5 Healthy Lunch Hacks for the Busy Mom
Ever wish you could add minutes to your day? While you can’t stop time, you can delegate the daily task of packing your kids’ lunchboxes. Use these 5 hacks to make packing a healthy lunch fun, fast, and easy! Tips: Everything can be done at night for a grab-and-go morning. Packing lunches isn’t strictly for when School is in session. Make summer break even easier by packing daily lunchboxes that are easy to grab and go on busy summer and weekend days too.
- Let them choose
The lunch-making process begins at the grocery store or farmers market. Take your children with you shopping and have them pick things they want to try. Give your kids a choice, but structure your words carefully: “Which two fruits or vegetables would you like in your lunch?” This will empower them to choose what they like best, without giving them the option to reject healthy food altogether.
- Play a game
Find or make dice with a different color on each side. While making lunches at night, have your child roll the dice. For whatever color that comes up – red, green, blue, orange, yellow, brown – have them find a whole food to match and put it into their lunchbox. You can make this even more educational by explaining what each color food does for their bodies.
- Bento it
Bento boxes, like those from Bentology, keep foods separate in little individual containers, which is perfect for teaching children about portions (and preventing pretzels from getting soggy). You can designate each mini-container with a color, texture, or food group and add it to the dice game.
- Turn it inside-out
Kids love lunches with a twist. Teach your kids to make “inside-out” sandwiches with preservative-free turkey on the outside, and all the other ingredients rolled into it. It’s a great gluten-free option.
- Try, try again
Sometimes it’s texture, sometimes it’s taste, sometimes it’s how the food looks – picky eaters always have their reasons! Researchers have found that it can take 15 times of trying a food for a person to learn to like it. So just because your kid doesn’t eat squash today doesn’t mean you should stop serving squash. It’s a process.
Have some awesome lunch hacks you would like to share? Post in comments below.
Healthy Hands Cooking is a movement to fight childhood obesity by certifying and empowering instructors to teach children and families about nutrition and healthy cooking. Our instructors are passionate moms, dads, teachers, nutrition grads, entrepreneurs, wellness advocates and more. www.healthyhandscooking.com