Share your healthy tips and hacks for your children’s school lunches! - £200 voucher to be won!

[EllieSmumsnet]

Every parent wants their child to be happy and energised during the school day, and ensuring they have a nutritious and delicious snack for that much needed pick-me-up during the school day is vital. But as busy parents, preparing healthy, interesting lunches every day can feel like a challenge. However, it doesn't have to be difficult!

Whether it's through creative flavours, fun snacks, or child-friendly healthy lunch recipes, we want to hear your tips and tricks for making lunchtime enjoyable and nutritious for your kids.

Do you swear by bento boxes or batch-cooking on a Sunday? Have you found your holy grail quick and easy tasty snacks that are also school friendly? How do you ensure your child’s school lunches are fun and healthy? Share your secrets with us!

• Share your tips and tricks in the thread below to be entered into a prize draw
• One lucky MNer will win a £200 voucher

Here is what Soreen has to say:
"At Soreen we understand the pressure on parents to provide their children with snacks that are enjoyable and tasty, yet healthy and nutritious. There are so many snacks targeted at children and families that don’t provide that vital pick me up that children need from their snacks during the school day, and instead are high in sugar and fat which are not only unhealthy but also cause dips in energy shortly after being consumed.

It’s for this reason that we offer Soreen Lunchbox Loaves, an ideal solution for parents looking to provide a nutritious yet delicious pick me up for their children that are available in 4 fruity flavours. They’re school friendly and Good Choice approved, meaning they won’t get confiscated from the school lunchbox police or be returned at the end of the school day. Our Lunchbox Loaves contain deliciously squidgy energy, providing that much needed reboot to the day, leaving your child energised and happy for the day ahead!"

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw!
MNHQ
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My favourite healthy lunchbox idea is to buy a large pit of natural yoghurt or Kefir and decant it into a mini screw top tub. In another tub put a mixture of dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, coconut curls and blueberries for them to top their yoghurt with.

We ensure a healthy sandwich (wholemeal bread) with fruit, a Soreen bar for energy and low sugar biscuit. Stops him buying chocolate on way home!

We're lucky in Wales to have hot lunches for free in primary, but on the odd occassions where i need to send a packed lunch, my son loves a cream cheese bagel, blueberries, yoghurt and a soreen bar. He loves the banana bars.

It depends what our daughter eats. Sometimes it might be a sandwich, with veggies on the side (peppers, cucumber, tomatoes). Those go in a box in the lunchbox and is collapsible (space saver) when empty. She might have a warm meal in a flask on other days.

lunchbox might include a cheese sandwich , a squeezy yoghurt, some straberries or grapes. DD is very fussy with her food due to SEN so it is hard to get much variety in it. The squeezy yoghurts are great though.

We keep it simple with a sandwich or plain pizza and fruit, tomatoes and crackers. We use lunchboxes with lots of compartments so foods are kept separate.

My kids get bored of sandwiches so we use hot food flasks sometimes. Hot pasta, leftover shepherds pie, even a baked potato with cheese and beans have all been taken in in their lunchboxes.

Letting them have an element of choice is key!
would you prefer x or y today \ did you want… a or b for dessert?

even better is getting them to help make it the night before..

*lots of colour

*lots of different texture

• different foods daily-routine can be boring.

• make it fun..! Use sandwich cutters for fun shapes, different toothpicks (Amazon do bright kid ones!) for fruit..

• a little note 😊

• Sneak veggies into a muffin.. sweet potato works well with coca for choc muffins!

hire someone to implement the above, while you shout and plead with them for the 50 millionth time to put their shoes on.

We often have pasta in a flask rather than sandwiches - usually pasta and pesto, with something like chickpeas or kidney beans for added protein.

Dd and I often have soup as an alternative if we’ve had it the night before.

One thing I would never add for a healthy lunch is a soreen loaf. Ultra processed crap masquerading as a health food. In all honesty I don’t mind giving my kid something unhealthy - that’s my choice. However, I think it is so immoral the way that these big companies market junk as “healthy”. Diet Coke, light yoghurt, flipping soreen bars are not part of a healthy diet for a kid or anyone else for that matter. They are ultra processed junk that should be had once in a while just like a chocolate bar. Such a con. Sorry but it’s infuriating!

