Packed Lunch or School Dinners

[Ruthierhyme]

Curious to know others view on these two ...

I'm a firm packed lunch believer, thinking lots (perhaps a bit too much ) emphasis is placed on children at dinner time to eat a huge cooked meal and then again when they get home ~ I bet we can all remember the 'scary' dinner lady from childhood lol !!

I find my children go through stages of eating like 'horses' for a week then hardly anything for a few days

I know if im not hungry,doesn't happen that often! no one could force me to eat !!

Do you think a 10.30am Preschool type snack time routine should be ongoing throughout a schooling lifetime & could a couple sessioned snack times for children be more beneficial than making them sit to one midday/evening meal that could end up in tears and arguments?

With some children's weight increasing at a younger age ... I wonder what everyone else's thoughts on this are?

well, had a think and my views....

my children have/had school dinners at primary school. because one wouldnt eat a packed lunch at all, and i personally know the cook and dinner ladies so therefore there was no "bad dinner lady scenario". they tell parents if they have not eaten much on a regular basis and are not forced to finish. i.e, you get told if you are wasting your money.
mine then had a light snack when coming home and a cooked tea later on when dad gets home. this works well for our set up and i am not competing with the cheese stirng and lunchable brigade, because i wont by them!!. although saying that our school is now healthy and there isnt supposed to be any crisps, choccolate, lunchables etc etc.

my oldest now takes a lunch box to secondary school because there is much less control over what he can choose , i.e be could have burger and sweets everyday which is not good. so he packs a lunch. sandwich, fruit, crisps, rice cakes etc.etc

we have a snack time at preschool that is around the same time that the local school have morning break (which they now have to take fruit!) i think that this works as it does not interfere with lunch.
i dont think that 2 dinners a day makes chi;ldren overwieght but what the dinners are made up of.
many schools now are giong healthy eating so this will help, but it is the junk after school that does not help and the tv, playstation culture that we now live in. they need to paly more outside running around - like i am sure we used to

sorry if i have gone ona bit!!:)

I have 3 children..2 at high school who wouldnt be seen dead in the cafe apparently its full of nasty ladies inw hite jackets,lol...so they both take a packed lunch which they do themselves,and are very good at it,I always have a nosey thru to make sure its healthy...
son is 11 and in yr 6...is very lazy and prefers to have school dinners,hes looking forward to trying out the dinners at high school because he thnks it will be nicer to have more choice than he has at primary where basically its this or this...

we do snacktime at 10.30 at nursery,its always fruit,crackers with cheese,toasted brown bread...nice things like that...and we do encourage conversations about healthy eating