Healthy School Lunchboxes for Healthy Kids
Struggling for ideas for simple healthy snacks to fill your kids lunchboxes and their bellies ? To help them feel happy and healthy all day long and give them brain food for afternoon classes ? May help with your own lunchboxes too ! Well here are some handy tips to help you and your family to plan ahead.
This is my basic food plate and I refer to it when thinking of what I am going to put in my children’s lunchboxes :
By sticking to my healthy food plate guide every day, I know that my children will be getting that perfect healthy meal and mix of foods that they need for school and every day life.
The drink should be water (not artificially flavoured) or freshly made juice and NOT fizzy drinks / soda / pop or cordial. If your child does not like water, then you can use fruit to flavour the water, such as strawberries, lemon or lime or a mix.
The oil should not be vegetable oil, but should be coconut oil, avocado oil or hemp oil where possible – used for cooking and dressing.
Giving healthy snacks and meals to our children is important in providing good nutrition. I do this to encourage lifelong healthy eating habits. It also makes me feel happy, knowing that I am giving them the best start in life.
Knowing that I am doing my very best as a mother, to help prevent potentially disabling and lethal diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. Meals and snacks play a major role with helping our children grow healthy and strong.
Fruit and vegetables are the most important snacks to be serving our children. These days most children do not get [eat] their recommended servings (5-13) of fruit and vegetables each day. Therefore when considering lunches, we must make sure they have their recommended daily intake. Remember : Fruit and vegetables help to lower the risk of disease and illness, because they contain important nutrients, vitamins, minerals and fibre.
Serving fruit and vegetables to your children can be challenging, however encouraging them by talking to our children to discover which fruit and vegetables they like and playing fun taste testing games each week with different varieties of fruit and vegetables, can really help you both to know which fruit and vegetables to use. If you add some good planning to this in terms of shopping, and what you want to pack each day, then it can be really quick and easy to put a healthy lunchbox together for your children.
Healthy School Lunch Suggestions
- Basic Salad : Any one of these (Egg Tuna Cheese or Fresh Meat) with a combination of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, garlic, onion, celery, radishes etc (whatever the child prefers)
- Oat Crackers : With soft cheese, chopped carrots (or carrot sticks), peppers or cucumber
- Egg Brown Rice : Egg and cooked brown rice, fried in coconut oil and mixed with some raw vegetables that your child likes (this can be prepared the night before)
- “Free From” Wraps : Wraps filled with their favourite choice of filling
- “Free From” Pasta : With a sauce of their preference. Add to it any vegetable of their choice, maybe even tuna or fresh meat if your child wishes
All of the above are sent with a piece of fresh fruit every day and occasionally a fruit bar (such as a nakd bar or packet) or fresh made healthy sweet snack (such as our signature Sweet Potato Chocolate Orange Brownie or One Minute Slice) and a bottle of water NOT pop, soda or bottled juice.
I hope that this has helped you and given you some ideas for making your kids lunchbox a healthy treat !
Thanks for reading
Gilly-Marie Harvey
(Dale just typed it, Gilly writed it!)
NB : “Free From” refers to gluten free and yeast free products which can be found in most supermarkets
