Hacks To Make Your Kid’s School Lunches Easier To Prepare
Your child’s health is everything, but with so many processed foods geared towards kids, creating healthy school lunches is a challenge. You can make your child’s lunch from scratch each morning, but that can be quite time-consuming. Preparing school lunches that are delicious and nutritious can be challenging, but there are ways to make this daily task much easier.
To simplify the process of preparing healthy school lunches for your child, do as much meal prep in advance as possible. Opt for fruit and vegetables you don’t require cutting and packaging, including clementines, bananas, apples, and baby carrots. Buy individually packaged items in bulk, prepare sandwiches the night before, and buy reusable containers with multiple compartments. Use insulated bags, and utilize leftovers whenever possible.
Preparing healthy lunches for your child has endless benefits. Balanced nutrition helps ensure your child consumes vitamins and nutrients, and it helps form healthy eating habits that can last a lifetime. If, however, curating a nutritious lunch menu for your kid every day has become tiresome and time-consuming, then this article is for you. Below is a list of tips and hacks to help you prepare healthy school lunches every day.
Pro Tips To Make Healthy School Lunches Easier To Prepare
1. Get Your Child’s Input
You might be the breadwinner and adult, but you should always get your child’s input before preparing a school lunch. If they don't like what you make, then there’s a good chance it will go uneaten.
When you involve your child in the decision-making process, there's a better chance the healthy lunch won't go to waste. Having an open dialogue helps take the guessing out of the equation. Once you find all the healthy foods your child is happy to consume, preparing school lunches becomes much easier.
2. Wash And Prep Fruit And Veggies In Advance
To help make daily lunch preparation go faster, consider doing as much work as possible in advance. Most school lunches and snacks have a fresh fruit and vegetable component.
To save time each morning, wash and dry fruits and vegetables as soon as you bring them home from the store. Carrots, celery, apples, grapes, and other foods that kids eat without peeling can all be washed on Sunday, left in cold water in the fridge to stay fresh, and then portioned out each morning, or the night before.
3. Use Insulating Bags
When you prepare your child’s lunch, you must think about food safety. Since lunch boxes don’t get refrigerated, ensure all food choices stay at safe temperatures. Instead of limiting your menu to shelf-stable foods, which often lack nutrition, consider buying an insulated lunch box and ice packs.
These miniature cooler bags allow you to pack foods like yogurt and deli meats in your child’s lunch, without having to worry about your child getting sick. This makes weekly meal prep easier, as it allows you to think outside the box when preparing lunch for school.
4. Opt For Tupperware With Multiple Compartments
One great way to ensure you pack all the main food groups in your child’s lunch is to buy Tupperware or other reusable food containers that have multiple compartments. These bento-style containers are quite common, and take a lot of the thinking out of your child’s morning meal prep.
Simply fill smaller compartments with a vegetable and a fruit, and the large compartment with a sandwich, main dish, or some form of protein your kid enjoys. These simple and reusable containers ensure you send your child to school with a balanced meal without having to work too hard.
5. Make Sandwiches The Night Before
Sandwiches are a school lunch staple. Preparing a sandwich at six in the morning, however, is not how most parents want to start the day. If your child loves sandwiches, make them the night before. This will save you a few crucial minutes in the morning.
If your child won’t eat a sandwich without a condiment, like mayonnaise or mustard, then you can add the condiment in the morning. Even if you have to add mayo, you will have saved time and effort by preparing the rest of the sandwich the night before.
6. Opt For Fruits And Veggies That Require No Preparation
To save time without sacrificing nutrition, buy fruits and vegetables that require little to no preparation. Instead of chopping up melons, berries, and mangoes, opt for fruits that you can toss directly into a lunch box. Apples, clementines, and bananas are all great options, and these fruits do not require constant refrigeration.
As for vegetables, baby carrots, snap peas, and green beans are all veggies you can wash in advance and add to a lunch without having to chop and cook.
7. Buy Healthy Individually Packaged Items In Bulk
While there are endless processed foods that are loaded with saturated fats, salt, and sugars, there is also a growing industry of healthy pre-packaged foods geared towards children. The only issue with these healthy packaged foods is that they tend to cost more.
To help save you money and time in the morning, look for pre-packaged children snacks in bulk. If you have a wholesale club membership, try out different healthy packaged snacks, and see which ones your child gravitates towards.
8. Take Note Of What Your Child Does And Doesn’t Eat
When your child comes home from school, it’s always a good idea to check the lunchbox to see what has disappeared and what remains. If you notice certain foods come back untouched more than once, consider cycling them out with something new.
Taking a quick daily inventory of your child’s lunchbox after school is a great way to stay on top of your kid’s ever-evolving tastes. After all, the goal is to create a healthy lunch that your kid will eat, not just look at and play with.
9. Utilize Dinner Leftovers Whenever Possible
Another great way to save time on school lunch prep each morning is to utilize leftovers whenever possible. If you made roasted potatoes and carrots with dinner, you can make them the vegetable for the next day.
If you had lasagna, and your child can’t get enough of it, then add a portion of for their lunch. Using leftovers saves you time, and also helps keep your child’s school lunch fresh and exciting.
10. Map Out The Meals In Advance
Very few people do their best thinking in the early morning. Therefore, instead of trying to prepare lunch from scratch each morning, consider mapping out meals in advance. A weekly chart or well-executed grocery list will make school lunch prep easier, without sacrificing quality.
11. Cover The Healthy Food Groups, But Keep it Simple
As a parent, you are always motivated to give your child the absolute best. While this is a great goal, it’s important to remember that the “best” doesn’t have to be complicated. When planning and preparing school lunches, don’t over complicate things.
Instead, your goal should always be to cover the healthy food groups, including fruits, vegetables, protein, and whole grains. Keeping things simple will save time, and the odds are your child will prefer it this way.
12. Find Healthy Shelf-Stable Beverages
When you send your kid to school with lunch, you also need to remember a beverage. In addition to water, most parents pack juice. The problem is that many juices are high in sugar. Luckily, there are a few shelf-stable beverages geared towards kids that are low in sugar and filled with vitamins.
Find a shelf-stable healthy beverage your kid likes, and stick with it.
13. Use Large Cookie Cutters For Sandwiches
If you have a child who hates bread crusts, then you can save time cutting the edges off bread by using a cookie cutter. You can buy large cookie cutters in various shapes that easily cut through bread.
This simple tool will not only remove crusts, but it will turn a boring sandwich into a fun-shaped lunch your child will enjoy. Then you can keep the crusts, dry them out, and make breadcrumbs.
Wrapping Up How To Make School Lunches Easier To Prepare
Preparing a healthy lunch for your child is important, but it can also be time-consuming and stressful. To help make school lunch prep easier, buy fruits and vegetables that don’t require chopping or advanced preparation.
Buy bento-style containers to help make it easier to remember all the healthy food groups. Search for healthy pre-packaged snacks and low-sugar beverages that you can easily add to your child’s lunch each morning.
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Tom Gaffey is an expert writer who currently resides in Washington D.C. Tom has a passion for real estate and home improvement writing, as well as travel and lifestyle writing. He lived the last twelve years in Hawaii where he worked closely with luxury resorts and event planners, mastering his knowledge of aesthetics and luxury products. This is where he found his passion for home improvement and a keen interest in DIY projects. Currently, Tom resides in Washington D.C, and also working on his debut fiction novel.
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