Packing a healthy lunch for school

Lots of talk about how to pack a healthy lunch for your child. Well, there are few basics that make the lunch healthy:

• make sure the lunch has at least 3 different food groups, that's minimum,  shoot for all five on most days
• look for low fat dipping sauces, kids love that so they can dip their fruits/vegetables
• combining foods into salads or sandwiches is a great way to get the additional food groups in
• milk or some calcium based beverage is good for the milk group.
• If you are using fruit juice, check the sugar content and look for 100% (that means no high fructose corn syrup)
• lean proteins
• whole wheat pita, pasta or bread

But you know what is the biggest factor to a healthy lunch.... let your child be part of deciding what goes in it. Otherwise, there is no guarantee that they will eat the lunch. Set the criteria, it can even be a "detective game". Look in the pantry, refrigerator etc and find a food that has grains with at least 2 or more (ideally 4!) grams of fiber it in for lunch.

That is why it is good to have them help with grocery shopping so they can give input in the foods that meet the "healthy criteria" but they like and picked.

Okay, we got whole grains. But what about a fruit....