BACK TO SCHOOL: How to pack the perfect school lunch your kids will actually eat!  

Term 2 is upon us and it’s time to prep those school lunches again. You want to provide your kids with a nutritious lunch – after all, it’s important to help them concentrate and perform at school. But what makes a healthy lunch?

Have you ever heard the saying ‘Eat a Rainbow’? Well it’s no myth. Include a range of colourful fruit and vegetables in your kid’s lunch box. Not only will this make their lunch fun and exciting, it’s the perfect way to ensure they get the vital vitamins and minerals they need.

But the most important part of a lunch box is the carbs. Carbohydrates are the preferred source of energy for the body and in particular the brain. Without a decent supply of carbohydrates, your children will struggle to focus throughout the long school day.

Angelo’s pasta is a fun and exciting way to include a healthy source of carbs for your kids.  Use Angelo’s spinach or beetroot fettuccine to boost the colour of your children’s lunches to keep them interested. It’s also an easy way to sneak more veg into your kid’s diet. Just cook up some greens, then grate and blend it through your favorite pasta!

It’s all well and good to construct a healthy lunch for your kids, but how can you make sure the lunchbox doesn’t come home full?

Here are our top tips to making sure your kid’s lunch boxes always come home empty:

• Think Shapes. Use your favourite cookie cutters to cut fruit and sandwiches into fun shapes for your kids.

• Get your kids involved. Getting them involved at the preparation stage of the meal is effective in teaching kids about nutrition, and it gets them excited to eat what they’ve created! Why not get them to stir through their favourite sauce into through an Angelo’s Pasta and pack it up for lunch!

• Be open with your kids. It may sound simple, but simply ask them what foods they like in their lunch box.
• Make snack-inspired lunches. Kids LOVE finger food. It’s easy for them to eat, and they can pick and choose what they want when they want it! Chobani Yogurt is not only healthy and yummy to eat but they also do small, snack size, squeezable yoghurt pouches.

• Invest in a good lunch box. We recommend FlipLid lunch boxes. Bento style lunch boxes are all the craze right now, so why not jump on that bandwagon? They make it easy to give your kids a snack filled lunch, and cuts down on waste! (BUT make sure your kids can open all the compartments – in little kids this can be a little tricky at first, so practise at home with them!). Another great product for packing foods like jelly, sauces, yogurt and dips is the Zestio food pouch. These pouches are re-usable, dishwasher and freezer safe, BPA free and designed in Australia.

• Exercise portion control. Kids are better at stopping when they are full than we think! A lunch box may be coming home with leftovers because you’re simply providing too much for their small stomachs!

Good luck!