Teaching Our Children Healthy Eating Habits

As many parents of school age children are sending them off to school for this coming school year, they are looking to make lunches that are quick and healthy, yet creative enough to keep their kids interested from day to day. There are many, often overlooked, choices in our fast-paced society surrounded by unhealthy fast food and convenience food.

As a parent sending my own kids off to school for the first time, I plan on utilizing creativity to make my kids lunches as fun and healthy as possible. Below are some ideas of how one may go about this.
First of all, for the main course of the lunch, one could use shaped cookie cutters like pumpkins, leaves, or hearts, depending on the season, and cut shapes out of lunchmeat, cheese, and/or bread, then add some crackers and one has a homemade "lunchable". Another idea is to wrap peanut butter and jelly, lunchmeat and cheese, or salad in a tortilla and have a wrap sandwich (Chicago Tribune --Wednesday, August 19, 2009). If one is wanting to avoid the carbohydrates of the tortilla, the lunchmeat and cheese could be wrapped in lettuce or spinach leaves. For a fun twist on the original peanut butter and jelly sandwich, one could put all natural peanut butter and low sugar jelly on a whole grain hot dog bun.

Now, of course, we need some healthy sides to accompany the main course. We could rely on the old standard of carrot sticks and celery sticks with peanut butter, or we could add some low calorie ranch dressing, cream cheese, or a fun variation of peanut butter, such as cashew or almond butter. The latter two work well for people with peanut only allergies. If the kids really enjoy vegetables as mine do, mix tomatoes, cucumbers, feta cheese, and olives with a couple drops of olive oil and vinegar for a small Greek salad. Another option one can use is to sandwich cream cheese or peanut butter between graham crackers for a sweet treat.

Next, how about we make a fruit kebab by stringing various fruits such as pineapple, grapes, strawberries, and blueberries on a piece of dental floss and sending that to school for a fun fruity treat (Chicago Tribune -- Wednesday, August 19, 2009). When they are done eating the fruit, they could then use the dental floss to floss their teeth. One could also cut some apple or pear sticks and accompany them with some peanut butter or cream cheese for dipping.

Finally, one of the best ways to encourage healthy lunch habits is to have the kids help prepare their own lunches. In so doing, they learn healthy eating habits that could lead to a longer healthier future.