volvoxvsmarla

I rather fix the issue of why parents can’t feed their children cause they probably can’t properly feed themselves than working on fixing an consequence.

I wholeheartedly agree here, but this would mean a huge ass systemic change. It would be infinitely better to treat the cause and not the symptom - but it would also be harder, take much more effort, more change, more willingness from politicians, more consistency. This is just not realistic in the short or even medium run. Providing free and healthy school lunches is already a very hard and difficult goal/job. However, it has the benefit of being very concrete. You have one task that you focus on with direct benefits. Improving the conditions so that parents can feed their children better is very vague and much more multifacetted. Where do you even start? Minimum wage, working conditions, daycare options, healthcare, boosting the economy, increasing social security... 100% you should do all that, but man, you'll wait a long time for this to become so much better as to have a measurable effect on "lunch performance".

Also, even at the end, parents can still make bad choices. As you mentioned, sandwiches are considered healthy even in the Netherlands. I do, indeed, work in nutrition science, and the ideal sandwich is healthy, but 99% of people eat severely unhealthy sandwiches. A friend of mine is a dietician and, my Lord, I've at least had the privilege of reading studies and not working with people because people are dumb. I can't believe that in 2025 you got to tell people that white bread and candy is not good for you or that you shouldn't drink sugared soda instead of water. People don't know that sugar makes you fat. People don't know what a calorie is. People don't know that you can't soak your salad in ranch dressing and put 15 fried chicken fingers on top and that's not "a healthy low calorie salad". You will always have negligent parents. You will always have parents with mental health issues or other struggles who cannot safely provide food. Especially in a socially rotten country like the US.

Last but not least, why not do both. You can absolutely both work on fixing the underlying issues and in the meantime work on providing free and healthy school lunches all over the country (or, for that matter, planet). Actually, you absolutely should do both. They don't exclude each other a bit.

Maybe I should just bring some leftovers and eat them cold, could do that as well I guess.

You could absolutely do that, or cook dishes that are meant to be eaten cold to begin with. Onigiri, buddha bowls, gazpacho soup (with some volkoren bread ;) ), a salad with falafel balls, etc. A zucchini-egg-oats-ham-cheese slice from the oven is also a cool afternative, you can cut it up and freeze it and just let it thaw as you need - and eat it with one hand. Bring some baby tomatoes on your walk. Eating a cold lunch doesn't mean you need to choose between leftover cold spaghetti with meatballs and a sandwich.

I understand the value of taking a walk, but eating while walking is also not exactly the healthiest.

Last but not least - our little conversation here is actually off topic. The question is about school lunches. And while you might like your cold, unhealthy sandwich and a walk (all power to you) - school children who can't return back to class earlier if they eat faster do absolutely deserve a warm and nutritious lunch. Remember that in the US, a lot of people cannot afford to feed their children at home, let alone with a warm and healthy meal. Maybe a sandwich for lunch is fine if you then have a great breakfast at home and a big dinner, but imagine all you eat in a day is a white bread pb&j sandwich for lunch and then the same for dinner, breakfast skipped. This is the reality for many more people - many more children - than we can imagine. And children move more and they are growing and they have to concentrate at school, they need to be full and nourished.

This is why this is so important. Providing all children with a free or at least dirt cheap meal that is both tasty (as in, accepted by the children's freakishly picky palate) and nutritious is an incredible challenge, but it is possible. Yet it is treated as an afterthought at best and poor people shaming and punishment at worst. If a child gets a pb&j for dinner and no breakfast, it better have a goddamn delicious huge ass plate of wholegrain maccaroni with vegetables and chicken breast and a low fat joghurt with fruit salad for lunch. And a salad bar. Because salad bars rock. I'd prefer it not to be chicken, but I probably have the only kid that genuinely likes boiled tofu over meat.

I understand the appeal of bringing a cold lunch, but from a nutritional perspective only few sandwiches really are healthy. Most breads have little to no whole grain part (I remember that ultra fluffy bread from the Netherlands exchange, it was amazing but definitely not nutritious), and at best you can fit in two slices of tomato and cucumber and a salad leaf. The greatest part is the fillers of usually "animal protein" which contain too many saturated fats.

