Healthy lunch box

[Jules]

Hello there, fabulous site. I wonder if you can help me? I am a teacher in a primary school and we are trying to encourage parents to include healthy options in children's lunch boxes. I would like to make a leaflet for the parents with some suggestions. Have you got any recipes or healthy options that are cheap and quick/easy to prepare. Many thanks Jules

[Louise]

Hi Jules,

I notice this is your first post, thank you for your input and welcome to Organically Pure. What a great question, have you seen the Jamie Oliver video in 'Articles' under 'News/videos', that may give you some ideas for educating parents about reducing the sugar content in food.

Keep coming back to the forum for input from other people, but from me, I would suggest always encourage whole fruit and vegetables. I believe children love finger food, and it is known that raw food carries the greatest concentration of nutrients. My suggestion would be cut up fruit with maybe a yogurt dip (occasionally), and some veg sticks with a dip of hummus.

I would also strongly advise parents to provide water for a drink with maybe lemon to taste for at least 50% of the time. All the soft drinks contain sugar, or a chemical substitute. Fruit juices are not recommended as a general rule, these should be treats and not the staple diet.

It isn't easy with children, they are nurtured in such a way that almost everything they eat and contains sugar, this makes it very hard to change such an eating pattern with tear and tantrums along the way. My advice, make the changes slowly and make it fun.

[Teri23]

Hi Jules,
There is a thread on healthy snacks in the General section, so I did put a reply there too. But I think my picture may offer some suggestions to your question too. I think a picture speaks a thousand words