This Mom Is Defending The Very Hefty Lunch She Packed For 9-Year-Old Daughter

One mom is putting all of us to shame when it comes to making school lunches. She’s going viral for her elaborate and hefty meals, leaving some Instagram users commenting on her videos with confusion, questions, and a lot of humor.

“Make my 9-year-old daughter’s school lunch at 6 AM with me,” Alexia Gallegos wrote in text overlay on the video. “Steak and shrimp bites.”

Steak and shrimp bites sound amazing, and if I was a nine-year-old kid with a pallet beyond pop-tarts and mac and cheese, this would sound like an amazing meal to chow down on at school.

However, Gallegos didn’t stop with the entree. She added corn on the cob and potatoes, which she assembled into the lunch box. But hold on now, she doesn’t stop there!

Next, Gallegos packs snacks such as chocolate chip mini muffins, a rice crispy bar, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an apple, plus a Dr. Pepper and mango juice box.

Topping the lunch off, she fills her daughter's pink Stanley cup with heart-shaped ice cubes and water. Cute!

After the video took off, Instagram users could not help but leave some hilarious, tongue-in-cheek comments about the hearty meal Gallegos packed for her soon-to-be fourth grader.

“Your 9yo daughter is a lucky man. The other construction workers don't get meals like this.👏,” one user joked.

Another wrote, “You forgot to give her some lunch money, in case she gets hungry”

“Legends say her daughter still eating her lunch to this day,” another joked.

One user asked why Gallegos packed such a large meal for her child, asking, “All kidding aside, it’s a beautiful lunch but why so much food? She’s 9. I feel like you were packing your husband’s lunch whom has a very physically demanding job and works a 12 hour shift.”

Gallegos, based in Texas, told Newsweek that she struggles to come up with ideas of what to include in her daughter's school lunches and posted the video to give other moms some inspiration.

Speaking to the reaction online, Gallegos said that she decided to film her daughter's lunch one day and “it just took off.”

"I have gotten some negative responses, such as 'that's too much food for her,' but overall, I've gotten a lot of support and created a community of followers that support me and like to use my lunch ideas," she told Newsweek.

Unsurprisingly, after Gallegos gained popularity for filming her daughter’s lunch, she posted several more videos.

For her daughter’s last day of school, she cooked up some birria tacos. Plus an entire package of chocolate eggs, yogurt, cut-up watermelon, a packaged cake snack, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, two cheese sticks, and a sweet note.

While some of the same kind of comments trickled in (joking that her daughter works in the coal mines, etc.), others applauded Gallegos for packing so much food.

“Clutch mom looking out for her kids and other kids with the extra snacks! 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽” one user wrote.

“people at school always want to have their friends food especially if someone has a mom that is willing to spend that much time and effort to packing them a good lunch,” another echoed.

“so at least the mom is packing food for her AND her friends so her daughter can still have food without telling her friends no.”

Hot take here, but as long as there is not much food waste involved in all this meal prep, what is the big deal? Yes, it’s a hilariously large amount of food for a 9-year-old kid, but the meals appear pretty balanced.

Don’t we want our girls to have healthy relationships with food? If she’s chowing down this much food at school in front of her friends, she obviously doesn’t have some of the insecurities that I had as a young girl.

I was skipping meals and eating half a sandwich in front of the boys in my class to appear small and dainty. I wouldn’t dare eat the amount of food that Gallegos packs for her daughter, and you know what, I totally could have because I was a growing kid who was very hungry!

As long as her child is fed and happy, Gallegos should keep doing her thing, at least to keep the laugh-out-loud-worthy comment section going.