Learner Dad: I’m officially giving up trying to get my girl to eat fruit for lunch

Pic: iStock

I’m getting lunch anxiety.

I do the breakfast, lunches and a share of dinners in my house, leaving my wife to buy clothes for the kids and decide what goes in the wash, things I wouldn’t be allowed to do anyway.

I’ve no problem with this division of labour, I like cooking and chopping and things like that.

The main problem is my daughter’s lunch is starting to look very brown. She won’t eat fruit. If I put an apple in her lunchbox, it just goes on a return trip to school. I can see it inside the lunchbox when I take it out of her school bag. Sometimes it has a few little nibbles in it and this kind of breaks my heart because I can see she is trying.

I’ve tried mandarin oranges and pears, and it’s return journeys there too. I haven’t given up yet. Not because I think she’ll suddenly start eating fruit, it’s just that I’m tired in the morning and popping a pear in her lunchbox makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing.

The thing is, she’s the best eater in the house as long as the food isn’t coming out of a lunchbox. She eats anchovies straight out of the jar. What kind of child eats anchovies straight out of the jar? She does. 

She will also eat an apple or pear at home as long as I chop it up, but chopped fruit isn’t exactly attractive after four hours in a lunchbox, so I wouldn’t blame her for sending that back untouched in fairness. (And no, she doesn’t like bananas at all. I don’t think I’ll ever understand kids.)

Anyway, back to the brown lunch. Well brown and white really. She’s happy to eat a sandwich, particularly if it’s made with that pork and onion roll which doesn’t look like it has any pork or onion in it . She also likes wholegrain rice cakes, oatcakes and cheddar cheese. 

It’s not a particularly unhealthy mix – it’s just that it looks very browny beige in the giant lunchboxes we give our kids these days. (Their latest ones are like a small suitcase - I doubt you’d be allowed to bring them on-board with Ryanair.)

I’ve tried a few grapes in there as well, for colour, but she won’t eat them either even though grapes are basically sweets.

My understanding is serving up brown food is an awful thing to do to a child. It just means it’s fried or battered or processed in some way that is going to lead to obesity.

Colour is virtue signalling when it comes to food. ( Obviously, as long as it’s a natural colour that you get in fruit and vegetables, rather than food that looks like it might glow in the dark. ) I’m worried word will go around the playground that Pat gives his daughter brown food for lunch, and people will judge me for that.

The alternative is to go into school at lunchtime with chopped fruit and I don’t think anyone wants that. (I’ve checked with my nine-year-old, she’s dead against it.)

So maybe I’ll just cop myself on.

I’ m the one with the problem here, with a classic case of middle-class food angst. We’ve recently moved to a new area and I have it in my mind that it’s similar to one of those really fussy-anxious parts of California, where in reality it’s a rural village in east Cork where people probably give their kids chocolate brioche three times a week.

School lunchboxes shouldn’t be a competition. You basically just want to keep your kids alive until they come home and you can nourish them with a sweet potato blended into their pasta sauce. In the end, fruit is just sugar. I had a jam sandwich for lunch at least once a week when I was at school and it didn’t do me any harm.

I’m officially giving up trying to get my girl to eat fruit for lunch. Unless she’d like a Kiwi.