Healthy Ideas for School Packed Lunches
How to Ensure Your Children Eat Healthily at School
With September comes autumn and of course the return of children to school in their smart uniforms. After a summer of picnics, parties, barbeques and days out, children return to school and can get bored of nothing but cheese sandwiches for weeks on end, sometimes being driven to swapping lunch with friends! A new approach to the packed lunch may be what is needed to keep lunch interesting, and of course to ensure it is nutritious and filling enough to get them through the afternoon.
Part of the problem is that parents get exasperated by what they can put in their children's lunchboxes, the continual search for something healthy, and at the same time, something fun for the children to eat. Ready prepared sandwiches and lunch "packs" marketed specifically for lunchboxes can also work out much more expensive than the ingredients themselves.
Tricks With Packed Lunch Sandwiches
If you do opt to give your children sandwiches, vary the sandwich fillings - try the following:
- fill with chicken and bacon using Sunday lunch leftovers, or tuna mayonnaise with sweetcorn or chopped spring onion.
- Try adding the roasted red peppers freely available in jars to sandwich fillings.
- Give them a twist by cutting off the crusts, then cut into quarters and spread one edge with mayonnaise or cheese spread. Then dip this edge in poppy seeds or crisp crumbs.
It is a common misconception that children do not like strong flavours. Nigel Slater writes, in his book Appetite: “Think of the tastes children enjoy: tomato ketchup, flavoured potato crisps, Marmite. They are all incredibly powerful flavours. How can we say that olives are too strong for children when they will happily eat a bag of salt and vinegar crisps?”
Pasta Salads, Sushi and Other Ideas for Packed Lunches
Save your leftover pasta with tomato sauce and once cold, mix in some grated cheese for a quick pasta salad that will give your child a break from the usual sandwiches and also energy for the afternoon ahead. Add sliced olives, spring onions, chopped ham and any other favourites for variations on this salad.
Try adding vegetarian sushi rolls to your child's lunchbox. Their round shape and bright colours are attractive, as well as healthy, with their fillings of red and yellow pepper, cucumber, carrot and avocado.
Or create an easy and interesting lunch by just packing a selection of different crackers and some different cheeses that your child likes. Olives, ham and even sweet pickled onions might go down a treat too and this type of lunch is quicker to prepare than making a sandwich.
Packing more fruit into your child’s lunchbox
Sometimes it seems a struggle when a child has their firm likes and dislikes to give them their recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables per day.
Try slightly more unusual fruits in a little fruit salad to add to their lunch bag. Kiwi fruits, with their bright green colour and sweetness are popular with children and contain more immune-boosting vitamin C than oranges. Tinned fruit can also be added. Tinned peaches, pears, mandarins are all popular fruits. Beware of bananas and apples which, if cut into a fruit salad, could go brown and slimy by lunchtime.
Depending on your child's age group you could also make miniature fruit kebabs using cocktail sticks. Be careful though and use your better judgement as cocktail sticks could become harmful in the hands of exuberant children!
Some schools offer a snack in the daytime consisting of a piece of fruit, but another way to up your child's fruit intake is to add fruit to your homemade muffins and cakes. Bananas are great in baking, as are blueberries, raspberries and apples. Fruit yoghurts and cereal bars are useful, but can contain a lot of sugar and additives.
Lunchbox treats can be healthy
A lot of the ready-prepared treats found on the supermarket shelves can be expensive, and can also contain hidden ingredients. There are lots of variations on the traditional "sandwich and crisps" packed lunch, even for time-strapped parents. Your child will look forward to opening their lunch box every day - and you will feel happier knowing that what you are giving them is nutritious and low in sugar too. Children might never want to swap their lunches again!
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