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When it comes to meal prepping you can probably plan your own lunches fairly easily because you have a wide range of foods you can and will eat, and you may be willing to try new things. The difficult part is planning your child’s lunch. It becomes especially tricky if your child has food allergies, is picky, or has to be on specific diets that are different from yours. Some clever thinking and a bit of creativity will help you out though – check out these awesome bento box lunch ideas for kids to see what we mean!
How to encourage your child to eat a healthy lunch
1. Try using these Bento box lunch ideas for kids
It takes some extra time and dedication on your part but Bento lunch boxes are a brilliant way to encourage your child to eat healthy lunches. The sections in the box make it easy to keep the different foods separate, and with some tools and accessories you can make their lunch look totally exciting!
The best bento boxes
Bento boxes are great because you can keep all their food items separate inside their lunch box.
Kid sized portion controlCLICK FOR BEST PRICEGreat valueCLICK FOR BEST PRICEKeeps food warm or coldCLICK FOR BEST PRICE
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Use silicone baking cups
Brightly coloured silicone baking cups make fabulous snack holders inside a lunch box. Of course you can use them for baking cupcakes and muffins too!
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Introduce cute bento forks
Another way to encourage your child to eat their healthy lunch is to include some of these super cute bento forks in their lunch box.
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Cut sandwiches into interesting shapes
Sometimes the only thing you need to do to get your child to actually eat their sandwiches is make them look like a unicorn, a rabbit or even a turkey!
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2. Start out simple
You don’t want to overcomplicate your kids lunches. You also don’t want to go gourmet on them.
Try to stick to something simple for their lunch that can easily be repeated over the course of the week with some minor changes.
For example, start with flavored greek yogurt and fruit. This gives them something sweet, but also gets fruit into their system. It also gives them active cultures and probiotics from the yogurt to help with digestion.
Add a protein to the mix and you have something filling that can get them through their lunch.
3. Make small changes
You may be wondering how you will get the right nutrients into the lunch without putting in food your child will not eat. Consider making minor changes that you notice, but your kid won’t.
For example, if you go with peanut butter switch to a nutrient enhanced or fortified nut butter.
Instead of regular yogurt, go with a greek yogurt to boost their protein intake and B-vitamin intake.
Instead of regular juice, that can contain a high amount of sugar, go with an organic fruit smoothie.
If milk is the drink of the day, consider a nut based organic milk instead.
4. Make a note of what they like, and what they don’t
The most important thing to planning healthy lunches for your children is to record what works and what does not.
A great way to do this is to write down each lunch selection on an index card. If your kids like it, then keep it. If they don’t like certain aspects, then note that and make changes. If they hate the meal, then toss out the card and do not repeat it.
This will help you with meal planning in the future and help you stick to what your kids like.
It will also help you narrow down allergies or figure out what your kids may eat if you need to make healthy changes and adjustments.
Image Credit: Bento Lunch Box by Melissa | CC BY | Text overlay added
