How to Pack Healthy School Lunches Kids Will Love

Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared on Living on the Cheap.

If your child regularly brings lunch to school, you’ve faced the “what to pack” dilemma. You want to pack something nutritious, but you also need to be sure your kid will eat it.

A thrown-out lunch does nothing for your child’s health or your wallet; it’s basically cash in the trash.

Here are some simple tips to pack healthy school lunches for kids so that they fuel their minds and bellies.

Why lunch is important for kids

In addition to providing roughly a third of the nutrients your child’s body needs to grow and be healthy, a well-balanced lunch also provides brain and body energy to remain alert and focused for the rest of the school day. So, making sure your child eats it is crucial.

Finding that balance of nutritious and delicious can sometimes be a challenge, but it’s far from impossible.

I spoke to my friend Sally Kuzemchak, a registered dietitian, author of “Cooking Light Dinnertime Survival Guide: Feed Your Family. Save Your Sanity” and author of the Real Mom Nutrition blog, to get her ideas.

Think outside the lunch box

Most of us view a school lunch as a sandwich, a side, a drink and maybe a treat, but Kuzemchak thinks in broader categories: “A protein source, whole grain, fruit, vegetable, and ideally a calcium source as well,” she says.

This concept can broaden your possibilities and allow you to think “outside of the lunch box.”

For example, a lunch of whole-grain crackers, turkey and cheddar cubes, melon balls, and cucumber sticks with some dip meets all the requirements, as does a slice or two (depending on size) of leftover pizza and apple slices with peanut butter.

Even a basic sandwich can be more appealing if you swap out plain bread for cinnamon bread, a hot-dog roll, a whole-grain mini bagel or a whole-grain tortilla.

Here are some foods that would fit into each group that you could mix and match to create lunches with kid-appeal.

Healthy food lunch options

• Protein: Deli meat slices (that could be rolled up) or cubes, nut butter, hard-boiled egg, edamame, hummus
• Whole grain: Crackers, tortilla, different breads, different types/shapes of rolls, popcorn
• Fruit: Apple slices, orange smiles (segments), melon balls, raisins, pineapple chunks, no-sugar added applesauce or fruit cups
• Veggies: Cucumber sticks, colorful pepper rings, pizza or tomato sauce, carrot sticks or canned green beans (rinsed and drained). A bit of low-fat dip goes well with many of these.
• Calcium source: Low-fat milk, reduced-fat yogurt, cheese cubes or slices, cottage cheese (some kids might like their fruit mixed in with this)

School lunch recipes for kids

• Pack yogurt, cut-up grapes or diced apples/pears and a whole-grain cereal in separate containers, and your child can make a yogurt parfait by combining it all at school.
• Homemade soups are great for cold days. Make a vegetable-packed minestrone or one of these recipes on the weekend for the upcoming week or have it for dinner and send the kids with leftovers for lunch.
• Kuzemchak also has two yummy, homemade fruit leather recipes on her blog that could be made on the weekends for simple grab-and-go during the week: strawberry fruit leather and apple cinnamon fruit leather.
• These mini deep dish pizzas are incredibly easy. They can be eaten cold, or you can reheat them and throw them into a thermos if your kids prefer them warm. Use your kids’ favorite toppings to personalize them.
• Homemade granola is also easy to make and can be frozen to stay fresh longer.
• Once or twice a week, surprise your child with a sweet ending to his or her lunch. This can be as simple as a handful of chocolate kisses or a pudding cup. If you’re a baker, bake up a batch of cookies one weekend that you can freeze and dole out over the course of several weeks.

Tips for prepping school lunches

• Try it out at home. Make some test lunches and offer them to the kids on weekends. They can offer feedback and tell you which ones are favorites — and which ones might get thrown in the trash.
• Keep it fairly simple. Remember that lunch time in some schools can be as short as 10 to 15 minutes, and if children have to spend most of their time opening difficult containers or spreading sauces, etc., they may not have enough time to eat. Ready-to-eat, dump-and-mix, or finger foods and dips are all good choices.
• Kuzemchak warns, “Be careful about packing too much. I find that if I scale back on the portions and number of items I pack, my kids eat more. Large lunches are overwhelming for small kids, especially when they have a limited time to eat.”
• Be sure to keep cold foods cold (with an ice pack) and hot foods hot (in a thermos). When I have both hot and cold foods for my kids, the cold food goes in the lunch box with the ice pack and the thermos goes in a separate bag that I tie onto the lunch box handle.
• I also like my kids to drink milk for lunch, so I make a tray of mini milk ice cubes and each morning I pop one in their milk cup. It’s just a little extra insurance that the milk stays cold, in addition to the ice pack.

How to prep school lunches

Another challenge with creating a healthy and yummy lunch is carving out time to make one. Kuzemchak has some helpful tips:

• Do as much as you can the night before. Mornings are crazy enough.
• Involve your kids if possible. For instance, make a little chart on selections you both agree on and have items kids can grab and pack.
• Prep some items on the weekends. For example, freeze sandwiches for the week then pop them in the lunch box the night before when you’re packing. By lunch, they’ll be defrosted. Wash and cut vegetables.
• Get gear that makes it easy. I’m a huge fan of divided lunch box containers because you can fit everything in the compartments, but there’s only one container and one lid. Reusable containers are not only good for the planet, but think of the money you’ll save on baggies and foil. Plus no more flat sandwiches from apples smooshing them.

What not to pack in a lunch box

You know your children and what they need best. Make good food choices that will help your children throughout the school day so that they can be in-seat and concentrate on learning.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pack them fun foods, but giving them a lunch box full of sugary sweets might be a recipe for making them full of energy and having difficulty concentrating.

Do your best to include foods that are healthy and delicious, and communicate with them what they’re hoping to find in their school lunch.

When you’re all on the same page, it’s the best approach for them to be able to enjoy their lunch and not waste any of the food.