A mum has revealed the wild way she tried to prove that her primary school aged daughter’s lunch was being stolen from her each day at school.
Chrissy, from the UK, was faced with a schoolyard dilemma after her daughter started coming home with items in her lunchbox that she hadn’t packed.
Soon she realised the lunch she had provided was being ‘taken’ by another student and ‘replaced with other items’.
After spending a few days trying to work out who the thief, Chrissy suspected one of her daughter’s best friends was helping herself to the packed food and replacing it with things she didn’t want from her own lunchbox.
Hoping to sort things out, Chrissy reached out to her daughter’s friend’s mum, but she refused to hear it, insisting her daughter ‘would never do that’.
Left with little choice, Chrissy decided to take matters into her own hands with a plan to catch the lunchbox thief red handed.
‘I’m going to try and prove it today,’ she declared in a post on her TikTok account.
The minute-long video showed Chrissy preparing a small amount of penne pasta and then locating some tubes of gel food colouring in pink, purple and blue shades.
A mum has revealed the wild way she tried to prove that her primary school aged daughter’s lunch was being stolen from her each day at school
Chrissy created a decoy pasta lunch, which was actually filled with brightly coloured food dye
She then painstakingly filled the cooked penne with blobs of the bright dye, before placing them in a small kid’s lunchbox container.
Next, to disguise the food colouring-filled pasta, she spooned tinned tomatoes onto the pasta and sprinkled on grated cheese – so it looked just like a regular tomato and cheese pasta lunch.
‘I’ve told my daughter to look out for the rainbow mouth at lunchtime!’ Chrissy winkingly wrote in the caption.
At the end of the video, Chrissy revealed that she’d packed an edible second lunchbox for her daughter to eat, adding that she’d told her daughter ‘to hide her real lunch so the thief can’t take anything from her today’.
The viral video posted to her @chrissy.j.xx account racked up seven million views and nearly 900 comments – many from parents with strong reactions to Chrissy’s plot to catch out her daughter’s lunchbox thief.
‘This plan is devious, I love it,’ read one reply.
‘Mother of the year award,’ another joked.
‘I’m so invested in this lunch series! Did the kid get caught?’ asked a third.
To set the lunch trap, the British mum cooked some penne pasta and carefully filled the individual pasta pieces with a brightly coloured edible gel
Chrissy later shared in a follow-up that, although the rainbow pasta trick didn’t work, she tried a similar idea a few days later by tipping edible glitter inside a packet of crisps.
By the end of the school day, the child she had suspected was found to have glittery hands.
Many had follow-up questions about the school lunch situation, prompting Chrissy to elaborate in a lengthy reply.
‘I wouldn’t mind too much if [my daughter] was swapping, but the food is being taken and replaced with something her friend doesn’t want,’ she said.
‘My child was coming home upset because she didn’t have the things in her lunch she was looking forward to.’
Many replies admired Chrissy’s creative food dye pasta plot, especially since the other mother refused to believe it was happening in the first place.
However, some played devil’s advocate, wondering whether the daughter’s friend might simply not have enough food.
‘Is she taking your daughter’s lunch because your daughter isn’t eating hers? Or is it because she’s hungry?… Maybe you could pack two lunches, one for your daughter and one for her,’ suggested one.
‘Maybe the child doesn’t have enough food at home? Even if she brings food, maybe it’s not enough… I’d pack a second lunch like in the video and let that child eat,’ agreed another.
‘What happens if the kid stealing the lunch only gets one meal a day? As a mum I would pack more and say please share,’ read part of a lengthy reply. ‘As adults, we do better. Not get back at children.’
But these replies sparked debate, with many insisting Chrissy had no responsibility to feed a child that isn’t hers.
‘It’s not her job to pack another child’s food?!’ wrote one incredulous commenter.
‘In this economy? Absolutely not. Everyone is hurting and money isn’t stretching as far as it used to for many families. And you expect this mama just to foot the bill for someone else’s kid that’s stealing from her child? That’s wild.’
Chrissy then disguised the food colouring-filled pasta by covering it with tinned tomatoes and grated cheese
Once grated cheese was sprinkled on top, it looked like an ordinary tomato and cheese pasta meal
Chrissy herself clarified in the comments that the school offers a free lunch service, so no student goes hungry.
Accordingly, several replies praised Chrissy’s clever plan and hoped it succeeded in calling out the other child’s behaviour.
‘If a kid genuinely needs help with food, of course we should help. [But] if a kid is STEALING someone else’s lunch, they deserve consequences,’ read one reply.
‘The thief isn’t starving. She’s swapping out the good bits from this girl’s lunch with things she doesn’t want from her own. She has plenty herself, she just wants better stuff or enjoys the mischief of swapping.’
‘I’m not opposed to being generous and packing extra lunches for kids to share at times, but stealing isn’t something we should excuse. Stealing is stealing.’
A surprising number of comments shared stories of how their own families had tackled school lunchbox theft in a similar way to Chrissy.
‘My dad made a decoy lunch – put chilli in everything. My lunch never got pinched again,’ recalled one man.
‘Someone stole my lunch every day when I was 7, so my mum made a sandwich with anchovies, dishwashing liquid and chilli. Safe to say she never stole my lunch after that.’
The TikTok video shared to the @chrissy.j.xx account noted that the mother had also packed a normal edible lunch for her daughter in an identical lunchbox
A follow-up video shared to Chrissy’s account confirmed that although the rainbow pasta plan didn’t work, a different plan involving a packet of crisps and edible glitter was successful a few days later
One intrepid student didn’t even bother enlisting his parents for his own lunchbox trap. ‘I made a fake lunch: resealed worms in a chip bag, dirt in a peanut butter sandwich… they never stole my lunch again.’
While many applauded the mum’s creative plan, others were fixated on how unappetising the pasta meal looked.
‘Tomato straight out the tin is disgusting. Why would anyone steal that?!’ wondered one reply.
‘The dish itself is punishment,’ joked another. ‘Pasta cooked in too much water, cold unseasoned sauce topped with grated cheese- unmelted! Think that’s enough suffering.’
