Healthy packed lunches 45pc more expensive than less nutritious versions, research finds

8 comments

1. There is a reason why ultra processed food is cheap. Its got a long stable shelf life, which removes problems with supply chains and logistics. 

   Its also cheaper to make a product when you can substitute things like honey with chemicals like sucralose. 

2. Even the “healthy” stuff seems to be expensive pre packaged junk (proper corn wtf)

   Could definitely get those costs down

3. This is impossible. All the galaxy brains on reddit said just go buy the cheap food instead of expensive.

4. >four portions of fruit and vegetables incorporated into the healthy lunch.

   This makes me feel like a bad parent. 4 portions just in lunch?

5. “Unhealthy lunches for the research were made up of white bread with chocolate spread instead of wholemeal with cheese; flavoured yoghurt rather than a plain, unsweetened version; and snacks such as crisps as opposed to the four portions of fruit and vegetables incorporated into the healthy lunch.”

   A cheese sandwich isn’t healthy?

6. The first nursery we went our son to were utter Nazi’s on this.

   He is autistic (which we knew about by this time but were still waiting for a diagnosis) and would only eat certain things, luckily when he was this age most of them were healthy – he is a teenager now and this is no longer the case…

   Anyway, he used to love these organic “school bars” (if anyone remember those?) they were way better than normal school bars, not nearly as processed, basically fruit puree which is left to dry in the sun. We used to send him in with one of those along with a couple other forms of fruit, usually grapes and strawberries, and then the rest of a healthy lunch (no crisps, chocolate or Mr Kiplings style baked goods).

   The nursery refused to let him eat them because it “wasn’t healthy enough”, even though:

   1) It was the only “unhealthy” thing in his packed lunch

   2) It was still a healthy food.

   Apparently their policy forbade such an item *but they did allow boxes of raisins* as a “dried fruit” style option. Which oddly enough were massively more unhealthy than the fruit bars we were sending him in with!

   I printed off 6 double sided sheets of food research showing how nutritionally crap raisins are compared to the organic low processed fruit bars we were sending him in with and they still wouldn’t budge.

   There were other issues at this nursery where they were overstepping their authority and we ended up changing nursery within a couple months of starting there, but this part of the debacle always stuck with me for some reason.

7. I just feel sorry for the people who think any preprepared box meal is healthy. 

8. > Unhealthy lunches for the research were made up of white bread with chocolate spread instead of wholemeal with cheese; flavoured yoghurt rather than a plain, unsweetened version; and snacks such as crisps as opposed to the four portions of fruit and vegetables incorporated into the healthy lunch.

   Well 4 portions of fruit and veg vs 1 packet of crisps isn’t a like-for-like comparison at all. What happens to the comparison if you do something more realistic like subbing in 1 banana for the crisps?

   Oh and my work lunch today is homemade lentil soup. It doesn’t get much cheaper than that, and quite healthy too.