SOME East Lancashire children's lunchboxes are packed with fat, salt and sugar, it has been revealed.

Just one week after the Lancashire Evening Telegraph highlighted the poor state of school dinners, nutritionists claim that those who take a packed lunch could be even worse off.

A lunchbox survey, commissioned by the Foods Standards Agency, has found that 74 per cent of children's lunch boxes do not meet the government nutritional standards set for school meals.

Jenny Slaughter, the dietician in charge of improving local primary school children's eating habits in East Lancashire, said: "During my work in schools as part of the Lancashire Healthy Schools Programme we found that the children who came off worse nutritionally were those who brought in packed lunches.

"The situation is particularly bad in East Lancashire as it has high levels of deprivation.

"In some cases they would bring a packet of crisps, a chocolate bar and that was it."

Mrs Slaughter said a typical 'unhealthy' lunchbox - a sandwich on white bread, crisps, fizzy drink, pudding, chocolate, cakes and biscuits - contains empty calories because it has no nutritional benefit to a child's body and development.

She also warned that consuming those types of foods on a daily basis could lead to obesity, heart disease, and diabetes - all of which has a high occurrence in East Lancashire.

She said: "We really need to do something to address this issue because improving the standard of nutrition in our children's lunch boxes is relatively easy.

"In one school in Burnley we wrote to all the parents to say we were having a healthy eating drive and to not let the children bring crisps, sweets and chocolate to school.

"We also sent a list of ideas to fill up the lunch box like wholemeal sandwiches, carrot sticks, packets of grapes and fruit bars and it really did work wonders.

"It not only worked brilliantly for the children but it helped the parents out as for once they could say 'no you can't have those crisps because school won't allow them.'"