Photos reveal how kids packed lunches have changed over the years
Have a think back to your school days and its the food that really makes the nostalgia hit home.
Remember the days before Jamie Oliver stole away our turkey twizzlers, when we could enjoy a bottle of Panda Pops and a massive cookie with our lunch of a pasty, beans, and chips?
Oh, how we miss them.
But the food that inspires our school lunch nostalgia differs quite a bit between the generations.
While you may fondly remember a sandwich of Billy Bear ham and cheese, someone born just a few years earlier might dream only of Wagon Wheels.
The team over at Wren Kitchens teamed up with nutritionist Jenny Edelstein to take a look at how kids packed lunches have transformed over the decades.
They reckon that childrens packed lunches tend to be far more nutritionally healthy today than they were 50 years ago… which is probably the case, considering our prior fondness for pickled onion Monster Munch.
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Shall we take a look at the average school lunch for every decade, then?
1970s
Here we have a classic seventies collection of peanut butter and jam sandwiches, some cubes of cheese, cheese puffs, pineapple slices, a carton of orange juice, and a few sweets.
Those cubes of cheese with pineapple are giving us major house party vibes, we must say.
1980s
Yes, those are indeed Space Raiders – a delightful pairing with a cheese and pickle sandwich.
80s kids also enjoyed some apple slices, a Wagon Wheel (Im team jam), and another carton of orange juice.
1990s
Oh hey, 90s kids. Youll remember enjoying a ham sandwich (Billy Bear ham gets you extra points), likely with Hula Hoops, some animal shaped biscuits, a Penguin, a jelly fruit pot, and a Capri-Sun.
2000s
Remember Frubes?
If you were a kid in the early 2000s, you probably enjoyed a lunch of a tuna and sweetcorn sandwich, a tube of yoghurt, some pringles (you had a sparkly Pringles snack pot, of course), string cheese, and some fruit flavoured water.
Your mum probably chucked in some apple slices and grapes to make it healthy… plus a Kit-Kat for pudding.
2010 to now
So heres what the young people are eating these days: a chicken salad sandwich with fancy thins rather than standard bread, carrot sticks, a handful of crisps, a chocolate finger, tropical fruits, and yoghurt covered raisins.
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According to the study of 2,000 parents by Wren Kitchens, the majority of parents consider childrens packed lunches today to be healthier than when they were young, and whats included now is more nutritious than the food found in packed lunches in the 70s.
Nutritionist Jenny said: Theres been a definite shift away from heavily processed foods we saw in packed lunches in the 1990s and high sugar content seen in classic 1970s lunchboxes. Today, we see packed lunches inRead More – Source
