Meet the mums who wake up at dawn to make healthy school lunches for their kids

Every weekday come rain or shine, stay-at-home-mum Nithya Puspanathan, 37, is up at the crack of dawn i.e. 6am. From Mondays to Fridays, she makes her way to her home kitchen and begins firing up the stove as she prepares hearty meals of spaghetti carbonara or stir-fried noodles for her three school-going children – Hemant Puspanathan, 11, Harshini Puspanathan, eight, and Hashwin Puspanathan, seven.

Once she’s done with the daily cooking, Nithya packs the kids’ meals neatly into lunch boxes for them to take to school.

“I used to do this on and off on alternate weeks, but the kids were progressively not happy with the meals in their school, so I started doing it every day,” explains Nithya.

Throughout Malaysia, this practice is prevalent among mothers who sacrifice their own sleep for the sake of ensuring that their children are fed home-cooked meals every day at school.

Their motivations may vary, but for most mothers, the main reason they continue to do this for the entirety of their children’s school-going years is largely because of concerns about their kids’ daily nutritional intake.

Nithya for instance, noticed that the food in her children’s school canteen was often tasteless and nutritionally deficient, which is the main reason she decided to devote her mornings to making her children’s school lunches.

“Basically in the school canteen, it was pretty much the same meals and the kids weren’t too keen on it, because the food was really bland and had no taste. And when you see the meals – like in the carbonara, there weren’t any mushrooms – so I feel like they don’t put quality products in the school food.

“And my kids are used to what we are eating at home, so at least this way I know what is going into their bodies – that is the main reason I started preparing it,” she says.

Nithya’s views are echoed by Soh Yin Yin, 43, the owner of an F&B business. Soh wakes up every day at the unthinkable hour of 5am to cook for her 12-year-old twin boys – Ezekiel Amadeus Rong Sugiarto and Elliott Timotheus Yau Sugiarto.

“I noticed that with the school food, sometimes the portions were quite small. Like when they have chicken rice, there is very little meat or if they serve curry noodles, there are maybe one or two fish balls, not a lot of greens and a lot of noodles.

“That’s why I wanted them to eat healthier, homecooked food, so I can control the type of food that they eat. Also my kids are used to homecooked food, so they don’t seem to like the canteen food anyway,” says Soh.

University executive Jumariah Sainuddin, 29, is so concerned about her children eating well that she has already started the routine of waking up at 6am every day to cook their lunch for them (when they are at daycare), even though her children – Faiq Al Aathif and Alyssa Medina – are only four and two respectively!

“I just wake up early and sacrifice a bit of time because I want them to eat well,” she explains.

Picky eaters and the pandemic

For other mothers, making school lunches is a no-brainer, especially when their children are picky eaters. Full-time mum Reena Kulendran, 38, for instance, has two sons – Aryan Saravanan, 11, and eight-year-old Rohan Saravanan.

As both her boys are incredibly picky eaters, Reena gets up every morning at 5am to prepare a wholesome meal for their daily lunch, one that she knows they will definitely eat as she is worried they won’t eat anything if their only option is what is available in the school canteen.

“My boys are quite picky and they cannot see vegetables in their meals, otherwise they won’t eat it – and that includes onions!

“The school actually provides balanced meals, but they won’t eat it, so in order for them to eat, I have to make them food because I can force them to eat at home, but I can’t do the same thing in school, so I give them something I know they will eat, like rice and meat,” says Reena.

For other mums, hygiene and sanitation are topmost on their minds, especially with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. For in-house legal counsel Rashidah Abdul Hamid, 34, this is exactly what prompted her to start waking up at 5.45am to prepare lunches for her seven-year-old son Muhammad Yahya.

“My husband and I are very worried about Covid-19, especially because when my son started school, he only had one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. And we are not very sure about the safety of the food preparation in his school, so we didn’t want to take chances. We feel that it is safer if he only eats whatever is prepared at home,” says Rashidah.

How do they do it?

While waking up early is probably the biggest component involved in cooking and putting together school lunches for children, assembling these meals also takes a certain amount of planning, preparation and strategy.

