Help me make DD's lunches healthier!

[MaresyDotes]

DD is 14 and has always had packed lunches, she's not keen on the selection at school and prefers to take her own.

Today's lunch was a cheese wrap (grated value cheddar), a Froob pouch, a Kellog's Fibre Plus bar and a banana. She grabbed a bag of Iced Gems and a Capri Sun on the way out of the door. This is a typical lunch (apart from the Iced Gems!).

Please bear with me if this is long, I don't want to have to keep saying 'no that won't work' to people who are good enough to reply!

She will not eat most fruit - she will eat a banana, she will eat a few bites of an apple but throw the rest away. The only 'cold' or raw veg she will eat is a carrot (like an apple, a few bites only) and sweetcorn. She will not eat any salad veg in any way, shape or form.

She won't drink milk. I am faced with having to give her cheese and yogurt in some form every day to make sure she's got enough calcium. She either has a cheese wrap, or a ham or turkey wrap and a 'cheese stick' as well.

She won't eat wholemeal bread (I do get away with giving her wholemeal wraps) and as she won't eat much veg, she has the Fibre Plus bar for - well, the fibre!

I added up the calories and her lunch is around 800, including the drink (carton of juice or a Capri Sun Multivitamin) . Due to the cheese, a pretty high proportion of these calories are from fat. (she doesn't have the juice/Capri sun every day, most days she has a bottle of water).

I have tried her with cold pasta (i.e. tuna pasta salad), she doesn't like it. I thought hot food in a flask would work, but the only soup she will eat is chicken soup - the clear one, not cream of chicken - and won't eat any of the veg in the soup. The only 'hot' things I've found that she will eat are Ravioli (from a tin), chicken soup, and leftover Spag Bol.

She knows her diet isn't the best, but she doesn't like the healthier alternatives that I have come up with. She can't/won't suggest anything different; she isn't really stubborn, she is willing to taste new things, but she is adamant if she doesn't like something.

I should point out: this isn't teenage faddy eating, she has always been like this, despite being started off with healthy foods as a baby. She gagged on fruit when I tried it from the baby jars.

It's texture Scootergrrrl, she has a multivitamin every day because I know she's not getting enough.

jammy Our teas are typically spaghetti bolognese (she'll eat the pasta but leave any sauce in the bottom of the bowl), jacket potato with baked beans, tuna mayo, cheese, sweetcorn and salad (she won't touch the salad), Sunday roast with all the trimmings (she eats the meat, potatoes, yorkshire and sweetcorn), chops or gammon with macaroni cheese, baby corn and green beans (won't eat the beans), grilled chicken with couscous, sweetcorn, broccoli (won't eat the broccoli), casserole (picks out the meat and potatoes, leaves the rest). Her favourite meals are pasta-based: spag bol, macaroni cheese. But she doesn't like cold pasta which doesn't help!

squishy and others - it's not a case of 'hiding' the veg, she likes gravy on her meals and is quite happy to watch (and help me) make dinner when I'll put some of the carrots, onions etc into a blender with the gravy to make it thicker (and it tastes brilliant too ), she will happily eat the gravy even though she doesn't like the individual veggies. She will make chocolate cake with courgettes or beetroot, and carrot cake with courgettes and carrots, and loves them. She just won't eat them in 'real meals'.

I'm not actually that concerned about her nutrition, but she is definitely getting a bit chunky and I'd love a way to get her to eat some healthier options. Some great suggestions here earlier up the thread, thanks for those

A teenage girl needs fat and protein, not excessive carbs, unless very physically active, so I wouldn't worry about her eating more fruit. More veg would be good but for the nutrients/vitamins in them, not the fibre (we don't need that much fibre...so ditch the fibre bar too because it is probably full of sugar!).

You say she likes clear chicken broth...could you get her to take some most days, along with whatever else she is having? If you make your own from a chicken carcass or wings it is VERY nourishing and has plenty of calcium so would tick that box too.

She does love my homemade chicken soup, I only make it about once every two or three weeks but I could freeze batches, great idea linz, I didn't realise it would be high in calcium, is that because of the bones?

Yeah, that's right. I do mine in the slow cooker for at least 24 hours to get as much of the goodness as possible out.

My DH believed he disliked fruit and vegetables until we moved in together and he got to sample my amazing cooking. By encouraging him to try vegetables cooked in different ways he has learned he likes most of the vegetables he had been avoiding. For instance salad he loves with vinaigrette dressing or balsamic vinegar and in fact asks for this on many occasions. Mushrooms he loves in pasta sauce even although in every other disguise they are the devils food. COurgettes roasted or stir fried he asks for more of and peppers he now eats however they are prepared having thought he hated them without really trying. He even attempted a Brussels sprout recently although that needs work! With fruit I went through a stage of making up fruit salad and incorporating things he would not normally have tried and we found various types of melon he really likes (would normally have been given honeydew which he doesnt like), the reddish pears are liked (rather than conference pears which his Mum bought), lychees are loved and had never been tried before, fresh pineapple is another favourite and was only offered from a tin when he was growing up. He will eat any sort of veg if in soup.

He doesn't always reach 5 a day but the variety and interest has developed and even I never thought I'd see him eat salad!

Could you get one of those food flasks (they have them on amazon) and batch cook on a weekend, freezing in individual portions of spag bol, mac cheese so she could take one to school, its my staple lunch diet left overs!
On a weekend I cook a large pot of spag bol, cheese sauce (dd2 will only eat a decent meal which is covered in sauce) joints/chicken and freeze in individual portions so at least we can have quick healthy meals during week, I also add nuts to couscous for extra bite and goodness.

If you make your own bread you can add grated carrots, or courgettes. I tend to do that plus add sunflower seeds/pumpkin seeds/linseeds, and then make them into mini pizzas, calzones, or just buns. Then freeze them.
It started with plain buns, with time I have added more and more brown flour, seeds and vegetables, and the kids don't really seem to have noticed.

I can remember eating a 2 ounce piece of Cheshire cheese and an apple for my lunch when I was 14. It made lunchtimes easier, as I used to spend them playing cards.

Eventually, even the staff stopped chivvying the 4 of us down to the hall to eat, as we were nice and quiet.