Pack healthy lunches for your kids

Jet, Feb 23, 2004

Packing your child's school lunch can sometimes be as challenging as your child's day at school. As a parent you want to prepare a nutritious, well-balanced meal, but you don't want your child to trade his lunch or toss it in the cafeteria's garbage.

Now you can relax. Following are some suggestions that will ease your preparation and make your child's lunchtime healthy and fun.

* Plan For The Week

Naturally there is a daily rush when both parent and child are leaving for school and work in the mornings. However, by employing a weekly school lunch menu, this can help avoid choosing last-minute, unhealthy lunch choices.

The first step is to ask your children what they want to eat--children tend to eat healthier when they have a say. Add these and other planned meal ingredients to your grocery shopping so that you have the items stocked in your home.

Because the percentage of obese children has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, refer to the Food Guide Pyramid for nutrition recommendations to help plan a well-balanced diet for your child.

* Main Treat

Multigrain bread, bagels, raisin bread and pita pockets are healthy bases for a nutritious lunch. To keep your child's lunch appealing, you can vary the type of bread each day and cut the bread into fun shapes with cookie cutters. You can make the same shapes when cutting luncheon meats. Pasta salad is another option for offering different shapes and colors.

Protein-packed foods such as chicken, tuna and egg salad combined with pasta and breads make a well-balanced meal. Make fruit and raw vegetables appealing by making colorful animal shapes out of toothpicks with celery, carrots, green and red peppers, apples and pears.

* Drink Up

Experts recommend milk as the lunchtime beverage choice; it doesn't matter if it's white or chocolate (just take into account chocolate-flavored milk has more sugar). Also consider offering low-fat or nonfat milk instead. Fruit juices are OK too, but make sure you are serving your child 100% juice, and not a high-sugar fruit juice drink or soda. And of course bottled water keeps your little one refreshed as well. Use an insulated thermos or ice pack to keep beverages cold.

* Snack Time

To kids, sometimes snacks are just as important as the main treat. To avoid unneeded calories, incorporate your child's favorite snacks with nutritional treats too. Microwaved popcorn, pretzels, graham crackers, raisins and other dried fruits, low-sugar cereals, whole-wheat crackers, unsweetened applesauce, mini rice cakes and yogurt are all neat and great-tasting snack suggestions for your child's lunch.