What should go in a school lunch box?
There are calls from low-carb, high-fat advocates to flip the food pyramid, making sandwiches an occasional snack rather than the norm. The advice contradicts current dietary guidelines. What should kids be eating at school? What do you put in your children’s lunch boxes? involved with growing and making their own food from a young age that way they will learn that it is not just something to stuff their mouth.
HEIDI RASMUSSEN, RAUMATI SOUTH
I’d like to add that instead of putting more pressure on busy parents there should be hot healthy lunches made at school which can include, as much as possible, produce grown at the school and a place where the kids can eat together at a table. Sitting down to a proper meal at lunchtime, and taking the time to enjoy it, goes a long way to establishing healthy habits around eating. This idea has been advocated at schools in NZ by groups like Garden to Table, and Jamie Oliver in the UK. In terms of economy of scale, it can make more economic sense to have affordable hot healthy lunches prepared and served at school as opposed to parents purchasing packaged processed foods in small portions at retail prices, which provide short term convenience at the expense of possible long term health issues.
LARA MORRIS, OTAKI DISTRICT
A hot meal for school lunch? Way too hot in summer for that, and if your kids are fussy eaters, what a can of worms, so to speak! Apart from the fact that already financially stretched families will once more be digging into an empty money pit to pay for those ‘hot lunches’, its taking away another parental choice/ responsibility, if its compulsory, and a big administrative pain in the butt, if its optional. Leave school lunches alone, stop telling parents, ‘ you cannot feed your own child your own way,’ and deal with bigger issues.
BRIAN TESTER, PARAPARAUMU BEACH
I guess I must be lucky. I was the oldest of five kids in a working class family, and had jam sandwiches, a free apple once a week and school milk every day in primary school, and boring jam sandwiches right through secondary. I amnow in my 80th year and still going strong. I do believe in exercise and good food now though.
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