Acceptable sandwich fillings for school?!

[civilservant]

That's terrible - doesn't your daughter's school have a kitchen to provide them with hot food, budur? This should be something that you can take up with the council, given that Southwark now has a free healthy meals policy for all children up to Year 4

I know from experience that there's a lot of peer pressure on children to take packed lunches in - but I just don't understand how sandwiches can be seen as desirable (with the exception of Scruffy Mummy's of course!)

[minder]

civilservant - schools usually have a packed lunch section or school meals section.

Mine always took a packed lunch (yes sandwiches) which my three teenagers still take to school/college/uni and I have a sandwich for lunch too (cheese/ham/salmon with lots of cucumber, lettuce, onion, tomato).

They've had variations like crusty rolls, pitta breads but always come back to sandwiches!

I've signed them up for hot meals sometimes at primary school but remember my son coming home from school one day to say he had had an apple for lunch. This was around 9/10 years ago. It turned out that as his surname was at the end of alphabet and he was end of queue there was only an apple left for his lunch!

[Carbonara]

It isn't necessary to be original, inventive or varied in packed lunches if your child is OK with the same old basics. And remember that 5 packed lunches don't represent the majority of her diet, so make up for protein etc at other meals and she'll be fine.

Experiment at weekends with sandwiches made from:

Marmite

cold fish fingers

avocado

hoummous

cucumber

For a Reception child I would pack a lunch which is high calorie and will fill them up. They eat slowly and so spending time eating high bulk, low calorie foods such as carrot or cucumber batons may leave her short of energy and hungry. For the same reason I would avoid fiddly foods for Reception age.

What about dairy-free flapjack?

[civilservant]

Minder, it sounds like budur's child doesn't have the option.

I know that one of the improvements at Goose Green for example was building a kitcehn so that children could have a hot meal at lunchtime, so wonder why her child's school doesn't have a kitchen.

I used to take sandwiches to school myslef, and used to wish that we had had a hot meal option. I'm lucky enough to have a work canteen and prefer the hot soup at lunch now!

And I insist that my daughter has a hot lunch at school too, although packed lunches seem to be the 'in' thing. But maybe when she grows up, she'll prefer to have sandwiches at work because she couldn't have them at school!

Anyway, its terrible about your child going hungry - poor plannign at the school, clearly, and I hope that they took steps to sort it out. I would have been very cross about it.

[goosegreenpta]

In fact hot meals were always available at Goose Green school but prior to the opening of the new kitchen they were prepared and heated up off site. Now the food is so good and free for reception - Y4 as per Southwark policy that only a handful of children have packed lunches. Indeed a good deal of the staff choose to stay and eat their lunch with the children.

Parents can come in for lunch which costs ?2 so I've seen for myself that the hall is well staffed with vigilant teachers who ensure that children are eating enough.

We have hexagonal tables and table cloths so it all feels rather grown up and sociable. This set up was influenced by the Headteachers visit to Corpus Christi in Brixton, Schools can learn a lot from the best practice of others.

[budur]

she's in private school which doesn't have a kitchen, so besides paying the fees I still have a pain of thinking what to give her for lunch every day. quality of teaching is great though and she loves it there. we have a canteen at work and i always get hot food. don't like sandwiches myself, i had enough of them at university, put me off for the rest of my life.

[civilservant]

thanks for clarifying, budur!

[minder]

Sandwiches, rolls, wraps, everything in-between. As long as a young child gets a hot meal at dinner-time I can't see what the worry is.

My son had cheese and marmite sandwiches for about 3 years when he was at primary school. He's now 6ft 3" (just turned 20) and is still emptying my fridge every couple of hours, when he's not at uni, where he also has a sandwich, and loads of fruit which he takes in.

budur - a private school which doesn't have a kitchen? Which one is that?