Every August, we celebrate Kids Eat Right Month, which celebrates the importance of a healthy, active lifestyle for kids and families. There is no better time to start building healthy habits for a lifetime than in childhood. It can be a fun and positive change for the whole family, too!
Whether you love it or hate it, the days of “Back to School” are right around the corner. For many of us, this means it’s time to dust off the lunchbox, dig out the ice packs, and put the lunch-making hat on. This can become no small feat, especially if you have a picky eater on your hands. The point of making someone a lunch is to have them actually eat it, right? Don’t stress; whether you make lunch once in a blue moon, or you have to hit the daily grind, here are five tips for putting together a lunch that is fun for kids, and healthy, too. (Feel free to use some of the tips for your own lunchbox. It’s great for adults to switch up their lunch routine also!)
Make a rainbow: Not only is a colorful lunch fun to look at, but a wide variety of colors translates to a wide variety of nutrients. The more color, the better. Think of red bell peppers, orange carrots, yellow corn, green avocado, and blueberries! All of the colors we see in our food have different nutrients that come together to create a very nourishing lunch.
Get trendy with a bento box: The lunchbox of-the-moment is the bento box. This box, which has it’s roots in Japan, contains several compartments of different shapes and sizes. This makes it the perfect container for keeping portion sizes in mind, and for keeping foods separate, in case you have a little one whose sandwich cannot touch the strawberries.
Always include protein: When we think of a healthy lunch, plenty of vegetables and some fruit come to mind. But don’t skimp on the protein! Protein is what helps keep us feeling full and satisfied between meals, and helps prevent blood sugar spikes (and crashes). Easy proteins include hardboiled eggs, roasted turkey or chicken slices, beans, or even a smear of nut butter.
Get creative: If you really want to up your lunchbox-making game, let your creativity shine. Cut foods into fun shapes with miniature cookie cutters, make faces with vegetables slices, or include little sticky note labels with fun names for food, like “green monster peas”, or “silly sunshine clementine”. Making lunch more engaging and imaginative makes children more likely to eat the food you took the time to make.
Skip the liquid sugar: Resist putting juice boxes, sports drinks, or energy drinks into the lunch mix. All that these beverages provide are empty calories and a heap of sugar. Plus, they tend to fill up little bellies quickly, leaving no room for the nutritious stuff, like the whole-wheat pasta or Greek yogurt you were hoping would be eaten first. In this case, water is the best way to go.
Including these tips in your lunch-making rotation means healthy, fun lunches will be in session all year. Your little school-goers may even look forward to lunch more than recess! Let me know- what are some ways you are celebrating Kids Eat Right Month this year?
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