Packing a Nutritious School Lunch May Call for Some Stealth

We want our families to have a healthy diet, especially the youngsters going back to school. We give them a good breakfast and plan a nutritious dinner, but what about lunch? We can pack a healthy lunch for our children, but will they eat it?

- CAROL CORLEY

Or will we need to get a little sneaky? Is there a way to hide the good stuff so that our children will gladly eat their healthy lunches?

There are different ways to get children interested in their lunches. An easy way is to get children deeply involved so they will have a sense of ownership. You could start them with planning “theme” lunches at the beginning of the week, then shopping to pick out ingredients, and finally preparing the lunch to take to school.

Another easy and often overlooked option is to make lunch attractive — even adults prefer a pretty plate to something thrown together at the last minute. Maybe have cookie cutouts for their sandwiches, include bright colors. Teach the child to arrange food attractively onto their plate.

And then there is downright sneaky. It works even for me. I know I need to eat vegetables and fruit, so sometimes I actually hide raw vegetables in my cheese sandwich, and fruits into a smoothie or buried in Greek yogurt. Easy and tasty.

There are also other ways to sneak vegetables and fruit into a school lunch — add to muffins, mini quiches, put it in chicken salad, vegetables pureed and put into meatballs.

Of course, you can always just add vegetables or fruit with a dip.