Packing healthy school lunches can be a challenge. While you can send your kids to school with a brown bag lunch full of healthy snacks, how can you be sure they’ll actually eat them?
Here are a few tips for packing healthy school lunches kids will actually eat:
1) Ask your child to help. Involving your kids in the grocery shopping and lunch preparation helps them establish healthy eating habits. Give them specific choices such as “Would you like celery with peanut butter, a bunch of grapes, string cheese, or baby carrots with hummus?” Your kids will be more likely to eat healthy snacks if they had a role in selecting them.
2) Keep a list of healthy lunch ideas handy. Post a list of healthy snack and lunch ideas on your fridge, and you won’t be stumped for ideas during the morning rush.
3) Try to pack lunch the night before. You won’t feel as rushed, so you’ll have time to wash and chop veggies or fruit instead of just tossing a cookie in the bag.
4) Try new things. Some kids are happy eating the same meal day after day. Others insist on variety. If you’re short on lunch ideas, check out LaptopLunches.com.
5) Keep some convenience foods on hand.Don’t have time to cut veggies, wash fruit or make a healthy wrap sandwich? That’s ok. If you have some convenience foods on hand like string cheese, apple sauce or yogurt, you can still pack a healthy lunch.
6) Clip your coupons. It’s frustrating that healthy food and fresh fruits and veggies costs more than junk food. But you can often find coupons for treats like crackers, cereal, applesauce, yogurt, granola, and more.
7) Last night’s dinner can become a yummy lunch. Cold pasta salad, grilled chicken strips with honey mustard dip, pita pizzas, soup/stew (warm it in the morning and put it in a thermos)….yum.
Yoplait Lunch Contest:
Yogurt is one of my favorite lunchtime snacks since it’s both wholesome (an excellent source of calcium and a good source of vitamins A & D) and tasty.
Yoplait Kids yogurt contains Omega-3 DHA, a nutrient that helps support healthy brain development in kids. Yoplait Kids yogurt contains no artificial sweeteners or flavors, and it has less sugar than other kids yogurts. Yoplait is offering a $1.50 off the kids yogurt. Click here for a coupon.
To help you get the school year started off right, Yoplait is giving away three lunch packs ($25 value) to Mamanista readers. The prize packs consist of a travel cooler, a travel BrainQuest game and a coupon for a free six pack of Yoplait Kids spoon-able or drink-able yogurt.
We’re going to be picking three winners. To enter, leave a comment on this post by 11:59pm on August 22, 2008 letting us know your favorite lunch or healthy snack. For two extra chances to win, subscribe to our newsletter here and to our daily email here.
