It's in the Bag: 7 Tips for Packing Healthy School Lunches
If you dread packing school lunches—or your child dreads eating them—it's time to team up to pack some healthier, more enticing options.
School cafeterias are making strides toward serving healthier lunches. New federal nutrition standards require schools to offer more fruits, vegetables and whole grains and to limit the sodium, calories and saturated and trans fats in school foods. And the School Nutrition Association's 2012 Back to School Trends Report shows that schools are complying.
Over 55% of the 579 school districts surveyed offer self-serve salad or produce bars, in addition to the traditional serving line. And a growing number of schools provide healthy grab-and-go options, such as prepackaged salads, whole fruit and packaged produce like bags of baby carrots, grapes and sliced apples.
But, if your child goes through the school lunch line and chooses French fries instead of broccoli and fruit cobbler over fresh fruit, lunch can be a nutritional disaster.
So, what's a parent to do? Start by talking to your child about what nutritious foods he or she really likes, and then think of creative ways you can put those in a lunch bag. For the younger set, tuck in a note on a napkin encouraging them to enjoy their lunch.
7 Tips for Healthier Lunches
Here are seven tips to get you started.
Variations on a PBJ theme. If your child really likes peanut butter and jelly, try some healthier variations. First, start with whole-wheat bread (for white-bread diehards, they sell white whole-wheat sandwich bread). Instead of jelly, add fresh fruit like bananas, apples or grapes. You can create a peanut butter and strawberry wrap by topping a tortilla wrap with peanut butter and thinly sliced strawberries, and then rolling it, cutting it in half and sealing securely in plastic wrap for the lunch bag. Tip: To avoid soggy bread, spread a thin coat of peanut butter on each slice of bread and put the fruit in the middle.
Snick-snack lunch. The Urban Dictionary defines snick-snack as a small snack. So on snick-snack days, skip the sandwich and pack a bag full of fun—and healthy—finger foods. Some options: fresh fruit, like apples, berries, pears, grapes, melon balls or cubes, bananas and oranges; low-fat string cheese or other low-fat cheeses cut in cubes or rolled up; nuts (did you know they may promote brain health?), sunflower seeds or granola; rice cakes or whole-wheat crackers; celery sticks with peanut butter or low-fat cream cheese and raisins on top (ants on a log); and other fresh veggies like carrots, cucumbers, bell peppers, cherry tomatoes and broccoli florets, with low-fat dressing for dipping. Tip: If your child won't eat a whole apple or pear (because of braces or preference), use an apple slicer/corer to quickly cut it into eight slices and toss in a plastic zip-top bag with a squirt of lemon or lime to keep the sections from browning.
