Teens are notoriously picky with food so it may be difficult to please a teen with a packed lunch. Learn how to pack a lunch for a teenager in this parenting video.
Avoid utensils
Avoid boring food
Ensure its tasty
Feed healthy wraps
Charles K. Bens, Ph.D. | President of Healthy @ Work, Inc., author of Healthy at Work: Your Pocket Guide to Good Health and The Healthy Smoker: How To Quit Smoking By Becoming Healthier First . Educational specialties include nutrition, smoking cessation, wellness and mental challenges. He is also the team leader for wellness consulting assignments.
DR. CHARLES BENS: Hi. I'm Dr. Charles Bens, and I'm the president of Healthy @ Work, Inc. And I'm here today to talk to you for a few minutes about how to pack a healthy lunch for teens. It's not an easy job. Well, I think there are some criteria that you want to try to make sure that you meet. First of all, you don't want them to have to use utensils to eat this lunch. They want to be able to eat it any where, any time on the run. It's really important. We also don't want to make it ordinary or boring because we know teens are impatient, and they want to have food that's interesting, but not too interesting that everybody looks at it and takes notice of it. We also want it to taste nutritious and be nutritious without being too obvious. I think a good way to do this is with wraps. It's really important to get all the healthy foods in there that you can. One of the ways to do that is use turkey or salmon, maybe a teriyaki sauce with it to kind of make it more tasty, and then mix in the brown rice. This gets you the complex carbohydrates. Then you can chop up all kinds of peppers, yellow, orange, red peppers. This really gets them the vitamins and minerals that they need. Then you can put that favorite dressing on that I mentioned such as teriyaki or thousand island or sesame seed. Any of those that they like would help to make this a very acceptable lunch for them. Then we use a whole wheat tortilla or a spinach tortilla, and now you've got a wonderful sandwich. They can eat it anywhere. It's very nutritious, and it tastes wonderful. You could also include a green drink. There are lots of good ones around that are tasty, and this will give them a lot more nutrients that they need. And for the afternoon, when they need that energy boost, a piece of fruit and some nuts is really the best way to go. Teens need energy. They need brain food. They need cellular growth food, so they need healthy fats like the ones from salmon and flaxseeds and olive oils. They need a good protein like chicken and salmon and turkey. They need quality carbohydrates like rice and oats and whole grains and vegetables and fruits. So I think you want to stay away from the sugar. You want to stay away from the saturated fats. You want to stay with the foods that are whole and natural, and you want to make sure that they're getting some of those everyday in their lunch. Because that's going to make sure they perform the best in school, and they stay the healthiest that they can be. Thank you so much.
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