The reason that centre's regulate what you should send to care is because child care regulations and accreditation state that we need to provide parents with information about healthy food and ensure children are meeting their daily dietary requirements by restricting certain foods. I do agree that it can be counter productive because once they go to school they can eat whatever but you would be supprised how many children actually question what is in their lunch box when they have something unhealthy. The amount of times i've heard a child at arvo tea say öh no mum didn't pack me any fruit to have before my snack" is really encouraging. Hopefully healthy food messages will stay with children.

Back to OP lol. For daycare I pack my DD usually little containers with meat (ham or chopped chicken) or baked beans or a hard boiled egg, chopped up cucumber, capsicum, avocado, snowpeas and cherry tomatoes. For arvo tea it is fruit chopped up and plain crackers or plain corn chips with hommus, sometimes sultanas or dried banana, soy or goatmilk yogurt as she is dairy free. We take a peice of fruit for shared morning tea.
Know what you mean about the apples which is why the centre i work at decided that children should just bring their own piece of fruit for morning tea. There were also some parents who didn't contribute at all which was a bit rude.