School Dinners V's Packed Lunch's

littleredhen

you should see the amount of food wasted in the dinner hall every day - i am not saying all kids waste alot of food but some kids regularly tip most of the school dinner in the bins - so before making the decision have a look at the school menu - my dd was choosing sandwiches for her school lunches:eek:
i was mad as i thought she would be choosing a nice hot meal - so now occasionally she gets a school dinner after we see what's on the menu and agree beforehand what she is taking and i know her older sister spies on her and will report back if she doesn't have what she says - but going back to my point on the amount of waste i have to say i very rarely see the children eat up all the dinner and even the ones who have packed lunches are given far too much food by their parents - they end up biting the middle of the sandwich and then tucking into the crisps and throwing half the packet away - i am really mean mine get a homemade roll with a filling, water to drink and some fruit i.e. grapes and that's it - i have seen kids tucking into yoghurts and crisps and sandwiches and cakes and it really is too much - all the kids want to do is get out to play -

Spendless

I have one child on packed lunches and the other on school dinners. Dinners are £1.50 a day and the amount my eldest eats I don't think it would be any cheaper to have him on packed lunch. DD has a smaller apetite and also likes things like dried fruit which you can bulk buy and just put a few in a container.

You don't have to buy juice boxes, you can put water in a drinks bottle for them.
I use re-usable containers now, so am not buying foil or sandwich bags.

I needed to have a 'lunchbag' for them anyway as they take a packed lunch if they go on a school trip, so no additional expense there.

helen81_2

My 2 have packed lunch. The average one contains a ham/cheese/egg/dairylea spread sarnie on wholemeal or best of both bread, a packet of crisps like wotsits french fries or quavers (still bad,but not as bad as others) generally 2 pieces of fruit, sometimes a yogurt if Ive been shopping lol and a botttle of water.
DD eats THE LOT but DS only eats half as DD says he's too busy talking to eat it all in time! He always ends up eating it in the car on the way home :rolleyes:

tessie_bear

my son has packed luches for 2 main reasons......hes not a big eater so i dont think hed get my moneys worth....also with a packed lunch i know what he is and isnt eating iyswim i agree with poster that said a nice packed lunch with fruit ,nice quality sandwich filling, wholemeal bread ,lowfat snax/crisps,fruit juice ,yogurt doesnt work out much cheaper than a cooked lunch...i suppose a jam sarnie and a mars bar would be cheaper but not good enough for my baba;)

pukkamum

My son has packed lunches
a) because it definately is cheaper for me as i buy sandwich stuff for hubby and i always have fruit and veg,juice etc in the house anyway
b)he gets a homecooked hot meal every night at home and i really don't think he needs two hot meals a day, he certainly doesn't when on school holidays and at the weekends so why should school be any different?

gairlochgal

Mine have a compromise - they check the sittings rota and take packed lunches on the days their class is due to be last and therefore least choice of food. That works out at about 4 packed lunches a week between two kids. It makes paying for school lunches a bit more complicated but the school doesn't seem to mind.

Every so often when I bake bread, I make sandwiches out of the rest of the loaf and freeze, so assembling a packed lunch only takes a few minutes. It's defrosted by lunchtime. We use the Concentrate lunch boxes which have a hard shell plus 2 little pots inside, and protect the food very well - even when a kid decides to climb into the trolley and squash everyone's lunches! We do have the odd trauma with a lost lunchbox but they're clearly labelled and find their way back - DD1 is in year 6 and has only had one disappear entirely over the years. They assure me they're the only kids who don't have crisps in their packed lunches but they seem to be struggling along somehow!

melwright

Mine alternate between the 2. We have found the food flask option brilliant. He takes in soup/pasta/leftovers (depending on what it is) in it and makes a change from sandwiches daily, plus save you having to think about what to put in them!
I work full time too and don't have loads of time to sort out things, what I try to do is think about it the night before and if I'm cooking put something in they can have the next day such as chicken drumsticks/pizza slice etc, that way it's all done for the morning and if you're cooking anyway, doesn't mean there's a huge effort.
I buy the drumsticks/pizzas etc when they're reduced and freeze so always have something around to put in for the lunch.

vik6525

Oooo, I forgot to add....

ANOTHER reason why my son has cooked lunches is because you wouldnt believe the amount of 'food swapping' that goes on with the kids in sandwiches...
I used to send him in with healthy food, but he'd just swap it for !!!! and junk that the other kids took in. In fact, by the end of it, I think he was swapping his entire lunch. I was sending him in with fruit, yogurts, cereal bars etc, and he was swapping them for monster munch and peperamis'... :rolleyes:

carolpinkdreamer

At our school, the menu sounds delicious but in reality the meals are disgusting. The vast majority of it ends up in the swill bin.
I think many parents would be appalled by the quality of the dinners and at how little their children actually consume.

Don't know if that's just our school but I wouldn't give them to my children even if they were free. I like the idea of them having a hot healthy meal at lunchtimes but ALL of my dinner lady friends send their children with packed lunches!

angie_baby

I def find that packed lunches are cheaper than dinners.

In the winter DS has soup in a thermos flask - so cheap to make, we are just finishing of batches made over xmas - pea and ham, brocolli and stilton etc, soups are dead easy and cheap to make. Sometimes he has some leftover pasta or stew. He usually has a slice of bread - again made over the weekend, sliced and freezed into portions. In the summer this changes to tuna pasta salad or sarnies.

I also make a batch of fairy cakes and hobnobs - freeze some in indivdual bags ready to grab in the morning.
Along with that he will have couple of pieces of fruit and sometimes a yoghurt with his lunch.

I never really costed it as i make soups with bits that prob needed to be thrown like the stilton over xmas or veggies that need to be used. Roughly it prob adds up to around £1.20.