Examples of healthy packed lunch that your kids actually eat

[Lykke1000]

Ive just read in another thread about sending a packed lunch as school dinners are UPF and of low nutritional value. Fair enough. I actually have no idea what my kids school dinners are like in reality - no way of finding out either 🤔

My DC has never complained about them but she always prefers a packed lunch, and says almost everyone has them.

BUT - she only wants sandwiches made with white shop bought bread or wrap. Doesn’t let me put cheese in it - so it’s mostly salami or ham (processed upf) apart from when I occasionally have time to make something like tuna-mayo or coronation chicken (also actually upf).

I’m also allowed to put sliced cucumber and apple, blueberries or grapes, but not carrot or banana or most other fruit or veg.

List of things she would actually like (but doesn’t necessarily get) are: peperami mini sausages, mini cheddar crackers, popcorn, crisps, biscuits, flavoured yoghurt tubes, babybels (ok not upf), rice crackers (ok) and obviously sweets/chocolates which are luckily not allowed.

Basically she has a very limited range of items that are acceptable and get eaten.

Can you please give examples of nutritious and healthy packed lunch items that your child actually eats?

I let my son has one packed lunch a week although when I see the school menu and Theres a particularly crap week of food, I will allow 2 packed lunches.
I do a wrap with a meat or cheese. I do sliced peppers and cucumber or carrot sticks.
A yoghurt, some cut grapes or half an orange or something and maybe a small treat.
Could definitely be better but could be a lot worse.

The school meals look horrendous most days actually.

How do you know they look horrendous? Can you see them? Any examples?

I don't have a problem with a lot of UPFs as I think it's a bit black and white. Don't see the problem with a tuna mayo and cucumber sandwich on shop bought seeded bread for example. Seems perfectly fine to me.

So UPF aside, some packed lunch items that my son eats would be:

Sandwiches on seeded bread (cheese, peanut butter, or tuna mayo)
Tuna pasta
Fruit (banana, strawberries, grapes, satsumas usually)
Dates
Breadsticks with humous
Yoghurt
Flask of homemade soup (also likes Heinz tomato)
Flask of leftover pasta bolognese

My DD used to have:

A wholemeal wrap with tuna mayo or egg mayo or cheese or ham (homemade mayo)
Cucumber, cherry tomatoes, pepper, carrot
2 fruit portions (strawberry and grapes for
example)
Greek yoghurt with squirt of honey
Then 1 processed thing - like a cheesestring, some gingerbread biscuits, pom bears or similar

I don’t lose sleep over some UPF though.

You could make something a bit like coronation chicken with home-cooked chicken breast and some greek yoghurt with mild spices and mango chutney blended together. Would she eat it in a wrap?

There are quite a few sliced white breads that have added fibre or protein or vitamins. Still UPF but with some benefits. Better than just plain white.

All that fresh stuff she likes is great - blueberries or cumber and sliced apple or grapes every day is good. A lot of children like iceberg lettuce - could you try adding some of that to her sandwiches or wraps?

My DD has

Some sort of wrap/pitta bread/sandwich with a filling like cheese, leftover roast chicken, or tuna.
Some veg, generally cucumber and tomatoes but sometimes red pepper. Peas in a pod in summer.
Some fruit
And then at the start of term I bake a big batch of mini muffins - these are apple, banana and carrot muffins (as in, each muffin contains all three, I don't make three different types). I'm not kidding myself it's healthy, I know it's still a muffin, but they are the size of small cupcakes. I freeze them all and get one out the evening before so it's defrosted in time. She has one of these two or three times a week. The other days she has plain yoghurt.

Would she eat sourdough? Jason’s sliced sourdough isn’t UPF and is closer to supermarket bread. Crosta and Mollica wraps aren’t UPF either. Mine also like Daylesford pesto and pasta, plus cubes of chicken

Also things like sugar free home made muffins, or banana-oat pancakes are good.

