Back to school prep: Healthy lunch box ideas

Good nutrition is vital to power kids through a busy school day. A balanced lunch box should include starchy foods like brown bread, rice, potatoes or pasta; lean proteins like tuna, boiled egg, thinly-sliced cheese or chicken; reduced fat dairy like yoghurt, cheese or milk (kept in a cooler bag); and fresh fruit and veggies, like apple slices, grapes, cherry tomatoes and carrot sticks. Make sure they have a water bottle with plain water or home-made iced tea to keep them hydrated. 

In the age of Covid, keeping comorbidites like obesity and diabetes at bay is vital, and they’re a growing problem in children. Avoid foods and condiments high in sugar (watch labels for corn syrup, fructose, sucrose, dextrose). And in place of high-fat spreads, use mashed avocado (with a squeeze of lemon to prevent browning), or low-fat hummus or cottage cheese (add a little pesto for zing), says Cape Town dietitian Karen Protheroe. “You could also use low-fat mayo with tuna, egg or chicken.”

Sarmies

Give these a quick twist by providing kids with a star-shaped cutter (or other shapes). They can use it to create shapes from sarmies made with wholemeal bread, moistened with avo or hummus.

For fillings, try good old peanut butter (salt and sugar free), shredded left-over chicken, mashed tinned fish (tuna, pilchards or sardines with a pinch of oregano), or boiled egg (mashed with a dollop of plain yoghurt or low-fat mayo and pesto). “Avoid processed meats like polony and salami,” says Protheroe.

Salads

Make the base a carbohydrate like wholewheat pasta, brown rice or wholewheat cous-cous, and turn salads into a meal. Prepare the carb in advance (make plenty and keep in the fridge). To 400g of pasta (or other carb), add 4-5tbs fresh pesto, 3tbs Greek yoghurt, juice of half a lemon, 200g mixed cooked veggies (think peas, green beans, courgettes, carrots, corn), 100g quartered cherry tomatoes, and 200g cooked chicken, ham, hard-boiled egg or cheese.

Snacks

For teatime breaks or lunch treats, encourage children to pack popcorn (popped dry or with olive oil), oven-baked pretzels, lean biltong, and rye crackers with ricotta, hummus or low-fat tzatziki.

Also delicious are sweet potato crisps: heat the oven to 180ºC and thinly slice ¼ of a small sweet potato, toss it in ½ tbs of olive oil, and roast for 15-20 minutes until crisp. Leave to cool.

Or make home-made chick nuts, suggests Protheroe. Soak 375g of chickpeas overnight, drain, pat dry with paper towel and spread thinly in a baking tray. Bake at 180ºC for 45 minutes or until crisp. Toss with salt, and for older children, a dash of cayenne pepper. 

Sweet treats

You can’t go wrong with packing fresh fruit, or teach kids to whip up a fruit sundae: spoon 80ml natural yoghurt into an airtight container, mash 25g strawberries to form a purée, and swirl it through the yoghurt. Top with 10g blueberries or mixed berries.

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