Healthy School Lunch Ideas - List of Googled Ideas

[frizbeemom]

I've been trolling the net for some ideas for healthy school lunches. While most of you have packed away your lunch boxes for the summer and feed them at your kitchen table, my kids are at a daycare center for the summer. If I don't pack their lunch, I need to pay for fast food that one of the ladies picks up. Excuse me, but they are not eaten fast

Comments

[mybonnykate]

Literally, fast food??? O.O

You can sneak greens into the smoothies, bit by bit. I started Ellie out with straight milkshakes, and went from there to frozen strawberries and raw milk, and then started adding nutritive pieces a tiny bit at a time. I make my own yogurt, which is naturally thin and runny enough to use as the liquid part of a smoothie for me, but she doesn't like the tang of yogurt. I empty a probiotic capsule into hers (and a raw egg, but that's controversial, I know).

We do the Famous Snack Tray, as you know, so my solution would be a bento box with fruit, veggies, cheese, nuts, and seeds in the segments. But YMMV; lunch is the only truly healthy meal that Ellie eats and she's still stuck on a heavy starch for dinner rut, so I take full advantage of her willingness to nibble on the snack tray. It does usually take them a couple hours to work on it, though.

[frizbeemom]

Yes, fast food! O.O Fries is on the menu almost every day, and it's a variation of chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, pizza... Heck, no way! It's actually more of a shock to me this time around, after having not been with them for a year, than it was almost five years ago when we started with them! I know, it's me that has changed

[sidheag]

Why, at a daycare centre, do they only get 15 mins to eat lunch? I can just understand this phenomenon at school if they're trying to fit in as many lessons as possible, but if you were designing the schedule without that constraint, why wouldn't you allow kids as much time as they'll use without getting bored?

These ideas sound very cute but so complicated! I only have to pack lunches for summer camp thingies, and it tends to be couple of slices of bread, maybe with cheese, maybe with jam; pot of tomatoes; pot of grapes; sometimes a packet of "healthy fat" [must look into these claims properly some time...] crisps.

[frizbeemom]

Oh, no sorry. While it's not unlimited time at daycare, it is more than 15 min and they were able to eat all of their lunch on Friday. I was just trying to find some options that work year round, since they tend to chat and get distracted during lunch. :) Keeping it simple wrt containers to open tends to work best.

[ssterikoff]

J likes consistency, so her lunch is usually organic milk, cheerios (original, not the sugar-coated ones), and either a piece of fruit or unsweetened organic apple sauce. Sometimes she will ask for something different. Sometimes I substitute yogurt, cheese (she's iffy about cheese - sometimes she eats it, sometimes she doesn't), salami, whole-grain crackers,... Chocolate milk was a recent request, and it was mixed 50/50 with white milk. Her afternoon snack (lunch is around 10:30AM at her school) is often cheerios and a 50/50 mix of organic juice and water.

Dinner is where veggies appear. We'll try putting carrots in her lunch next year. With no front teeth for a good part of the year, she had trouble biting them.

[frizbeemom]

I would love to put milk in their lunch! How do you keep it cold? Do you freeze it the night before? I just worry it will turn warm and who wants to drink warm sour milk? Lol. I sometimes put dry cherios in as a snack, without milk. The yogurt doesn't fly because it needs to be refrigerated cold for them, but it will work at daycare this summer because their lunches get refrigerated, but not for school. I want to get some bigger, better ice packs for the lunches next school year.

Carrots is a very iffy thing for me. Sometimes they're eaten. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes I find them hidden behind furniture so that I think they're eaten.

[ssterikoff]

http://www.thermos.com/product_catalog.aspx?CatCode=LUNC... )

[maryidarren]

things that are banned from our school, Peanut Butters, Ranch type Dressings, shellfish, all nuts, and in one class Bananas. The Banana one moves with the child.

[frizbeemom]

We had peanut butter banned at the Kindergarten school, but not at the elementary school. I could understand why it would be, but since it is not, I like to use it some days. :) Wow, bananas is a weird thing to be allergic to.

