AS well as making sure a packed lunch is nutritionally balanced, most mums also worry about whether they’ve packed enough to see their little ones through the day.
It’s this exact reason that one Australian mum turned to Facebook earlier this week to ask for other parents to share photos of their five-year-old’s packed lunches – and the difference is absolutely staggering.
Writing in the Facebook group Lunchbox Mums, the woman asked the group’s 111,000 members how much they squeeze in their children’s lunch box.
And let’s just say, the days where simply a sandwich and a piece of fruit would suffice are well and truly gone.
Among the first to comment was one mum who packs typically packs three slices of garlic bread, some cheesy pasta, slices of ham, chopped melon, grapes and a chocolate muffin.
And if you thought this was plenty – another mum sent her child in with TWO lunchboxes containing an assortment of fruit and veg, crackers, and chicken nuggets as well as a sandwich.
What the NHS recommends children have for lunch:
The NHS gives a number of suggestions and guidelines on their Chnage4Life website.
- Base the lunchbox on foods like bread, rice, pasta and potatoes – wholegrain ideally – too keep kids fuller for longer
- If your child isn’t keen on wholegrain, try making sandwiches with one slice of white and one slice of wholemeal bread
- Try to keep lunchboxes interesting by using a variety of shapes like bagels, pittas and wraps
- Make food fun as lunches can be more exciting if the child has to put them together, like having foods for dipping and makes a change from sandwiches every day.
- Opt for low fat foods, like lean meats or fish.
- Cut down on the amount of spreads you put into sandwiches
- Always add a bit of salad and vegetables to the meal
- Cut down on the crisps
- Chop up some fruit or peal satsuamas and add those instead of sweets
- Cheese can be high in fat and salt so pick strong tasting ones or go for low-fat varieties
- Get the kids involved in making the lunch – they’ll be more likely to eat it if they helped make it
Meanwhile, a third mum gave her five-year-old two different types of sandwiches cut into triangles, a chicken wrap, crackers, chopped fruit, yoghurt and a peeled satsuma in its own container.
On the smaller side of things, one mum sent her five-year-old to school with an apple, handful of grapes and some chicken nuggets as a snack.
Putting our lunchboxes to shame, another included all sorts of different cuisines – including homemade sushi and spaghetti bolognese.
Knocking her daughter’s lunchbox out of the park (that’s something we never thought we’d write), one devoted mum carefully prepared her daughter some fried rice, chicken, slice ham and cheese, and chopped fruit and decorated it all with cute panda bears and bunnies.
And for dessert, she popped two googly eyes on the jelly. Perfection.
Unsurprisingly, the lunch went down a treat with her daughter who ate it all “except a few spoonfuls of fried rice”… seriously, can we pay this woman to make our packed lunches please?
For more parenting hacks, this mum has been hailed a “genius” for her “life-changing” chore chart– and now her eight-year-old even LIKES picking up dog poo.
And this mum shared her packed lunch tip to stop her bananas from going brown.
Plus this mum shared her “life-changing” trick for keeping her children’s packed lunch sandwiches fresh for a whole WEEK.