Kids are heading back to school and they need the right food to give them energy all day.
But how can parents pack nutritious lunchboxes without breaking the bank?
4-year-old Camille and 7-year-old John love snack time, but their mom, Heidi, says packing their lunch box with treats isn’t easy.
“Everything is so expensive to buy,” Heidi Clement told 7NEWS. “It’s just finding things that the kids like and they’re excited about , but there’s also not a ton of sugar in them. My daughter Camille, she’s a little bit more picky, so she doesn’t like yogurt, but she does like avocado.”
So, Heidi gets creative.
“We do ants on a log with the peanut butter and the celery and the little raisins,” she said. “It’s crunchy, but then it’s sweet and salty.”
Doctor Joan Salge Blake, a nutrition professor at Boston University, shows us how parents can pack a delicious school lunch using the ABC Strategy.
“The ‘A’ is – I ask them ‘what are you going to eat, what do you want,'” Blake said. “B, be flexible – but it must be nutritious, and then C – Compromise a smidgen, so I know it’s going to be eaten.”
And filling the grocery cart doesn’t have to empty your wallet – check the store circular or app for deals.
“What you want to do is use this as your GPS to plan the lunches for the week, that your son or daughter will eat and save you big bucks,” Blake explained, holding up a grocery store circular. “They put sale items on the front page, and often times, these are very healthy foods. When I see grapes on sale, that’s it – you’re having grapes this week for the fruit.”
Doctor Salge Blake’s other tips? GO BIG.
“This is adorable, and easy to pack – but you want to go big,” she said while demonstrating with a small hummus and chips snack pack. “Buy a big tub of [hummus] – the biggest one you can get and the biggest [baby carrots bag] because you don’t want to run out. [The snack pack] is over 500 percent more expensive than this whole package.”
And put in the work yourself.
“I love cut-up-fruit and so do children, but [a container of pre-cut watermelon] is so, so expensive compared to buying a quarter of a watermelon and cutting it up yourself,” she said, noting a 300 percent price difference.
Meanwhile, Heidi says a little prep work saves time during the morning rush and money.
“I like to do a lot of prep on Sundays and then I have it ready for the week, and then I can just grab it and it’s ready to go,” she said.
7-year-old John says his mom’s snacks get a gold star.
“When it comes to snack time, I really look forward to it,” he told 7NEWS.
Experts say a healthy lunch box should pack in four of the five food groups – fruits, grain, veggies, protein and dairy.
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