Healthy packing doesn’t always mean healthy eating. Sure, it looks simple and easy, but how do we get our children to actually eat the lunch we pack? In schools, “Children may have as little as twenty minutes to make it to the cafeteria, find their seats, eat, and clean up after themselves, so ease is the name of the game,” says Hillary Wright, MEd, RD, of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates. So healthy, quick, and easy-to-eat food is the answer.
The best way to encourage our children to eat healthy is to make them part of the shopping and choosing experience. Let your child make choices about soup, bread, sandwich spreads and fillings, fruits, and vegetables. Most of us pack too much food in our child’s lunchbox and children tend to eat the “sweet stuff” first. Although it’s often more expensive, many individual serving foods like pretzel sticks, applesauce, cheese sticks or cubes, vegetable dips, and yogurt are healthy, easy to pack, and attractive to children.
Try making gradual changes towards a healthier lunch. You can pack the usual sandwich and add vegetables and dip instead of chips, or put in half of the child’s usual sandwich and add half of something new. Check out these lunch combinations:
Lunch Ideas
When making food choices for your child, or guiding him to make his own healthy choices, be aware of food allergies. Many child care centers and schools are peanut-free, so be sure to keep that in mind. Speak to your pediatrician before serving anything new like peanut butter or strawberries, especially for children under a year. Here are some ideas:
- Mini bagels with pizza sauce and cheese, melon pieces
- Mild salsa and chips, cheese sticks, cut grapes
- Bran muffins, small yogurt, strawberries
- Soup in a thermos, cantaloupe pieces
- Tortilla wrapped around cheese sticks, cucumber sticks and dip
- Hummus on pita bread with sprouts, carrot sticks, blueberries
- Cheese and apple slices on cinnamon raisin bread, yogurt
- Turkey cubes, crackers and cheese, apple slices
- Mini-rice cakes with cream cheese, broccoli, cheese chunks
- Peanut butter on banana bread or pita, yogurt, peaches
