A healthy lunch is an important way to ensure that your child gets plenty of nutrition. Whether your child eats lunch at school or at home, there are ways to ensure that she is getting the most benefit from her midday meal. KidsHealth reports that a healthy lunch will supply your child with enough energy for her afternoon activities. A lunch filled with nutritious foods will also play an important part in your child's overall diet and health.
Make Healthy Foods Fun
Presenting nutritious foods in entertaining ways may encourage your child to eat more of those foods. Henry Legere recommends in his book, "Raising Healthy Eaters: 100 Tips for Parents," that making your child's food more fun is a simple way to ensure that she eats enough. Cut her sandwich in shapes using a cookie cutter or use a small cookie cutter to cut shapes out of cheese slices. Using fruit and peanut butter to create a face on the top of her sandwich is another way to make her lunch more fun.
Allow Your Child to Choose
Fruits and vegetables should be a daily part of your child's lunch, KidsHealth notes. Your child likely has certain preferences for some fruits and vegetables over others. Allow your child to accompany you to the supermarket and choose his own fresh fruits and vegetables for his lunches that week or show him what you have on hand and let him decide which item he would like to have. Children who are given a choice consume more fruits and vegetables, which will improve the nutrition he gets from his lunch.
Color and Variety Challenge
A diet filled with many different colors is more nutritious than a diet filled with the same foods and colors over and over again. Legere reports that getting your child in on choosing healthy foods will ensure that she eats a variety of nutritious options. Challenge yourself and your child to create a lunch that includes at least three or four colors or three or four different foods. Include carrots and grapes and you have two colors and two nutritious foods. Whole wheat bread will add another color and variety, as will whole wheat pasta with tomato sauce.
Find Alternates to Unhealthy Foods
Many common lunch foods are high in fat, salt or sugar. KidsHealth reports that finding healthier alternates will increase the nutrition content of your child's lunch. Jelly on a peanut butter sandwich adds several grams of sugar and up to 100 calories. Replace it with banana or apple slices, which are still sweet but more nutrient dense. Replace mayonnaise on a turkey sandwich with mustard or hummus to reduce saturated fat. Pack fresh fruit in place of cookies or candy and 100 percent fruit juice in place of soda.
References
- KidsHealth: School Lunches
- "Raising Healthy Eaters: 100 Tips for Parents"; Henry Legere; 2010
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