[maryidarren]

If you are allergic to Bananas, you are most likely allergic to latex. If you are allergic to Shell Fish, you may find yourself allergic to Iodine.

[maryidarren]

T will eat anything I put in his lunch, he's grown up a lot.
A? Oh my! it's a struggle. We've settled on Jam sandwiches, every day! whole wheat bread is the only bread they eat. grapes and chopped strawberries are a hit. In the winter it's a lot of milk based pudding cups. Unsweetened applesauce, Fruit cups, frozen Yogart tubes. (a bit sweet though, but it gets them over that drained feeling) Thermos of pasta and sauce. (this one is hit and miss)
Thomas leftover homemade pizza, Leftover turkey chunks and ww pasta, Egg Salad Sandwiches. Cheese, apples.
My boys are all sensitive to apple juice so they all get Orange JUICE boxes, no beverages, or punches allowed (my rule)
MJ?Will eat grape tomatoes by the pint! so I'll throw them in when I start making his lunches in September.

[frizbeemom]

I can't do the frozen yogurt tubes because I can't find any without food dye. Perhaps I should check at Whole Foods. Hmmm. Oh, I forgot, I do do the orange and apple juice in addition to the flavored water pouches. Unfortunately, grape tomatoes are snubbed around here. A lot of fresh fruit and veggies are, but they get offered consistently anyway. One day they'll decide they like f/v's. :-p

[maryidarren]

MJ has a tomato plant on the back step, and either he or the bear will eat them.

[galagwyn]

I know I live in the land of Crunch but I am struck by all the juice and cookies. At A's school, it is requested (and enforced) that there are no sweets - no cookies or cakes, no prepackaged treats at all in the lunches. No juice - water is provided.
A typical lunch for A would be PB&J on whole wheat, carrots, apple, banana and raisins. In fact, the carrots / apple / banana combo is repeated daily with the sandwich being occasionally replaced by pasta or rice or cheese and crackers. He also likes avocado and tofu chunks. R's snack is provided by her class. Oatmeal, rice, wheat bread (they bake it there as part of the class), pasta, and veg. soup or fruit salad (dep. on season). Each day's starch is supplemented by seeds, almond butter, fresh fruits / veg, butter. Water is the only drink. Fats are encouraged, sugars are not. :-)

[frizbeemom]

Wow. Areas are so different. I'd love to switch schools for a week so they realize that some kids eat much more healthy lunches than they do. I really wish we had some more Crunch around here! But when I pull all of their juice and cookies and they revolt, I will remind them of your school. ;)

I am thinking of not putting any money into the lunch accounts next year. When I pack too boring/healthy of a lunch, Emily just charges what she wants to add to the lunch which makes it worse than my mediocre fare. I hate that we have NO control over what our kids buy! I can't limit anything. I want money in the account for the day that the lunch gets left on the bus or we have NO groceries in the house, and she doesn't go hungry, but it comes back to bite me when we're hanging over the toilet in the middle of the night because she ate some highly processed, highly dyed crap at school.

[ssterikoff]

Jessica bought lunch one day this past year, because what she voted on in the kids election won. She was treated to lunch by the principal for reading a certain number of minutes in a week for the Million Minute Challenge. The bought lunch was spaghetti and meatballs, the treated lunch was pizza. Lunch is $2.85, not including drink or additional snack. The menu appears to rotate between pizza, burgers, and chicken nuggets with tacos making an appearance two-three times a month. With their entree they get cookie, and a choice of a fruit or veggie, if I'm reading the menu correctly. They can buy ice cream, doritos, cookies,... in the cafeteria as well as milk and juice. It is cheaper and healthier to send lunch in - she just doesn't have any money to buy lunch, so she eats what she brings

[mybonnykate]

How often does it happen that she has no lunch? If it's like a once-a-month thing, I would empty out the account and let her go hungry. She's less likely to forget lunch on the bus, plus I would think that a bit of hunger (made up for with an afternoon snack, so it's not like she'd be skipping a meal) is healthier for her than the aftereffects of eating junk food that is, for her, essentially a toxin.