How to Build Healthy Brown Bag Lunches for Your Kids

Are you looking for some new healthy, fun, and easy to prepare lunches for your child's lunch box? It can definitely be challenging coming up with different ideas and having to rush around in the morning trying to put everything together. For me, I'm always looking for very simple lunches that are healthy. My kids will eat the school lunches only about 50 percent of the time. So I do prepare my fair share of school lunches for two kids. Here are three of our favorite brown bag lunches, which are all kid-tested.

Make your own pizza

Ingredients: Flour tortilla, cheese, pizza sauce, olives, spoon (for spreading sauce)

This is a quick and healthy meal you can pack for your child. What is so nice about this lunch is that you can prepare it the night before. The best way to pack this meal is to put some pizza sauce in a plastic container. I would recommend getting a bunch of the use and toss container ,that way your child doesn't have to worry about brining anything home with them. I place the cheese and any other toppings my kids like in small zippered bags. I place all of these pizza ingredients in their refrigerated lunch box with an icepack, to make sure everything stays cool. When it's time for lunch all your child has to do is make their very own pizza. If they have access to a microwave they can heat it up for about 10 seconds or so. These tortilla pizzas also taste great cold. I know my kids like to fold them over like a sandwich or roll them up.

Fun-Shaped Sandwiches

Ingredients: Child's favorite sandwich, cookie/sandwich cutters

I've learned from experience that kids go nuts for fun-shaped sandwiches. It makes that peanut butter and jelly sandwich so much more exciting when it's shaped like a dinosaur. I have several different cutouts that I rotate between. Another favorite shape, in my house, is a gingerbread man. You can get really creative with these cutouts and change the cutouts according to the different holidays and seasons. I do recommend that you use larger cutouts. If you use the smaller cookie cutters, you may end up with one very small sandwich and have to use two more slices of bread to get another small sandwich. If you use a larger cookie cutter, you will have a decent size sandwich. You can buy some cool dinosaur and heart-shaped sandwich cutters at Williams-Sonoma.

Cheese, crackers and fruit

Ingredients: Cheese, crackers, cold cuts, fruit

There aren't too many kids who pass up cheese and crackers. You can go to the health food store and buy healthier crackers, cheese, and cold cuts. This would be a great lunch to put in a compartment type dish. You can buy these at any of the major department stores, like Wal-Mart, Target or K-Mart. This is also a great way to get some extra fruit into a child's diet. Find out your child's favorite fruit and put it in one of the compartments. In my house, grapes are a great choice because they can last longer if your child has a later lunch time. Also, don't forget to include the icepack with this one, as you don't want the cheese and cold cuts to spoil.

Sources:
Personal Experience
Williams-Sonoma.com