Here are some ideas to make your life easier and to ensure that your children have good, wholesome food to take to school and to have in-between meals.
The basics
There are certain basic principles that you need to keep in mind:
- It takes planning – you need to plan ahead so that you buy the correct foods for making snacks and lunchboxes
- Resist the “easy” option to buy cold drinks, chips and chocolate bars – in the long run this is going to ruin your children’s health
- Resist your children’s demands and manipulations for high-fat snacks and fizzy cold drinks
- Remember that children are different to adults – they have a much smaller stomach capacity, so they need regular snacks and some children have a much higher energy requirement because they’re more active than adults
- Remember that children are similar to adults – they also like interesting and tasty food that looks good enough to eat, but they may not appreciate very sophisticated foods
- Lunchboxes may have to replace three to four meals a day – that breakfast that wasn’t eaten, the mid-morning snack, lunch and the mid-afternoon snack – a whole menu in one box!
- Packaging is important – buy a sturdy plastic container that’s big enough to accommodate the food you want your child to take to school without getting squashed, and consider buying a small non-breakable vacuum flask or vacutainer for keeping cold foods and drinks cold, and hot foods and drinks hot
- Eating a variety of foods gives children and adults the best chance of obtaining a balanced diet
Select foods from all the food groups every day:
– Milk and dairy products;
– Fruit and vegetables;
– Breads and starches;
– Protein foods like meat, fish, eggs and legumes; and
– Fats and oils, including nuts.
Children need healthy foods and drinks to snack on or to take to school. Here are some suggestions:
a) Food
Cereals, breads and starches
- Low-GI, wholewheat, brown or rye bread or buns, various healthy breads, crisp bread (rye or wheat), wholewheat biscuits
- Pita bread, or hot dog/hamburger rolls, or pancakes/pikelets, or mini pizzas, or bagels (buy the wholewheat varieties if possible)
- Wholewheat muffins or muffins made with fresh fruit like banana, dried fruit like raisins/sultanas/dates, or nuts; cheese muffins
- Health or energy bars (only for children who are very active and who don’t have a weight problem as these foods are quite high in fat)
- Granola cereal or unbuttered popcorn
- Muesli or bran based cereals
- Rice cakes (buy various flavours)
- Baked potato with a filling (keep warm in vacutainer)
- Potato salad (use lite salad dressing or dilute mayonnaise with fat-free yoghurt)
- Cooked corn on the cob
Protein foods
- Lean cold cuts (ham, beef, chicken)
- Grilled chicken pieces (wings or drumsticks)
- Cooked, chopped or minced meat or chicken/turkey
- Cooked sausages (only for thin and very active children as sausages contain quite a lot of fat)
- Homemade hamburger patties (use lean mince)
- Boiled eggs
- Canned fish such as tuna, salmon or sardines
- Cooked, minced legumes, baked beans or tofuMilk and dairy foods
- Yoghurt (plain mixed with honey and nuts or fresh fruit, or read-made, flavoured, low-fat varieties)
- Cottage cheese (flavour plain cottage cheese with tomato sauce, mashed banana or avocado, nuts or dried fruit, or buy ready-made flavoured cottage cheese – check the fat content and buy the fat-free versions)
- Cheeses (all types, use grated or cut into cubes)
- Cheese spread
Fruit and vegetables
- Fresh fruit – apples, pears, oranges, plums, peaches, grapes, litchis, mango, pineapple or melon pieces, figs
- Dried fruit and fruit rolls, dates
- Carrot or celery sticks, baby tomatoes, cucumber wedges, lettuce
- Vegetable muffins (grated carrots and baby marrows can be added to a basic muffin mix)
- Pumpkin fritters
- Potato cakesFats and oils
- Mono- or polyunsaturated margarine or lite margarine as a spread on breads, etc
- Nuts, peanut butter
- Nutella spread
- Crisp bacon (crumble and add to fat-free cottage cheese)
- Avocado – mash and use instead of margarine
- Low-fat or lite salad dressing, or mayonnaise diluted with low-fat yoghurt
(Use this category sparingly to ensure that inactive children don’t gain weight)
Flavourings
(Add taste, colour and variety to lunchboxes and snacks)
- Chutney – try different varieties
- Tomato sauce – the best source of lycopene, an antioxidant that protects against cancer
- Mild mustard or pickles
- Gherkins
- Olives
- Vinegar (add to mashed sardines for extra flavour)
- Lemon juice (add to mashed banana to prevent discolouration)
b) Drinks and liquid foods
- Milk, plain or flavoured
- Homemade milk shakes (puree fruit with low-fat milk, add honey and/or vanilla flavouring)
- Drinking yoghurt
- Milk/fruit-juice blends
- Fruit juice, still or sparkling
- Soda water – flavoured, still or sparkling
- Hot chocolate or cocoa made with skim milk (keep warm in vacutainer during winter)
- Soups (keep hot in vacutainer during winter)
- Cold water and ice for sports meetings
Dr Ingrid van Heerden (DietDoc)