For many of us, packed lunches have an automatic association with school: either as a daily occurrence or as a special feature of geography field trips. The impact of the childhood packed lunch on our adult selves and eating habits ought not to be underestimated, as, being the only meal of the day eaten without parental supervision, it becomes fertile ground for shaping attitudes to food.

School dinners began in earnest in the late 19th century, when it was discovered that poor pupils were not gaining sufficient nutrition at home to adequately equip them for a day of study. From 1906 schools could offer meals, and from 1907 these meals had to meet government-approved nutritional standards. As detested as they often were, canteen meals were a cheap (or even free) way to get a hot meal down thousands of young people every lunchtime. By the 70s, however, students were able to bring their food with them, and the trend gained popularity in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher, who increased the cost of school meals, It is now estimated that about half of students opt for a packed lunch, at a cost of almost £1 billion to the nation's parents.

In the 70s and 80s, school packed lunches would largely feature homemade sandwiches, with perhaps the occasional sausage roll or scotch egg. By the 1990s, the concept of "kid food" was becoming well established: bite sized, fun-shaped morsels of processed food thought to appeal to children's capricious tastes. As Bee Wilson notes in First Bite, in reality this means processed carbohydrates, sugars, dairy and salt,  thought to recreate the simplicity and comfort of nursery food. So came the likes of snacks such as Pombears, Cheese Strings and Dairylea Lunchables. Sugar-laden "fruit bites", squashes and fizzy drinks also began to feature, promising "no artificial preservatives" but offering negligible nutritional content or energy for learning. If the meals of childhood set up our tastes for the future (and Wilson is emphatic that they do) then it is unsurprising that millennials are opting for ready-made lunches as adults, filled with the processed flavours to which they are accustomed, rather than creating​ something from scratch.



The school packed lunch is crucial in developing attitudes to food because of the environment in which it is consumed. For reasons of logistics, packed-lunch eaters are often segregated from their hot-dinner peers, meaning that a good portion of the lunch hour is dedicated not only to eating your own meal, but also to looking at everyone else's.

I like to think of the packed lunch room at my own school as something of a microcosm of the wider world, a place where the hierarchy of the classroom really came into play. When we were 9 there was a rota for sitting next to the most popular girl, who was  smart, rich and athletic and ate, as far as I can recall, meals made up almost entirely of grapes and melon slices. Without the social-equalising element of the hot dinner (when everyone, regardless of wealth, is forced to eat the same slop) everyone's packed lunch reflected their personality and background: my German friend brought salami sandwiches and chocolate-filled brioche, the neat-as-a-pin class brainbox brought perfectly portioned rolls, with a pre-halved kiwi and spoon. There was the girl who ate only grated cheese sandwiches on fluffy white bread and another who never wanted to eat anything at all, who would nibble dolefully on a Golden Delicious for 45 minutes. We looked and copied one another, demanding from our parents the same snacks and treats we saw in other girls' meals. We shaped our eating habits around each other, reevaluating and fine tuning our preferences according to what was considered the best way or coolest thing to eat. (And this habit continues in adulthood: women are constantly asking​ one another about their lunch choices, eyeing up the next soup and salad trend that could enliven the never ending weight loss struggle.)

As whitewashed, bland and unpleasant-smelling as the packed lunch room was, eating there felt like being part of a special club; as though, by consuming our own food, rather than that intended for the masses, we were getting away with something. We did not have to endure the whims of the catering staff, but rather the affection and fussing of our mothers, who sought to provide us with food that was both fun and sustaining. Whether or not their choice was  met with approval (the girl who only ate apples insisted that her mother didn't understand that she hated sandwiches), there was no denying that this was a meal designed solely for us, which did not have to be shared. Thus the lunchbox (container included, obviously) became a source of pride, a badge of personal identity.

In these instances, the school packed lunch can feel like a treat. The sense of pleasure is heightened by the fact that, for young children, most lunchboxes contain foods to be eaten with fingers, things normally associated with parties: tiny squares of sandwiches, tomatoes, grapes and mini chocolate fingers. They are thus relieved of the frustrations imposed by cutlery at home, and eating feels more like play. This idea is thrown into relief most noticeably on school trips, when everyone is required to bring their own food. Ask any 8 year old to identify the highlight of their day and you are guaranteed to receive the response "lunch".

