hot lunch her mom had already ordered. When I asked her mom why she got two lunches her mother told me that she is eligible for free lunch but won’t eat it so still brings and packs her own lunch. The mother seemed irritated about the fact that her daughter did that but I told her good for her daughter for wanting to eat something healthy.

I have found ways to pack hot lunch too but it does not include very many things. I will heat up the soup and put it in a really good thermos and the kids tell me it is still hot when lunch time comes. Make sure the thermos is plastic and one that can take a beating because otherwise it will break in their bag. I am not sure if this works with other hot meals.

Hello everyone! I'm a parent of an elementary school child and a middle schooler. Interestingly enough I was working in the school cafeteria as a lunch lady . I learned so much about the politics involved with our school lunch programs. It's very discouraging. The quality of the lunches is determined by state guidelines. Most likely the school contracts out their lunch programs to the lowest bidder every five years or so. And I mean the lowest bidder.
I learned that our program last year was based on a specific calorie goal. The children selected minimal of two of the following;
A protein, a whole grain or a fruit/vegetable. Sounds reasonable right. It actually worked like this. We would prepare a salad bar with fresh salad, individual servings of fruit, carrots, celery, cucumber, and broccoli. Would the kids go near the salad bar -no. I bribed them, those that made a nice salad I would give them croutons. If I put the croutons out on the salad bar, kids would fill their plates with 1-6 cups of croutons.
Now the terrible part is that with the state guidelines, the most cost effective items THAT Kids WILL eat are as follows; hamburger, cheeseburger, chicken nuggets, pizza, spaghetti of some sort, sub sandwiches, Bosco sticks (bread with mozzarella inside), French toast sticks, bagels with cream cheese, sub sandwiches and occasionally fish sticks (which most kids trashed).
Remember, this is cost effective. We have many children that are on a free lunch program, so our taxes are paying for thousands of kids to just get one meal in their belly. And the majority of kids will not eat what is healthy, because it doesn't taste as good. Therefore, they won't eat their lunch at all and then parents call me to complain.
I've seen it from both sides. I pack my kids lunch. Occasionally I'd let them buy. I have more control when I pack their lunches.

In regards to your son and the milk situation. I dealt with that all the time. We have two of us lunch ladies and 200-250 kids to serve. We constantly had kids "dine and dash". Not realizing that they had to pay for milk or their food. We have all our kids accounts on line. I'd tell the parents to check it out. Regularly, we had children whose parents packed them lunch, but the kids wanted pizza instead. The kids ditch their lunch and buy it instead. I get the angry phone call. I usually know the kids well so the next day I'd always ask the kid if their mom packed them a lunch. If they say yes I ask them '"shouldn't you eat what your mom packed"..they reply "but I don't like it.". I try to reason with them, but I can't say no to the child. If they are in my line, my job was to make sure they get something to eat. We had quite a few kids flagged because of these issues. I usually tried to work with the parents individually. Most of the time it worked nicely and parents, kids, we're happy. But some parents :huh: .

In this economy, it's going to get worse. So please pack your child's lunch, and remember that there are nice lunch ladies out there.:flowerforyou:

I am in Australia in a small regional town and so we don't have the issue of school provided meals. Our Primary school doesn't even have a canteen! Once a term the Parents & Friends team will have a 'food day' fundraiser which usually alternates between pizza, fancy fruit, hot dogs, pies or something similar. But this is one day out of about 50! There is also a 'breakfast club' which is cost free before school one day a week. They have toast with Vegemite, jam, nutella or cornflakes, weetbix and drinks are milk, milk & milo, water or juice

Thus it is packed lunches every day for us. My boys have a number of other students in their classes with food allergies & intolerances so nuts, seeds, eggs & fish are out. But the staple is one sandwich with vegemite & cheese or sliced meat & cheese. 2 peices of fruit a day - apples, pears, grapes, mandarines, bananas, watermelon, strawberries - whatever is in season! And then the treat which is mostly a small container of biscuits. Usually I try for homemade like anzacs, yo-yos but also peices of slice or a cake slice or muffin. It maybe a treat still but I feel better for going homemade!

