Packing a school lunch that is both healthy and tasty is not very difficult. However, coming up with new ideas everyday might be. This article provides some ideas that you can try.
Parents try their best to ensure that their child eats all things healthy, and hence pack school lunches that are nutritious, whereas children want food that tastes good. While both these aspects are not necessarily contradictory, finding lunch menus which are healthy and tasty can be a bit difficult. Coming up with a creative yet healthy lunch menu becomes tedious to do everyday. It is not possible to explain the importance of healthy foods to children. Hence, a good option for parents is to try adding small, camouflaged quantities of foodstuffs their children don’t like to those that they do. Some ideas are given below.
Pizza
There are countless innovations that you can implement within the pizza. For example, if your child hates eating leafy vegetables such as spinach, you can include it in the pizza. Simply cut the spinach into small pieces and integrate these into the pizza topping. Your child may not realize its presence under all the mozzarella cheese. Similarly, for children who hate diced tomatoes, puree the pieces in a blender and use it as a topping. You can also sprinkle small pieces of diced broccoli as a topping. Try innovations such as a smiley face or a small airplane to distract your child from the fact that there is broccoli in the pizza. Camouflage is the key.
Sandwiches
If your child does not eat enough protein, you can grind the cereals or pulses into a fine powder and put it in the sandwich along with the butter or cheese. You can also put in small pieces of fruit into jam or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Coriander, mint leaves, or other vegetables that tend to have a tongue tickling taste, can be integrated into tuna or turkey sandwiches. Such leafy vegetables tend to work as herbs. A small sprinkle of these is sufficient to give a nice taste to the sandwich.
Cake and Sweets
You can give your child some vitamins through a cake. There are several citrus fruits that go well with cakes. When the cake has just been baked and is cooling down, you can add small pieces of fruit to it. You can do this even while applying the icing for fruits like orange.
Rolls
To make rolls more interesting and to get your child to like them, you can make a carpet of minutely diced vegetables, and sprinkle it with a lot of tangy juices (such as lemon) at the base of the lunch box. Make the roll and cut it into pieces. Again, sprinkle the juice on the pieces and make small shapes or smileys on them.
Small children do not rely on nutrition for eating. Instead, simple tastes get registered on their taste buds, an example of which is repeated demands for ice cream. Catching their attention with colors and smell works very effectively, and once they experience variable tastes such as the ones of herbs and citrus fruits, they will get accustomed to this new range of tastes. Due to this, they will start eating all types of foods, and eventually get all the possible nutrition.
