I need Healthy Lunch Box Ideas

Shannon - posted on 05/11/2009

Hi Julia

Thanks they are great tips. My daughter is 5 and started school this year. Piper likes alot of food but there is some food she just wont even try. The problem with Piper is that she gets fixed on a type of food and wants it all the time. Then because she's had so much of it she gets sick of it and then refuses to it eat again. Last week it was a BLT salad. She wanted me to pack it everyday for lunch now she won't touch it. The cookie cutter sandwich sounds like a great idea she will love that. Thanks for ur advice. I live in a small country town and Piper is the only child diabetic within hours of where we live so its hard to get support from people who understand. Its good to talk to someone in the same situation. Thanks again.

Julia - posted on 05/10/2009

Hi Shannon. My little guy is 3 and was diagnosed almost a year ago. He doesn't go to school, but we do pack lunches for frequent playdates and such. I know little ones can be picky, but I am pretty lucky and my son eats pretty much everything. Here are a few of our sons favorite things we make for easy cold lunches...

- hummus and turkey wraps (if you slice them after you make the wrap you can stack them in a little container which travel great and are more fun to eat...also wraps tend to be lower in carbs then bread which is a great benefit. You can get wraps in all kinds of different flavors "and colors" which my son loves! The hummus also comes in many different flavors and is low in carbs while given little much needed nutrients.)

- Cookie cutter sandwiches...this can be a little tricky figuring out carbs depending on the size cookie cutter you use, but we use really little cookie cutters which makes my son think he is getting more than he actually is. He really likes having the different shapes to eat and plays up an ordinary PB&J.

- we make him special lower carb trail mix...we use popcorn as the base which is low carb and then add things like unsweetened dried blueberries, small pieces of unsweetened dried apple, slivered almonds.

-Another idea that we don't do because we don't use artificial sweeteners, but we have friends that use is they take sugar free jello and take a bag of plain air popped popcorn and sprinkle the jello powder into it and it makes fun flavored poprcorn. It is pretty good and kids love it!

- we always include sliced vegetable in our sons lunches. We try to get creative and use a lot of the cookie cutter tricks for anything we can...it seems to make the boring food more fun for him.

- Our son son loves tuna fish sandwiches and one way we found to cut down on carbs is to do stuffed tomatos. You take a roma tomato, cut just the top of the tomato off, use a spoon to empty the pulp, and stuff it with the tuna mixture. You are elimating the bread so it is lower in carbs. We make our tuna without mayo when we are sending him out of the house with lunch so that we don't worry about it going rancid. We use all kinds of different things like italian salad dressing or artichokes in water and kalmata olives and olive oil.



What kinds of things does your daughter like? I know my son like some things that most kids don't really eat. I hope you find some new things for her to try. I hope this helps and good luck.