The kids are encouraged to bring water with them and are allowed to have them at their desks so they may sip whenever they are thirsty. During the mid-morning between lessons they have a fruit time which is 10-15mins where all the students sit for some show & tell while eating a peice of fruit. Lunchtime is 10mins for sitting, eating & hopefully digesting properly then 40mins for playing!

Our school has also recently gone to waste-free so any rubbish (excepting compostable e.g. apple cores, banana skins etc.) is sent home... Not necessarily for me but this has changed the way some parents have packed lunches.

Cafeteria food is vile. My niece refused to eat school lunches after a classmate at her table found a roach in his pizza. Still alive.

Check out momables.com for healthy lunch and snack ideas that your kid will actuakky want.

My mother packed our lunches every morning or the night before and I plan on doing that with my kid. School lunches were mostly terrible when I was in school. There were days when I wanted it like french toast sticks or nachos, but other than that, I always remember thinking how could my classmates even stomach that crap.

Nowadays it's much easier to pack something good. I don't think thermal lunchboxes were around back then. I remember having a brown bag for the longest time until I got a Sailor Moon lunch box. ^_^

Edit: Plus, one of my favorite school lunch memories was always opening my bag/lunch box and finding a post it sticker from my mom with "I love you." or "Have a great day!" or "You're awesome!" notes.

this whole thing freaks me out to think about because my 4 year old is going to start preschool in the fall and the school she is going to doesn't allow bagged lunches to be brought is ( some bs about well what if someone else has a food allergy and they eat your kids food...idk)

my kid is a pretty good eater for the most part but she likes foods like steamed broccoli, baked chicken nuggets, peanut butter sandwiches, pizza with NO SAUCE! lol and so on but its all home made food...she wont eat junk like mcdonalds etc (thank god) because she says its " busgusting " so i have no idea what the hell im going to do to keep her from half starving to death all day because she refuses to eat slop.

Those of you going into the education career, here is a link for a teacher at my school who is definitely a genius when it comes to this and once I finish college and get a job at a school I plan to do the same thing. He promotes healthy eating in such a simple way. Getting kids to actually read labels so they can see what is going into their bodies. I didn't even have him as a teacher but he sure made a good impression on me.

http://healthystate.org/2012/02/ryan-haczynski-voted-tampa-bays-healthiest-person/

Kids have been eating crap lunches for a while, it's not like all of a sudden they have gotten worse and it's this type of mentality that irks me. If you don't like what the school has to offer, don't give your child money to buy it. If you don't have that option and your child has no other alternative then rest assured that one meal every school day will not cause childhood obesity so long as they're not eating crap at home and they remain active. Instead of whining about things you can't control why not just make sure your home is the epitome of health.

My son isn't at all-day school yet (he has another year of half-day nursery first) but we're already pretty much decided that he'll have packed lunches most (if not all) of the time. In order to get round the hot food issue, I'll be sending him to school with a hot food flask in which he can have soup or hot food - it will stay HOT for a couple of hours and then by lunch time be at a decent temperature for him to be able to eat. The way I see it is I cook nearly everything from scratch in our house, so I know exactly what is in our food, how it's been prepared, and how healthy and nutritious it is. If I send him of for school lunches, I have no idea about any of that as well as not knowing how much he has on his plate.

Having very recently seen the Never Seconds blog, written by a 9-y-o schoolgirl, the whole idea of school lunches does not inspire me or make me feel good about what Xander will be offered by his school at lunchtimes.

(If you haven't already see Never Seconds, take a look at it - it's an eye opener for sure! http://neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/ )

On a recent visit to my daughter’s school I made sure I said to my daughter in front of everyone very loud that the hot lunches that the other kids were eating looked gross.

I'm sure that made the kids whose only choice is to eat the lunch provided by the school, feel really great. You do realize that there are parents who can't afford to pack their child's lunch, so the child has to eat the free lunch provided by the school? I know I would look forward to eating my lunch that someone just referred to as 'gross'. Maybe instead of acting like a toddler you could actually put some effort into getting healthier lunches into the school.

And just to note, my children take lunch from home.

my children eat healthy breakfasts and dinners, so i don't mind if they eat crap for lunch.
they are pretty picky, so if they like what school offers, i'm glad they are eating something.
they aren't fat/unhealthy, and get regular exercise.