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Healthy Lunch Box Ideas
Make your kids’ packed lunches more exciting with these healthy lunch box ideas
Packing a healthy lunch box for your children is a daily challenge for parents.
Kids are hungry at lunchtime, so they need a packed lunch that satisfies their appetite and gives them plenty of healthy food, including lots of the all important fresh fruit and vegetables.
All the noise about healthy school lunches has had an impact, and almost half of parents in the UK who pack a lunch box for their children, say that healthy eating is the most important factor in their choice of what to include, according to a recent survey.
Trouble is, that it can be a bit of a challenge to keep coming up with healthy lunch box ideas.
What to include? As well as providing stuff that’s healthy, parents are also trying to find food that’s a bit more interesting than the predictable cheese or ham sandwich with an apple. Here are some healthy lunch box ideas and sandwich filling suggestions to give you inspiration.
10 HEALTHY LUNCH BOX IDEAS
Add interesting salad to all your sandwiches – rocket (arugula), shredded raddichio, Chinese leaves, shredded spring onions (scallions), finely chopped red peppers, cold cooked fine beans, mustard and cress (grow your own on a kitchen windowsill), beansprouts or alfalfa.
Choose interesting breads for sandwiches and rolls – try breads made with olive oil, like focaccia and ciabatta.
Pack a simple hunk of sun-dried tomato or olive bread, with some thinly sliced cold meat or cheese to go with it.
For a healthy snack, pack a small tub of olives – lots of older children love their piquant flavour.
Fruit – buy organic whenever you can. Try kiwi, (halved and clingwrapped, with a spoon), cubed melon and blueberries, a handful of strawberries or raspberries, a passion fruit (with spoon), segment of pomegranate, orange cut into segments for easier eating, plums, a foil-wrapped peach or nectarine.
As a change from sandwiches, offer an individual quiche, samosas, a box of sushi, a pasty or pie from wholefood shop (or home made), a vegetarian ‘sausage roll’.
Make veggie bits a daily must in your children’s lunch boxes. Half a cold cooked corn cob, bean salad, a vegetable-based dip or pate, cold roast vegetables such as peppers, courgettes, squash (these are a good snack, or you can use them in sandwiches).
If you’ve had a great healthy supper one night, save a portion to use in a packed lunch. Pasta bakes, curries, casseroles – many children will happily eat these cold, or the school may have facilities for re-heating food, particularly for older children. Or pack hot foods that are fairly liquid in a small vacuum flask and provide a fork or spoon.
One of my most popular healthy lunch box ideas has been to make a batch of healthy cakes and freeze them for packed lunches. A mini fruit cake, a scone, or a slice of carrot cake all go down well and are much healthier than manufactured cakes.
Make up a mix of chopped dried fruit, seeds and nuts (if your school allows these). Buy the items separately and mix them yourself in a big airtight container. Much cheaper than buying little bags of trail mix.
Smoked salmon. Economise with trimmings, dress with a spoonful of low fat crème fraiche and a scattering of dill.
Avocado, thickly sliced, with crumbled grilled bacon.
Mashed banana and finely chopped dates.
Cold roast beef. As a relish, cook finely sliced onions until slightly charred and leave to cool.
Spread breads with black olive paste, pesto or hummus, then add filling.
Make bruschetta: grill slices of ciabatta or other open-texture bread on both sides. Rub with cut garlic if you wish. Drizzle olive oil over the bread, and top with mashed soft cheese like Gorgonzola, hummus and chopped tomato, or Parma ham. Pack close together in a box and cover with foil to keep the topping in place.
Thinly sliced ham, with finely sliced bottled artichokes or red peppers.
Brie or Camembert cheese, sliced, topped with finely grated carrot.
Mix canned fish like tuna or salmon with lemon juice, paprika, finely chopped onion and a little mayo.
Chicken, with cold roasted mushroom slices, or shredded watercress, or blue cheese creamed with a few chopped walnuts.
I hope this list of healthy lunch box ideas has given you some inspiration. Even if you try just a couple of new things each week, your kids' packed lunches will be that much more interesting, and you'll be giving them some great healthy eating habits.