Nithya for instance, says she has to manage all the various likes and dislikes of her three children and rotates meals depending on the hours they will be at school on any particular day. To help put together the daily meals, she does all her meal planning and grocery shopping on Sundays.

“Sometimes I make stir-fried noodles, mac and cheese, spaghetti carbonara or sausage puff rolls. I actually make their lunch based on their school hours. If it’s a short day and I don’t need to give them too much food, then I just make them simple egg sandwiches. I try to make it practical, because its early and I have three meals to prepare, so the food has to be tasty but also portable,” she says.

Reena meanwhile has worked out a system where she offers her sons a choice between two options the night before. Once they have decided what they want, she does all the planning and prep work, so that she just has to execute the meal the next morning.

“My boys are very simple ‘meat and rice’ guys so often I just make steamed rice with a meat dish like steak. Sometimes I also make mini burgers or ham and cheese sandwiches and their favourite is spaghetti Bolognese, so I usually rotate between about five options and every two weeks, I give them the option of sushi, so that is like my off day,” she says, laughing.

Jumariah on the other hand says that because her children are so young, she has kept things simple and now just sticks with three different options for their meals.

“It’s either carbonara, fried rice or pasta soup – that just makes my life easier lah,” she says.

Soh meanwhile says she is always rushing to finish up the cooking for her twins as she has to head off to her restaurant after that. As a consequence, she says the food she makes is not very pretty, but it is functional.

“I have seen a lot of mums who do pretty bento sets, like sushi shaped like bears and tomatoes cut into different shapes. For me, I have no time, so I just cut and cook everything and serve, there’s no special design or accessory to go with it,” she says.

Soh however has come up with an array of options for her kids, from fried rice packed with vegetables to French toast with sausages, pan-fried chicken and vegetables and homemade burgers loaded with greens.

Rashidah meanwhile says she really values simplicity, which is why she normally just packs sandwiches for her son or even leftovers from dinner the night before, alongside a portion of fresh fruits.

Helping hands

Most of the mothers who wake up early to put together meals for their children seem to do it alone, although there are exceptions to this. Rashidah’s husband Yahya A Shukor, 34, for instance is incredibly hands-on and the two often take turns to make their son’s school lunches.

“Um yeah, I can’t help but notice that women just assume that they have to do it because that’s what I experienced as well. I simply just assumed the role of doing it until one day my husband said if I was too sleepy to do it, he could take over.

“Once he started, I was like, ‘He can do this too’. I think the fact that many mothers do this is also conditioning, because so many of us grew up thinking this is what mothers do. But now I feel like it helps to know that it’s not a burden I carry on my own, because when I’m too tired in the morning, I can just ask my husband to do it,” she says.

Many others also say that they have noticed that among their peers who are busy parents (either fathers or mothers), a large percentage simply don’t have the time to cook these daily lunches.

“In my group of friends, very few prepare meals for their children because of their work commitments, so their kids buy school lunches,” says Nithya.

For many of the mothers who do this though, the reward is in knowing that their children are eating well every single day. Which is why most of them say they are determined to continue doing this for the foreseeable future.

“At the rate that this is going, it looks like I am going to be doing this forever because my kids prefer homecooked meals, as they get to tell me what they want to eat,” says Nithya.

Nithya also says one of the things she treasures the most about cooking the daily meals for her kids is the appreciation she receives, especially from her daughter, who never fails to write her sweet notes of gratitude.

“My daughter always writes me a thank-you note, so I look forward to opening her lunch boxes. She always tells me how much she loves the food and how she loves me,” says Nithya.

Rashidah meanwhile says that she is heartened that her son’s homecooked school lunches have actually helped him make friends.

“My son has told me about some of his friends who are quite interested in what he brings to school every day. And I think he enjoys it because he’s shy and other kids’ interest is a confidence-booster for him,” says Rashidah.

For others though, there is a time limit to how long they will be making these school lunches. Jumariah for instance, says that she has already decided to stop once her children start secondary school.

“I think when they are older, there is no need for me to do this. So when they go to secondary school, I will stop cooking their meals because by then, they should be independent enough to make whatever they want themselves,” she says.