Brown Bag Lunches Hawaiian Style

Providing a brown bag lunch is a fantastic way to make sure that your child is getting good, healthy, wholesome meals at lunch time. They can be very filling and a treat. Good nutrition is very important for young people. Their brains and bodies are still underdevelopment. Fueling their body with a healthy balanced diet enables them to function efficiently.

Here are a few brown bag lunch treats I use to send my children off to school with... Careful, the other children may try to purchase these lunches from your child;

A Mini Loco Moco

In a wide mouth thermos, place a scoop of hot brown rice, gravy and a scrambled egg. Secure the lid. Put crumbled cooked turkey burger in a separate container or zip lock bag. This way your child can add it to the Loco at lunch. Be sure to include napkins. You know this is a local favorite. Sorry, no seconds. The thermos will keep the rice, gravy and scrambled egg warm so the child get to enjoy a warm lunch. Include a piece of fresh fruit for dessert and any 100% pure fruit juice as a drink or let the child purchase school milk.

Open Faced Apple Pie

This is quick and easy. Place applesauce in wide mouth thermos. Put corn flakes (or other fortified flake cereal) in a Ziploc bag. At lunch time the child combines the cereal with the applesauce and eat. Include a granola bar for dessert and milk, water, or fruit juice to drink.

An alternative to the applesauce is to try yogurt. I do not recommend including any type of sugar sweetened cereal. Eating high-sugar content food at lunch time will cause their body to crash in the early afternoon. They will become very tired and lethargic, and this will affect how they perform in class.

Tropical Taco

Soft Taco Shells, shredded cheese, lettuce and tuna (or chicken or turkey). If you use tuna, be sure to drain it well, you don't want their taco getting soggy before they eat it. Create the taco in the standard way: meat, lettuce and cheese sprinkled into the taco shell. Under fill the shell so that you can tightly roll it and close the ends. Use a toothpick to keep the shell closed. Make sure the toothpick sticks out of the taco so that it is visible, but remind your child to remove it anyway. Place the completed tacos in a Ziploc bag and place them in a tall thermos with a few ice cubes on the bottom to keep the contents cool and fresh. Include a healthy drink and dessert.

A healthy meal at lunch time re-stimulates your child's neurotransmitters (the chemical message senders in the brain) and keeps them firing, resulting in a greater attention span along with improved concentration and memory. A healthy brown bag lunch can help your child perform at their best level while at school and let them know that you care for them even when they are away from you. Isn't that what family is about?

Resource: Personal Experience