Encourage kids to eat healthily...why is it more expensive to do so!

My DD finds it more expensive to fill lunch boxes with what is called "junk food" than to fill them with her own baking,the two litttle ones have a hot breakfast before school which takes them through to lunch,they will then have a wrap or sandwich filled with chicken or bacon/mayo/cress tec and fruit with a homemade cake of some kind.Far cheaper than crisps and chocolate bars and much healthier.She does a bake every week and also goes to work and runs a home on her own,takes a Sunday school and is involved with teaching mums how to budget their finances,so she does have a busy lifestyle.

glammanana it can be done, as your DD shows. Well done her.

"far cheaper to fill with junk food." Well, I suppose so if all you're giving them is Monster Munches, cheese strings and Mars Bars!
What's wrong with home-made sandwiches with healthy fillings, some proper cheese and an apple or banana - or both?

Cheese strings and Mars Bars are not cheap. I think Lynne is talking about 'smart price' type food e.g. 10 x packets of crisps for £1, 12 small iced buns for £1.20, BOGOF 12 rolls for £1, Jar of jam 35p (cheaper than home made) 10 x haribro sweets/lollies £1.00 and voila - daily lunch boxes for 2 children for under £5.00. - less than half the price of school dinners. NB. I am not advocating this daily diet just pointing out that it would be hard if not impossible to provide nutritious lunches at that price.

2 of my DGC have just started school and their mums are picking up tips to keep costs down from other mums. So far they have used raw carrots (much cheaper than fruit), plain tap water in a refillable bottle, refilling boxes of raisins from a big bag, handfuls of crunchy cereal or pop corn instead of crisps, currently, tomatoes, plums and apples from the garden, home made cereal bars. More ideas welcome!

I truly do not believe healthy food is more expensive, if you plan, self-cook and 'use your loaf'.

I agree, granjura, but I think a lot of young people these days haven't got much of a clue - and of course, some haven't got much time to cook either.

Whatever anybody says - Mums will find the time to do what they want to do. If they don't like cooking, they won't find the time to do it. I, for one, don't want to hear the phrase haven't got time to do it anymore!!

Anyone who hasn't got much of a clue has no excuse. There's plenty of freely and easily available information out there. You just have to be interested enough to look for it. Ergo, those people who don't, don't want to.

Besides, it's obvious that a sandwich, even a jam sandwich, is better than sweets, and so on.

Check out the school lunchbox police thread on mumsnet. That's taking so-called healthy eating to the other extreme – some schools are, I mean. And the one cited at the start of the thread clearly doesn't have a clue either. Plenty of the mums are appalled, quite rightly.

Hmmm. Maybe there's too much MISinformation about and that's the problem

Reminds me of a scheme at DD's primary school. They were trying to encourage the kids to bring healthy play-time snacks, and giving those who did "team merit points". DD didn't take any play-time snacks but I had to point out that that should count as healthy too, since she wasn't rotting her teeth with sugar at break time, before she was given the merit points, just for living healthily.

Sigh. Too much tunnel vision around for comfort!

This is slightly offpoint but what I have noticed, is that my DGS takes a bottle of water to school with him , seems they all do . What a good idea , keeps them hydrated without having to disrupt their learning .

Another good trend I've noticed through my GDs is that the amount of Apple and Blackcurrant, Orange or whatever that they have in their drinks is miniscule compared to when DD was a child. It barely covers the bottom of the cup - must be better for them all round. That's the amount they gave them at nursery and they don't like it any stronger now.

gangy 5...disagree with you so... much about not having time to do it. you obviously didn't have a stressful job whilst bringing up a family with no support

Well said, lynne.

Sorry, I am with gangy5. I had a busy job, a long commute and a husband whose job meant I was virtually a single parent and still managed to provide a home cooked meal every night. It wasnt a question of being martyred, it was a question of organisation, cooking in bulk and ignoring all media cooks. Most days we had a home cooked ready meal from the freezer but first thing in the morning I could also assembly a tasty casserole with baked potatoes in well under 10 minutes then put it in the oven and using the delay cook function I always insisted any cooker I had had to have, return home in the evening to a prepared and cooked meal.

Well, I'll try telling that to my DD, a single parent, who has to be at work at 8.30 a.m. after getting herself and two children ready and taking them to the pre-school club (they have breakfast at home). She works most days until 5.30, sometimes 6.00 p.m., so after picking the children up and taking them home it's around 6.30 p.m. - just about time for a quick meal and bath before bed (sometimes all three of them!).
I suppose she could spend half the weekend cooking and freezing nutritious casseroles, but she has other things to do, such as shopping, housework and the endless washing!

Well done to you, though, FlicketyB - you were obviously super-efficient!

Good on you Flickety....you're lucky to have survived, personally, healthwise through such demanding times. You've got to admit it wasn't easy...

Anagram....Ta.....that's what I'm trying to get at! ha

Granny23...that is where I'm coming from thanks...

Actually I worked 6 days a week for a total of 57 hours. My main aim was to ensure that my children had home cooked meals that were nutritious. This, I did not find hard to do but involved a little preparation and organisation. Home cooking is not being approached in the right way if you feel that you must start from fresh when you arrive home after work - it's not a question of how quickly you can throw things together. Foreward planning is the name of the game.

I realise that I've gone a bit off subject here. I don't agree that it costs more to eat healthily. It's certainly cheaper to cook your own than to buy ready meals.

I rather suspect it is supermarkets and food manufacturers who insidiously suggest that cooking from fresh ingredients or assembling a lunch box from fresh ingredients is somehow difficult and more expensive than using ready-made stuff and processed foods. It might be slightly more time-consuming – but not much.

Going slightly off thread for which I apologise.

I was so upset after my DGD went to the dentist, she is 6. She required a filling and whilst that made us all feel terrible we were even more upset at the reason.

We do not feed her sweets often, usually as treats. She prefers water and milk shakes to fizzy pop or cordials. We give her fruit of all kinds as we thought they were good for her and felt as her parents and grandparents we were doing the right thing for her. 5 a day and all that jazz.

WRONG. The dentist told us that giving her fruit was very bad for her and we had helped to cause the decay.! Shocked or what.

Apparently we must only give her fruit with meals as snacking in between on fruit causes the teeth to have an extra 'hit' of sugar and all of us should only have three 'hits' of sugar a day. Has anyone else heard of this? We feel awful about it.

Dental team that visited DD's school recently told them that too. But many, many years ago the school governing board I was on was told not to encourage children to eat an apple after lunch to "clean their teeth" because it would have quite the opposite effect. It's not just the sugar either, but the fruit acids. Better to encourage them to have a drink of water and swish it around their mouths.

I am just amazed at how long it takes knowledge like this to filter down to everyone. I guess we get a lot of mixed messages. My knowledge of the problems with fruit acid goes back a long way because my nephew, who is now 22, had teeth problems caused by apple juice when he was three. Also, DDs 1 and 3 have never coped well with fruit acids, but for them it was what happened at the other end of the alimentary canal that was the problem, or rather, that highlighted the problem.