Don't get me wrong, you can absolutely make a healthy sandwich with whole grain bread, homemade hummus, grated carrot, tomato, salad, cucumber, sprouts, quality cheese or seitan slices... But most people just don't do that. Most people take light bread with butter or cream cheese and deli meats and cheese on top.

I have been at a congress a couple of years back (I work in biomedical and nutrition science) and one presentation was by someone who gave dietary advice in clinics and reviewed some common tips and guidelines of dietetics. One of them was recommending adding bread as a whole grain source. The caveat was that people would not just eat the whole grain bread (if they were even to choose whole grain instead of white or light bread to begin with), but that - even when you substitute lets say a serving of white noodles with actual whole grain bread - you don't eat the bread alone. You put toppings on it, butter, deli meats, cheeses, which are all high calorie and not exactly healthy for you. Patients (especially the ones trying to lose weight) ended up increasing their calorie intake and their sat fat and salt intake by adding healthy bread to their diet.

I don't want to say that a cooked, warm lunch is automatically more healthy than a sandwich - but you have many more options here and more practical ones than with sandwiches. You can add so much more vegetables to it.

I thought it's first time mom on r/babybumps and now I am very confused

Pasta doesn't lose the majority of its vitamins to its cooking water though. (Mostly because pasta doesn't have many vitamins to begin with)

I wear a cord jacket from first grade as a bolero (I'm in my mid 30s). I got older stuff but this usually weirds people out.

Apart from the meatballs (and maybe bacon) this sounds like a good pizza to me. I like just a little bit of cheese on my pizza and if I put this in the special order it is like they don't believe me and add extra cheese. I also like to go heavy on the sauce and add garlic. Did your place have garlic without butter?

To be very honest I just like Pizzabrot but I think they only sell this in Bavaria (whelp).

Damn, I never heard of her before, thank you for sharing

Marble highway, crown, couch for soft toys, bracelets, easter bunnies, caleidoscope, towers of castles,...

Funnily enough I haven't thought of binoculars. I'll try it out today!

That's beautifully written and very to the point. I wish you well in your search for a partner who takes you as you are and, equally important, who you like as they are.

That was such a cool response, thank you!

I am not sure I have ever seen a weasel in real life (whelp), do they get stuck in a toilet paper roll? I thought they would be small enough to get through. You could make an amazing labyrinth from them! We did try to make something like that for marbles, and it... didn't necessarily turn out well, but it was super fun and taught us grown ups a lot about dynamics I guess! Btw they work well if you use just halfs of the rolls. I mean you probably don't really need it, but you can craft pencil holders from them too, I used to do this as a kid (I was a huge Art Attack fan).

If you want to soundproof a wall, egg cartons are actually supposedly really good for that! I mean it looks weird probably but I remember egg carton walls from the 90s. But the sprouting thing definitely works too! I actually thought of this by myself (I am weirdly proud of that xD) and double checked with a friend who has studied horticulture (and who has very little money because, well, she has studied horticulture) and she said she does this too! So I guess I have a professional approval for that technique!

Your tetra pack use reminded me of using cans for plants as well! Or remember can telephones? My daughter is only 3 years old and I look forward to crafting more and more stuff with her. She still loves commercial stuff though (which we try to buy used at least), she is so much into Frozen it is ridiculous. We shielded her from this stuff and it took one trip to friends who had a girl who was an Elsa fan to get our daughter hooked long before she ever saw the movie. It's crazy. We actually were sewing some "Elsa dresses" for her dolls today. She was so patient with it because she wanted it so much. Parenting is the best thing that ever happened to me.

Pretty obvious but you can use plastic containers from yoghurt, margarine, etc as plant pods (the ones that go inside the pretty ones). Just make sure to put some holes in the bottom for drainage. For seedlings, egg cartons work too.

Packaging paper we reuse as gift wrappings. I like to draw or "airbrush" something on it.

And toilet paper rolls... If you got a child you probably know.