Catherine Scott: Why I won't miss the packed lunch dilemma

As I packed my youngest off for her first day of secondary school, while feeling a bit nostalgic about leaving primary school life behind, there was one thing that I just wasn't going to miss. The packed lunch.

For what feels like years I have had to get up a precious few minutes early every school day to attempt to put together tasty, appealing yet healthy packed lunches.

I know I should have made them have school dinners but it’s just not that easy. At the end of the day you want to ensure that your young ones have enough in them to concentrate on what teachers are trying to teach them and I wasn’t convinced that always happened with school lunches. Any how now they are at seconday school they are quite capable of making the right decisions when it comes to food choices. (also aided by the fact I get a daily report on what they’ve been purchasing)

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My heart goes out to those parents still trying to manoeurvre the tricky balance about giving children food they will eat while it also being nutritious, low in sugar and fat - as it seems as a nation we are failing.

A new study carried out by the University of Leeds, discovered that that only 1.6 per cent of lunchboxes in England’s primary schools are meeting nutritional standards.

The research found that the quality of young children’s lunchboxes has only improved by 0.5% in the last 10 years.

Experts are now calling for packed lunch policies to be introduced to cut down on the amount of unhealthy foods, such as crisps, chocolate biscuits and sugary drinks being brought into schools.Researchers found that lunchboxes continue to be filled with high levels of saturated fats, sugars and salts, with only one in five containing any vegetables or salad. More than half of packed lunches contained too many sweet and savoury snacks, while 46 per cent included sugary drinks. There are now calls for a natioanl lunch box policy to be implemented.

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While something must be done to tackle the levels of childhood obesity we need to stroke a balance. I remember one of the reasons my daughter refused to have school lunches was because she wasn’t allowed any butter on her jacket potato. Having a lunch box policy means schools will presumably have the police it. Of course there is no place for fizzy drinks in a packed lunch, but will little Jonnie be singled out if he has a bag of crisps or a chocolate bar in his lunch ? Does that really matter if he is playing football for the rest of his dinner break?

Getting children to eat a nutritious midday meal is important but it must be taken in context. Although I wait to see what my youngest has eaten today