What Have You Got For Lunch?
Back in my day, I would eat what I was given, which was a Glad Wrapped Marmite sandwich, a piece of fruit and a packet of raisins. Muesli bars burst on to the school scene a few years after me and ushered in a new era of convenience food of increasingly questionable nutritional value. Mini bags of chips appeared around the same time. Fruit roll-ups and Le Snaks came a bit later. These and many other foil-wrapped conveniences passed through my plain plastic box at various times for various durations and I turned out all right, in spite of the chronic anxiety, overactive bowel, occasional bouts of depression, excessive introversion and inability to cope with minor frustrations.
My childhood took place in the 80s. Since then we’ve seen the rise of the mass circulation culinary magazine, the celebrity chef, food-based reality television, food-based television networks, Jamie’s School Dinners, peanut allergies and gluten intolerance. We’ve seen the cancer-related decline of smoked meats, the demonisation of carbs, the death of sugar and the rehabilitation of butter. We’ve had body shaming, body positivity and body neutrality. Through all this, our depictions of, relationships with, and attitudes toward food have been radically altered.
To get a sense for how all this has affected lunches on today’s rubberised playgrounds, I sought the testimony of my 6-year-old daughter. She is neither a forthcoming nor reliable source of information — she frequently lies and, without fail, every night at the dinner table when we ask about her day, she says, “Can’t remember.” She was, nevertheless, my closest on-the-ground source. After heavy questioning, she yielded the following intelligence: one of her friends brings sandwiches, two bring cut vegetables, one brings chips.
Several parental sources, all more reliable than