A new trend seems to be emerging. Some schools are now banning lunches made at home and are requiring kids to buy lunch at the school. The reasoning behind the decision is stated as a need for kids to eat healthier lunches, but is it just a ploy to get you to spend?
First, let us tackle the financial aspect of it. I really don’t think that this is not, yes, not, a new revenue stream for most schools. School lunches are subsidized by the government, event the ones that parents pay for. A standard lunch usually costs a student $2. It usually costs the school more than $2 to prepare. So there is no profit there. While I could prepare that same lunch at home for less, the reality is that the schools can’t.
Of course, some of the add ons that the school provides, such as ice cream, yogurt, pretzels, cookies, etc might be marked up, but for the most part I have found that these prices are pretty reasonable for eating away from home.
I can prepare a good lunch for my children for much less than $2 by making things from scratch, shopping the grocery sales and using coupons. What is more, the lunches I prepare are usually much healthier than the offerings on the weekly lunch menu that offers everything from pizza and chicken nuggets to canned vegetables.
I also find that the standard elementary school lunch doesn’t provide enough food for my children, leading them to have to purchase all of those extras that are mentioned above (for clarification, my kids are of a healthy, normal weight but very active). If my school ever went to a banning of homemade lunches, we would have to budget an extra $40-$60 per month per kid for lunch. With three kids (our youngest is not yet in school, though), we are looking at $120-$180 a month! Not very frugal, if you ask me.
There are other issues with banning homemade lunches of course. I really think that most normal parents should have the responsibility for choosing what their kids eat. If a parent finds it a better solution to have her child buy lunch at school (or get a free or reduced price lunch) so be it. But if a parent or child want to have a lunch that was prepared at home then why is it a problem?
What do you think?