My hacks are to check with school what you can't and can bring to school - we have nut and banana allergies - we had a confiscated lunch this week because the cake I had made for dessert had nuts in.
BUT other than that, yes bento boxes with a variety of food, pasta salad, sandwiches, cheese, and grapes, yoghurt and dried fruit - we love apricots.
for a drink a cool bottle of juice, we have a lot of stainless steel flasks which keep drinks colder for longer.

There are 2 other meals a day to get a completely balanced diet. If lunch is lacking in something (usually protein in ours), it doesn't matter if the rest of the day makes up for it.

PS soreen: the loaves suck. The middle is the best bit and lunchbox loaves have too much crust.

I make wraps with a whole chicken which I 'ninja' on a Sunday, lots of protein, I add salad, grated cheese, sliced peppers. Always a hit - and with a subtle change every day to the ingredients keeps it different and not boring - plus it's easier to eat with small wraps.
I add a frozen fromage frais to keep the contents of the lunchbox cool.

I don't pack new foods, I stick to the familiar. We can be adventurous at home but I want the dds to eat what I send in. Pasta salad always goes down well.

It was on Mumsnet I first heard of slicing a large Soreen Malt Loaf lengthways and buttering the middle! Genius.

My little ones love fruit yogurts - I mix plain greek yoghurt with their favourite fruits and berries. I like to bake them healthy snacks by blending oats, banana, apple, nuts, together with a little cinnamon and vanilla essence. Fortunately they do love their fruit and vegetables, I cut them into small pieces and keep little pots of them in the fridge to snack on.

I love to make fruit salads, in summer, vegetable crisps, babybelle cheese, in winter a soup or warm pasta meal, with some bread. I try to make as much home made as I can as IBD runs in our family, and anything sans additives is how I like to feed my family.

Always a bento style box. If you have a picky child pack a good variety of food but small amounts. Make it fun, silicone cupcake cases to help separate different fruits - berries are always a hit but can be delicate so the cupcake cases help.
Fun cookie cutters to make sandwiches more appealing (hello kitty is always a hit in our house) I also have a dumpling/ ravioli press that I use to make diy ‘uncrustable’ sandwiches.
Small food flasks are great for all sorts of food but the mini corn on the cob is always a hit - quick microwave cook in the morning, wrap in foil and pop in the flask.
Diy lunchables are super easy to make with a small cutter and healthier because you can choose unsalted crackers, better quality meats and cheese.
Food pics, fun napkins, even cocktail umbrellas (cut off sharp end) can add something fun to a boring lunch and encourage children to enjoy the food more.

Pizza goes down really well, as do crudités with ketchup to dip in.

I don’t go for interesting, I just keep it simple - protein in cheese/yoghurt, some fruit and something carb like for energy!

I pick the small wholemeal baps/teacakes and add tuna and sweetcorn - it's just something I know he will eat, and he asks for it daily, I bake banana bread with oats as a dessert and a fruit yoghurt or a greek yogurt with a spoon of toffee like Manuka honey for the immunity. I stick to what they want - and as we have a variety for dinner, it works - so don't fix it.

Sick of bashed fruit coming home untouched I now ask each dc to pick a fruit at the weekend and they have that each day. So it could be grapes, strawberries, watermelon but they have picked it. Same with their crisps and treat (biscuit/mini choc bar). Since then they eat everything rather than me putting random fruit in

I bought lots of tiny little reusable novelty forks/cocktail sticks with animals and eyes on, which make a pot of fruit, salad, a sandwich or hard boiled egg fun - always gets eaten!

I have a set formula I never deviate from. A fruit, a veg and a main. (Main is something like a sandwich). Crisps and sweets are for home. This is the way it has always been and always will be.

I bought a smash food pod from Sainsbury's for vegetable rice dishes and stir fry noodles with veg, works really well, we have a bento box to keep a variety of choice. Lots of choice and tastes.

Silicone muffin cases in a bento box, with a selection of sweet and savoury, cheese and crackers, grapes, in season fruits, rice with mild spices and vegetables, it's not boring, I alternate and offer home made crispie buns with dried fruit, flapjacks and cornflake cookies.