Lunch packing tips for school children
Posted on: 18/Dec/2018 12:38:18 PM
It takes a lot of effort and hard work to pack lunch for school children on daily basis keeping the account of taste as well as health and balanced nutrition. The aspects of heathy lunch or well packed nutritious dish will never satisfy children’s expectation when they open the lunch boxes. Color, taste and attractive orderliness also define a child’s interest to finish of their lunches fully and with thorough satisfaction to carry on rest of the day at school.
Packing lunches for your back-to-schoolers is no easy task. It takes time and planning. Plus, every parent knows that just because you pack it, doesn’t guarantee your kids will actually eat it. But reality largely differs as 90 percent of attractive foods for children such as noodles, cookies, breads, pizza and fried rice may not be healthy as well. So it is a big challenge for parents to meet the midpoint of both nutrition as well as attractive tasty food for their children’s lunch. Below is the list of tips to consider for making the lunch time a pleasurable experience for your children.
Tip 1: Children participation
Parents should encourage their children to actively participate in the selection of foods and the packaging for lunch. Children’s interest plays a very major role as the whole concept is to make them eat healthy and tasty food at right time. Take your children to shopping and make them realize about healthy options of food. Describe them about the ill-effects of preserved junk foods and leave it to their own choice. This will give a feel of importance in terms of decision making to children so that they will make good choices. Never force them to eat something as it will lead to many negative impacts in their mindset and body as well. Force feeding a healthy food is not at all good thing to do as the absorption of nutrition and minerals depend totally on a relaxed stress-free mental factor of children.
Participation of children in lunch making and packaging will surely make them realize the value of food and the importance of healthy active lifestyle that is dependent mostly on food consumption.
Tip 2: Make healthy food more attractive to eat
It is not the food but the way it is presented tempts a child to eat it with best interest. Chapatti or Paratha with a vegetable curry will never make them to sit and enjoy the food completely in their lunch time. For an alternative if you place steamed vegetables, egg, paneer and veg gravy inside the chapatti or Paratha to make a roll then the food looks more attractive. When the entire dish is served in the form of roll the factors of fun and health aspects includes to the effective eating time for children. Likewise Pizza made of millets and vegetables, Oats Idli, Vegetable salad along with main dish are some of the best choices to make food more attractive and healthy.
Tips 3: Bring in all kind of food sources
Include all kind of food sources into the lunch options of your children. Macro nutrition such as Carbohydrate, Fat and Protein should have an equally balanced proportion in your children’s lunch package. Proteins such as lentils, beans and meat, carbs such as rice, wheat, millets and other grains, fats such as healthy oils and nuts and nutritional sources such as raw fruitsts and vegetables should take a dominating proportion for your children lunch.
Tip 4: Children’s feedback
Feedback plays an important role in the selection of lunch for your children. The defined feedback need not be the words from the mouth of your children. Get feedbacks from the school about their eating habits during the lunch time to know what they like and what makes them happy in the precious time of the day. Selection in terms of health, taste and appearance and then getting a feedback, rearranging or correcting the issues will improve the nutrition absorption in your children. It will make their entire school time a feel-good experience which in turn will affect their quality of learning and other activities. Long days of forced food that children hate may actually reduce their interest in school learning which is quite concerning and bad for them.
