Healthy lunchbox ideas for children

With the festive season behind us, it will soon be ‘back to school' for our children.  Moms will now be tasked with coming up with healthy food ideas after all the over- indulging and snacking on sweets and junk food over the holidays.

Are you a mom who has to pack lunchboxes and make snacks for your children every day of the week? And are you at your wits end trying to strike a balance between healthy food options and your child's picky eating habits?

Ensuring your children follow a healthy, balanced diet is sometimes easier said than done. Children may feel they can function on a diet of chips, biscuits, sweets, fizzy colddrinks and white bread.  It also seems ‘cool' when other children have biscuits and sweets for their lunch.  Unfortunately, more harm than good is being done and these children are malnourished and unhealthy as a result.  Introducing healthy food items into your child's lunchbox, will go a long way in ensuring they are happy and healthy in the long run.

As part of the Government Employees Medical Scheme's (GEMS) ongoing effort to educate our members and future members on a range of healthcare topics, we would like to provide mothers with a few healthy lunchbox ideas!

Encourage your children to try healthy alternatives and each time they do, reward them with a star or sticker and once they've collected enough reward them with a non-food treat.  Keep a chart in a visible place, where the children can proudly show their friends their progress.

It's vitally important that children get into the good habit of drinking water. During the hot summer months, freeze a bottle of water and offer it as an alternative to juices and flavoured drinks and save the milkshakes and fizzy drinks as a Friday or weekend treat.

Try to add at least two pieces of fresh fruit daily to their diet.  You can also purchase fresh fruit and cut them into pieces and make a fruit salad, which may be served with low fat yoghurt as an alternative.

Wholeweat bread contains high sugar levels, so opt for the occasional health or rye bred, rice cakes and wholemeal biscuits.

Children need healthy foods and drinks to snack on or to take to school. Below are some ideas to make your life easier and to ensure that your children have good, wholesome food to take to school and to have in-between meals.

The basics
There are certain basic principles that you need to keep in mind:

• Planning: you need to plan ahead so that you buy the correct foods for making snacks and lunchboxes.
• Resist the ‘easy' option of buying cold drinks, crisps and chocolate bars - in the long run this is going to ruin your children's health.
• Resist your children's demands and manipulations for high-fat snacks and fizzy cold drinks.
• Remember that children are different to adults - they have a much smaller stomach capacity, so they need regular snacks and some children have a much higher energy requirement because they're more active than adults.
• Remember that children are similar to adults - they also like interesting and tasty food that looks good enough to eat, but they may not appreciate very sophisticated foods.
• Lunchboxes may have to replace three to four meals a day - that breakfast that wasn't eaten, the mid-morning snack, lunch and the mid-afternoon snack - a whole menu in one box!
• Packaging is important - buy a sturdy plastic container that's big enough to accommodate the food you want your child to take to school without getting squashed, and consider buying a small non-breakable vacuum flask or vacutainer for keeping cold foods and drinks cold, and hot foods and drinks hot.
• Eating a variety of foods gives children and adults the best chance of obtaining a balanced diet.
• Select foods from all the food groups every day:

          o Milk and dairy products;
          o Fruit and vegetables;
          o Breads and starches;
          o Protein foods like meat, fish, eggs and legumes; and
          o Fats and oils, including nuts.

Food
Cereals, breads and starches

• Low-GI, wholewheat, brown or rye bread or buns, various healthy breads, crisp bread (rye or wheat), wholewheat biscuits.
• Pita bread, or hot dog/hamburger rolls, or pancakes/flapjacks, or mini pizzas, or bagels (buy the wholewheat varieties if possible).
• Wholewheat muffins or muffins made with fresh fruit like banana, dried fruit like raisins/sultanas/dates, or nuts; cheese muffins.
• Oat cakes or oat crunchies, health or energy bars (only for children who are very active and who don't have a weight problem as these foods are quite high in fat).
• Muesli or bran rusks.
• Rice cakes (buy various flavours).
• Baked potato with a filling (keep warm in vacutainer).
• Potato salad (use lite salad dressing or dilute mayonnaise with fat-free yoghurt).
• Cooked corn on the cob or mielie bread.

Protein foods

• Lean cold cuts (ham, beef, chicken, tongue).
• Grilled chicken pieces (wings or drumsticks).
• Cooked, chopped or minced meat or chicken/turkey.
• Homemade hamburger patties (use lean mince).
• Boiled eggs.
• Cooked, flaked fish.
• Canned fish such as tuna, pilchards or sardines.
• Smoked fish like snoek or mackerel.
• Meat or fish spreads and paste.

Milk and dairy foods

• Yoghurt (plain mixed with honey and nuts or fresh fruit, or ready-made, flavoured, low-fat varieties).
• Cottage cheese (flavour plain cottage cheese with tomato sauce or piccalilli, mashed banana or avocado, nuts or dried fruit, or buy ready-made flavoured cottage cheese - check the fat content and buy the fat-free versions).
• Cheeses (all types, use grated or cut into cubes).
• Cheese spread.

Fruit and vegetables

• Fresh fruit - apples, pears, naartjies, oranges, plums, peaches, grapes, litchis, mango, pineapple or melon pieces, figs.
• Dried fruit and fruit rolls.
• Carrot or celery sticks, baby tomatoes, cucumber wedges, lettuce.
• Pumpkin fritters.

Fats and oils

• Mono- or polyunsaturated margarine or lite margarine as a spread on breads, etc.
• Nuts, peanut butter.
• Nutella spread.
• Avocado - mash and use instead of margarine.
• Low-fat or lite salad dressing, or mayonnaise diluted with low-fat yoghurt.

Drinks and liquid foods

• Milk, plain or flavoured.
• Homemade milk shakes (puree fruit with low-fat milk, add honey and/or vanilla flavouring).
• Yogi-sip.
• Milk/fruit-juice blends.
• Fruit juice, still or sparkling.
• Soda water - flavoured, still or sparkling.
• Energy drinks for children who participate in sport or who are very active.
• Hot chocolate or cocoa made with skim milk (keep warm in vacutainer during winter).
• Soups (keep hot in vacutainer during winter).
• Cold water and ice for sports meetings.

What can be used as bread filling?

• Peanut butter with raw honey.
• Cheese & tomato.
• Cheese & lettuce.
• Bovril or marmite with cheese.
• Meatballs with tomato sauce.
• Chicken & gherkins.
• Boiled eggs with tomato sauce.
• Hummus.
• Cottage cheese with lettuce.
• Cold meat with lettuce (please remember that cold meat contains preservatives).

You could also try finger foods such as wholewheat pretzels, baby tomatoes and cubed cheese, diced carrot and cucumber sticks with cottage cheese dip or hummus.  Plain yoghurt with a small amount of raisins also makes for a healthy alternative.

Remember, your children's health is your responsibility.

If you would like to know how GEMS can assist you to obtain more information about your health related questions, you can phone the GEMS call centre on 0860 00 4367 or send a SMS to 083 450 4367. GEMS will assist you in every way possible to ensure your health and well-being.

Sources used: www.wlw.co.za and Dietdoc, December 2008