As the new school year begins, many parents are facing the dilemma: how can they prepare a healthy, nutritious and enjoyable school lunch? With a little bit creativity, your kids will be able to enjoy a healthy and variant lunch that will contain key nutritious and will be fun and interesting enough for the child. Here you can find useful tips and ideas for healthy school lunches.
Healthy Lunchbox: Dos and Donts
<li><Dont</b> force healthy lunches on your kids. Try to improve the reputation of healthy food by explaining its benefits to them. Tell them that eating healthy food would provide them better energy to enjoy after school activities, help them to become better students, and so on.
<li><b>Do</b> get the children involved in the lunch preparation. Let them pick their favorite food out of a variety of healthy options.
<li><Dont</b> give up at ease to their demands. The adjustment to healthy food may take some time, especially if they are used to eat junk food.
Do allow them to have fun food once in a while, but try to prefer healthy supplements such as oatmeal cookies instead of Oreos, for example.
Your child's lunch has to be based on whole grains, protein, vegetables and fruits and contain small amount of fat and sugar. In addition, your childs lunchbox has to contain some healthy snacks. Water is the best beverage; other options can be an ice tea, 100 percent natural fruit juice or a cider.
Your children school lunches have to vary from day to day. Otherwise, your kid would be bored with having the same meal every day, even if it is his favorite food. Make sandwiches from different whole grain breads; vary in rolls, pretzels, or even healthy muffins. Young children would enjoy sandwiches shaped by a cookie cutter to diamonds, triangles or animal shapes. Use vegetables of different colors to create a happy, colorful lunchbox.
The sandwiches can contain peanut butter with jam, cream cheese, mozzarella cheese, tuna salad, grilled chicken breast, roast beef, hard boiled eggs and mix them with vegetables and healthy spreads. Instead of a standard sandwich, you can fill pita bread or wrap tortilla with any of the fillings mentioned above. Leftovers such as pasta salad with vegetables, macaroni and cheese, cold pizza or fish sticks could be a convenient and nutritious alternative to the everyday sandwiches.
Your child will have enough opportunities to taste unhealthy snacks at birthday parties and other occasions. Cookies, potato chips and other unhealthy snacks can be easily replaced with better alternatives such as granola bars, yogurts, rice cakes, vegetable fingers, fruits, nuts and raisings.
As you can see, the options for a healthy and nutritious school lunches are endless. Here are lunchbox ideas for your kid first school week:
Day 1: Rye bread sandwich with mayonnaise, lettuce and cooked chicken, a banana, small bag of whole grain cereals
Day 2: Cold spaghetti salad with tuna and vegetables, raisins, dried plums, English muffin
Day 3: Toasted pita bread filled with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese, carrot and salary sticks, yogurt
Day 4: Tortilla filled with mozzarella cheese and salsa, granola bar, small coconut
Day 5: Whole wheat roll with peanut butter and strawberry jam, an apple, rice cakes
Pam Walker is a mother and has made many school lunches. You can read her articles in the Online casinos 707 web site, which has information on everything from scratch cards to poker.