School packed lunches get eggy

Despite the current focus on making school meals more nutritious, two thirds of parents admit that it takes them ten minutes or less to prepare their children’s packed lunches. The survey, conducted by British Lion Eggs, also found that six out of ten parents put roughly the same thing in packed lunches every day.

Even though parents don’t tend to vary the foods they send their children to school with, they are still conscious of keeping it healthy. More than four in ten said they include eggs in their children’s lunchboxes because they are good for you.

There appears to be a mismatch when it comes to who prepares the packed lunches. Mums say that they are the ones who make the lunchboxes with 85% of Mums claiming they generally do so. Dads say that the responsibility is shared. Of the Dads surveyed 30% say they generally make the lunches, while only four percent of Mums agreed that Dads get involved.

Eggs are more popular than ever before with Brits eating 700,000 eggs per day while health professionals and consumers recognise their many health benefits. The government launched the School Food Plan in 2013 to improve the school food culture and children’s access to good nutritious food. But knowing what ingredients to put in your child’s lunchbox has never been more difficult with health warnings associated with a lot of lunchbox products.

* Jung Eun Kim, Susannah L Gordon, Mario G Ferruzzi, and Wayne W Campbell, Effects of egg consumption on carotenoid absorption from co-consumed, raw vegetables. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, May 2015. doi: 10.3945/​ajcn.115.111062