Guest Blogger: Clever Ways to Help your Kids Eat Healthy at School

 Guest Blogger #767, Entry #1818, November 13, 2012

It can be a real challenge to get children to eat healthily at school. Some just flat out refuse to do so, while others will only eat a few healthy snacks as part of their overall diet. The risk becomes that children are eating highly sugared and salted foods on a regular basis in school, which can damage their appetites and lead to problems with obesity. These problems can become more serious as children age, and can create lifelong dieting issues. Improving your child’s diet in school without them knowing is consequently important, and shouldn’t be too difficult if you consider some of the following approaches:

Healthy lunch ideas for school

Introduce Healthy Eating Slowly

Rather than trying to pack a healthy lunch every day, start by adding in a few items that don’t necessarily look like health food. Apples, bananas, and energy bars can be included with crisps and sandwiches, or can be given along with money. Be careful, though, if you find that these snacks are reappearing in rucksacks every day.

Push for Better School Meals

Trying to organise a gradual change in school meals is an approach that has had success in many parts of the UK. Most schools now avoid deep fat frying, and reduce servings of salt and sugar, as well as providing more child appropriate servings at lunchtimes. Moreover, by introducing vegetable wraps and healthily prepared snacks at breaktimes, schools can make healthy options a natural part of meals without it seeming like a major change.

Use Juices and Yoghurts

If your child turns their nose up at fruits and vegetables, you could try buying fruit juices and packets that avoid concentrated sugars. A fruit and vegetable drink carton can help to provide one of your child’s five a day, without necessarily looking or tasting any different to a sugared juice drink. You can also try this with flavoured yoghurts – start mixing up the yoghurts your child receives in their bags, and see whether they notice a difference if you switch to low fat or healthy brands.

Healthy lunch ideas for your child

Make Healthy Food More Convenient

Simply limiting what’s available in the morning for your child to take to school can make a big difference. While this can be a problem if they spend money on food in school, leaving out a fruit bowl, and keeping the most sugary and salty snacks in difficult to reach places may help to encourage children to take what’s immediately in front of them.

Don’t Force the Point

Forcing a child to eat their fruit and vegetables is only going to cause resentment and defiance. Instead, introduce foods gradually, and make sure that there’s always healthy options for breakfast and dinner, as well as on weekends. The trick is to create these options, and only go direct with asking about their diet if they consistently don’t take up healthy foods.

Adjust Your Existing Recipes

If you’re preparing healthy food for your child to take to school, try experimenting with small ingredients changes. Focus on including salads and other greens in sandwiches and rolls, swap out mayo for salad cream, use less spreads – it all helps.

Make it Fun!

Another approach that can be completed with a school’s help, you can encourage younger children to learn about nutrition as part of their science lessons, and make identifying healthy foods and their benefits into a game. The more informed children become, the better the decisions they can make on their own.

Chris Green is a mildly exasperated Dad who gets wound up by most things school related, however, now his kids are further along the school line and at Lansdowne College – the next stage is moving out right?

For more kids ideas on Stagetecture, click here.