Children often associate packed lunches with treats

The lunchbox may be a source of pleasure for the child (a feast of Hula Hoops, cocktail sausages and Iced Gems!), but it is often less so for the parent in charge of its preparation, who is forced to do battle with the need to feed their child responsibly and the desire to spoil them. Leanings towards the latter are in no way helped by the preponderance of advertising of this so-called "kid food" and the normalisation of processed fast food into the diets of children. Although much has been done to highlight the poor quality of school meals thanks to Jamie Oliver, research has shown that parents are no better than schools at feeding their children healthy meals in the middle of the day. A study published last autumn revealed that only 1.6% of children's lunchboxes met the nutritional standards required by school dinners, with only 1 in 5 lunchboxes containing any vegetables or salad, and 52%-60% containing too many sweet and savoury snacks, or sugary drinks. This has resulted in increasing numbers of children leaving primary school obese, setting up unhealthy eating habits for life.

It would be easy to demonise parents and their lack of nutritional awareness at this point, but it we should not underestimate the financial and time pressures they face when trying to scrabble together one or more lunches for their children every night after a full day of work. It is a fact of modern life that not everyone has the time or resources to create healthy feasts for their offspring every day. However, beyond these limitations, there is clearly a lot more at stake when it comes to preparing a lunchbox, beyond emulating the government's "eatwell plate". The tie between parental love and feeding should never be underestimated; with parents seeing their food as a true expression of their affection for their children, and as their first and foremost responsibility. 

Making a packed lunch for your children is a way of allowing your love to infiltrate the school environment, reminding them of how much they are cherished. But it is also a way of keeping control of them; without relying on the whims of the school catering staff, it is possible to know exactly what your children have (and, crucially, have not) eaten over the course of the day. Or so you think. Ultimately, every parent has to struggle with the knowledge that children are perfectly capable of tipping their sandwiches and fruit away, lying about how delicious they were and skipping merrily off to the canteen or vending machine to buy crisps and chocolate. If children are fussy, and liable to waste or flat refuse anything other than their favourite, beige foods, it is only too understandable that a parent will opt to give it to them, believing that it's better for them to eat that than nothing at all. Surely no one can forget the images of mothers desperately passing their children burgers through the school gates when Jamie Oliver overhauled school dinners, in fear that they would go hungry. 


 
Added to the mix is the fear of appearing a sub-standard parent by not providing a good enough lunch. This parental pressure is particularly notable in Japan, where the ritual of bento is an important part of school life. Schools apply strict nutritional standards to which parents must comply, and there is huge social pressure to create edible works of art for children each day, thanks to the trend for kyaraben - the fashioning of food to look like cartoon characters. Women have spoken of the highly competitive nature of bento-making, with mothers devoting hours to the careful preparation of these delicate meals in order to maintain a sense of superiority, as well as to prevent their children from being bullied for having a boring lunch. Teachers may even send written warnings home if the bento is considered insufficient. The concepts of love and feeding are so heavily intertwined that a mother who is not seen to put in significant effort into her child's lunch can be considered to be lacking in affection, and therefore a lesser parent.

The great irony of parental angst is that no amount of stress will guarantee how your child feels about packed lunches. No matter how long you agonise over the correct carb to protein ratio, once they reach a certain age, there is no way of knowing whether the little darling will throw it all away in disinterest. Some cannot wait to throw off the shackles of the parental packed lunch: hence why British sixth formers, freed of the rigours of the canteen, spend a good portion of their lunch hours visiting McDonald's or making toast, simply because they can. Others continue to feel the connection to home, and yearn for the feeling of comfort provided by a mother's meal. I recall the absolute delight on an A-Level trip of discovering a jam sandwich that my mum had slipped in my rucksack, because she just knew I'd be hungry. I was filled with the warmth of her affection, and I nibbled it contentedly in my bunkbed, feeling as though she were right there with me.

We should not underestimate the connection between packed lunches and parental affection (Photo: Oh Sweet Bag of Mine)

Despite reveling in the opportunity to choose our own foods as adults, the connection between a packed lunch and parental love is still somehow present, even if well disguised. One need only look at the number of people who opt for ready meals such as spaghetti Bolognese, cottage pie and casserole for their working lunches - warming comfort foods associated with childhood. These are the meals our mothers would.make: hot, hearty and filling, seen as important for a child's growth. And this is not restricted to Britain - as Meera Sodha wryly notes, although office workers in Mumbai have access to Westernised foods in their tiffin, they still prefer to eat "what mummyji makes". As hard as we may try to shake it off, the premise that the packed lunch represents the caring presence of a parent remains.

While this harking back to childhood speaks volumes about our modern anxiety epidemic, it also highlights the long-lasting impact of the food consumed in our earliest years on the habits we maintain in adulthood. Despite our independence and maturity, in the middle of our working days we long for the time when feeding ourselves required no work other than the lifting of steaming forkful to mouth, and we didn't have to worry about vegetables. In the havoc of the working day, eating a meal that comes pre-wrapped and ready to eat provides momentary relief from the responsibility of adulthood; even if you made it yourself, it can still feel like the home-packed delights of youth. The packed lunch becomes a gift, a treat and an act of self-love.