My DD has packed lunch almost everyday.
She has leftovers in a soup thermos (we put Bolognese or meatballs in the thermos and the pasta cold in a tub, she adds at lunch, otherwise the pasta absorbs too much of the sauce liquid and goes all wet and gooey) every day possible.

On non leftover days she has: pitta with humus, carrot sticks and cucumber sticks
Tuna crunch in one pot (tuna, red pepper, spring onion and cucumber in small chunks mixed with mayo, salt and pepper) shredded lettuce and grated cheese in another with a wrap or 2 (crosta and mollica are not upf)
She makes the wrap at school otherwise it can go a bit soggy

Mini pancakes (flour, baking powder, greek yoghurt and an egg, a spoonful of sugar and a few drops vanilla essence) cooked in butter with sliced strawberries in a pot and chocolate spread in another

A tub of greek yoghurt with small tubs of granola and strawberries that she mixes at lunch

Bread rolls with tuna crunch or bacon, lettuce and toms

Pasta cooked with garlic breadcrumbs (think this might be Sicilian) - we got a packet of the breadcrumbs from TKMaxx and it takes seconds to cook with leftover pasta.

Leek and potato soup with a side tub of croutons (home made) and feta.

You could make a slaw with apple and carrot, grated? Serve with pitta and humus?

For my kid, usually it’s

• a ham wrap
• cheesey pea and sweetcorn pasta with a bit of mayo
• onken passion fruit yog and I pop in small cut up peaches
• grapes and watermelon or blueberries
• babybel
• soreen
• tangerine/bananna/carrot sticks

I always do a variation of the above and change up the fruit/veg/pasta filling. He is at a nut free school otherwise he’d happily have peanut butter sandwiches too.

He has a balanced evening meal and always has a healthy breakfast so I just give him foods I know he’ll eat!

We are vegetarian and don’t buy “snack” type food.
usual packed lunch for 5 year old (we don’t have school dinners as they are just awful and full of UPF that we would never ever eat).

• cheddar cheese/cream cheese/sliced egg/humous sandwich (homemade in bread maker seeded/malted whole meal bread)
• sliced cucumber and pepper
• some fruit of some sort - apple slices, cut up grapes, mango, melon etc
• for morning snack (school request) it’s usually a fruit and a veg e.g baby corn and grapes, or cut up runner beans and satsuma segments etc.

For variation I have included things like plain whole meal pasta or rice cakes with humous to dip, homemade pastry wheels (containing grated mozzarella and tomatos). Instead of the cheese I might add roasted chickpeas or plain butter beans.

But it’s all part of the bigger food picture. Don’t beat yourself up if breakfast and dinner are fine!

Ah yes and we sometimes send things in a flask - homemade lentil soup, or Dahl etc

Leftovers mainly. We have a thermos

Ramen with no sesame
Curry and rice
Chilli and ricel
Leftover fajita chicken in a wrap
Biryani
Pasta
Noodles
Soup and chunky bread
Sandwiches
Wraps
The ends of the lasagne

Sides- whatever fruit/salad veg or sweetcorn we have in
Crisps, crackers, bagel chips, roasted chickpeas

Yeh there's an app called parent pay and they have the menu along with the photos

Lots of wonderful ideas are on Tik Tok.

Today I made:

Ham and salad wrap
cut up veggies were avocado, tomato, capsicum and cucumber
cut up fruit was kiwifruit and apple
crackers
gouda cheese
philadelphia cheese
hard boiled egg
oreo biscuit

DS has pasta in tomato sauce with cheese, a Greek honey yogurt, and some fruit. He has autism and is quite happy having the same meal every day! I sometimes throw in some homemade banana bread too which I batch cook and freeze slices of.

Some really good ideas. @goingdownfighting , for lunch that includes chicken or similar, how do you pack that to keep it food safe? I'm thinking of going down the packed lunch route too and might do food similar to you.

DS is in year 6, so makes his own. He generally has home-cooked chicken, a toasted wholemeal wrap or tortilla chips (the basic supermarket ones aren’t high in salt), salad and a piece of fruit.

On days I don’t work I make him chicken and pasta in tomato and basil sauce.