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Packing a school lunch for a child can often be more difficult than it should be. If it’s a healthy lunch, it could be even trickier. Just because you’ve packed it, there’s no guarantee they’ll eat it. That doesn’t mean that you’ll need to give your child the sugary stuff they ask for.
Instead, you can put together a nutritious lunch for them. That’ll only be the case if you know how to pack a healthy school lunch for your child. While you’d expect that to be simple, it’ll take more work than you’d expect.
Thankfully, however, everything should be quite straightforward. You’ll need to keep a few things in mind and follow a few steps. Once you do, your child should come how with an empty lunch box every day.
How To Pack A Healthy School Lunch
Get Your Kids Involved
When you’re putting together your child’s school lunch, you should try to get them involved. You can do so in a few ways. Asking them to choose between different things or simply asking them what they’d want could be the easiest way of doing so.
You can also bring them grocery shopping so they can pick out items. When you do, make sure to steer them toward healthy options. Even getting them to help put the lunch together themselves, if possible, could be a recommended route.
Getting them involved in this, among other areas, could be a great way to bond with them.
Make Sure They’re Properly Packed
If your child’s lunch isn’t packed properly, then there could be problems. Things can break and mix together, which could make it unappealing for your child. That could be one of the main reasons they leave items uneaten.
That will be quite easy to address, however. Naturally, a sturdy lunch box is the first thing that you should pick up. That’ll make sure that nothing falls out and gets lost before lunchtime. It’s also recommended that you use bags for each of the food items.
That’s especially true if you’re packing sandwiches and similar items. A zipper pouch could be the ideal option. These will be easy to open and close, so your child shouldn’t have any problems getting their food when they’re hungry.
Incorporate All Of The Food Groups
A balanced diet will include all of the food groups. You should make sure these are represented in your child’s lunch. That shouldn’t be too hard, as each food group has multiple different options to choose from.
With fruits, for example, you could pick frozen, canned, baked, and much more. The same can be said for vegetables, dairy, protein, and whole grains. These can each be individual parts of your child’s school lunch or be put together in some form, such as a sandwich.
Regardless of how they’re put together, you should make sure that each of the food groups are included. That’s also the case for other meals.
Make Sure They Get Enough Water
While water can be the healthiest drink for your child, they often don’t want it. You can change this by getting them a water bottle that they love. That could be from their favorite movie, television show, or video game.
The more they like the bottle, the more likely they’ll be to drink the water. You could also consider adding bits of fruit to add some extra flavor. If you go this route, you child shouldn’t have any issue getting their daily amount of water.
Make Healthy Fun
Depending on your child’s age, you might be able to make healthy food fun for them. There are quite a few ways to do so. You could use a cookie cutter, for example, to make shapes out of healthy sandwiches. The same thing could be tried with a melon-baller and fruit.
Getting fun shapes that your child enjoys will maximize the impact this has. You could also have a theme for the lunches, where each day revolves around a particular theme. That’ll help your child get more interested in what they have, regardless of whether or not it’s happy.
Wrapping Up
Knowing how to pack a healthy school lunch for your child can take more effort than you’d want. Once you’ve initially put this in, however, things should get much easier. Not only will you figure out exactly what nutritious foods your child will eat, but they might even broaden their horizons.
That could encourage them to try different things, which could let you pack healthier and healthier foods. Communicating with your child will be a large part of this. Make sure not to force them to try anything, but continue to encourage them as much as you can. With that, you should see them eating healthier in no time.
Kori
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