Packed lunch ideas for kids at school – not just sandwiches! – Food For Kids Podcast episode 29

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. By now most listeners to this podcast who have school or nursery aged children will have started the autumn term again. I know some have been back for a couple of weeks already but most people are back this week. So now that that initial rush of uniforms and school paperwork's coming to an end, it's a good time to think about how you're going to tackle lunches this year. For a lot of people one of the best things about the summer is not having to pack a packed lunch for a few weeks.

Obviously if you always get school dinners this won't apply and you can skip this episode or use some of the ideas for after school snacks, trip days or holidays. But for families who either have some packed lunches or all packed lunches we're back into the term time with a bang and while it makes sense in the first week or two to keep everything simple while your kids get used to all the changes of maybe a new classroom or a new teacher or even a new school, after a couple of weeks you might start to think about how you can add some variety and extra nutrition to your packed lunches without you spending all day in the kitchen.

One of the things that comes up all the time with packed lunches is that they can get boring. Some children of course don't mind having similar things most days. In a previous episode I mentioned that at secondary school I pretty much ate a plastic ham sandwich, cheese onion crisps and an apple for four years straight. That wasn't all down to my mom I liked having the same thing and it being predictable and because most of my friends had the same thing every day, when I did sometimes get bored and try to do something different, I'd get a lot of teasing, kind of “ooh, look at you, think you're better than us” kind of response.

So if your child feels like this too, then you can of course just make sure that the other meals they eat during the day provide the variety they need and try to fit in some less obvious ways to add a little variety to their lunches so that it doesn't draw attention.

And if you have a fussy eater, then the main thing is to make them feel safe and comfortable eating at school. So always make sure that there are some safe foods in every lunch. You have lots of other opportunities to make up for what they don't eat at school. This is especially important when they've had other changes going on which will make the lunchtime already feel less secure such as new friends or a new table or a new dining hall.

But if your child is getting bored with the same old sandwich or you want to try and change things up a bit to add some variety, especially if your child's fed up with sandwiches in general, then what do you do? There are loads of great ideas online for lunches, but sometimes they can make you feel bad and they can be a bit unrealistic when the creators who are making those blogs and videos are literally doing that for their side hustle or main income and they have lots of time to spend on it and you're juggling a job or several kids and after school activities. All power to you if you're the kind of parent who writes cute little notes into the skins of bananas or cuts up all the fruit into shapes or makes smiley faces every day. It's great if that makes you happy. But if like me, you're the kind of parent who intends to do that kind of thing and then ends up doing it twice and then not again for a whole year, then please don't get hung up on what other people are doing.

If you're making a lunch that includes some combination of protein, fat, carbohydrates, fruit and veg over the course of the week, even if each individual day isn't perfectly balanced, and if your child eats some of it most of the time, enough that they manage to get through the afternoon without falling asleep or melting down, and if you're making sure that they eat well when they're at home, then honestly, that's a win.

On the other hand, sometimes we do know that we've got into a rut and it's nice to get some extra inspiration because we forget that some things exist when we buy the same things at the store every week and also some people can be really creative and give us some really good ideas to tempt our kids.

So coming up, I'm going to give some ideas for different lunch elements, including some non-sandwich items without any side servings of mom guilt. So let's get into it.

Joanne Roach (03:47)

We're going to start with the school lunch version of the pick and mix idea I talked about back in episode 17 when we were talking about school holiday snacks. This uses either divided sandwich boxes, bento boxes or little paper and silicon muffin cases to provide a selection of picky bits in your box which your child can eat as they want rather than focusing on one large main and a couple of sides. It's the homemade and healthier version of those lunchable packs which kids love to put together.

As in the episode about snacks, if broadly speaking you can include some kind of starchy carbohydrate for some energy, something that's a good source of protein and maybe some healthy fats, and a couple of fruits and veggies, you're on to a winner.

I won't go into detail with them all again here because it will make the episode far too long, but if you go back to episode 17 I ran through lots of different easy ideas for each of those categories and there is a list in the show notes too so you can get some ideas for things you haven't tried yet or haven't remembered for a while. But in case you didn't hear that episode, for a quick overview of things that you could easily put into a DIY Lunchable Picky Box.

First here are some things you could provide for the starchy carbs part. You can obviously use tiny mini sandwiches but you can also use things like bagels either cutting them up into little pieces to dip or bagels or English muffins cut into halves and then made into little pizzas, lower salt crackers, breadsticks or pretzels, pitas or flatbreads cut into strips, rice cakes and oatcakes, triangles of wraps for scooping things up, you can also toast them in the oven or air fryer to make little nachos to dip into things, or you can make them into mini quesadillas with a dry-ish filling, you can get loads of good suggestions for fillings online. Kids who really like lots of tiny handfuls of picky bits can also have dry cereal or plain popcorn.

For the vaguely protein-y kind of section, obviously there's cold meats, cheeses, tuna mayo, hard boiled eggs, but don't forget dips and spreads that are high in protein like hummus, cream cheese, nut or seed butter if your school allows them. And nuts and seeds themselves as well as trail mixes make great picky bits. Mini bites of things like mini chicken satays or falafel balls, cold meatballs or risoles from the deli section. Mini sausages also work great in a picky bento box, especially with a little pot of sauce to dip into.

I'm going to put in a good word for roasted or air-fried chickpeas as a great snacky-picky choice. If you Google you can find lots of different coatings for them and they are a lot of fun and high in protein and fibre if your child is okay with the texture. If your child is fine with beany textures then edamame is also a fantastic picky protein source. But if your child really struggles with chewy and meaty options then you can still get a decent amount into wet items like milkshakes, yogurts, drinking yogurts. If that's something you struggle with then check the packaging on those as some of them have much more protein than others and some of have lot of sugars.

Obviously for fruit and veg you're looking at things that are portable, don't need much slicing up, will deal with being bashed about a bit, and bonus points if they will hold up well when they come home untouched and can be reused for a snack or for another lunch. Again there's a full list of child-friendly fruit and veg ideas in the episode 17 show notes. But while I'm here, don't forget the power of a skewer to make fruit seem much more interesting, or occasionally cutting things into nice shapes for little kids. Crinkle cutters are dead cheap and they take no extra time than chopping with a normal knife, but they look fun. And remember also that tinned fruits in juice rather than syrup can be split up into portions into little pots and they work really nicely too and feels a bit more like a dessert than just a piece of fresh fruit.

So that's the pick and mix approach. Whether you call it homemade Lunchables, a picky box, or your child thinks it's funny to call it a deconstructed pizza or a deconstructed wrap or whatever to make it sound fancy, the pick and mix approach does give you the option to keep a menu of things in and then choose different combinations each day or even to let your child choose their combo as long as they choose something from each category like we talked about in the snacks episode.

Joanne Roach (07:43)

Ok now for some other ideas to make lunch easier or more interesting. Firstly, if you're keeping mostly to sandwiches, don't forget that many sandwiches can be prepped ahead and refrigerated or in some cases frozen. I'll link in the show notes to the episode with Jenna the Food Safety Mum about the benefits of making lunches the night before for food safety and to her reel about freezing sandwiches to make life easier.

I'm not really into the whole making food look cute all the time thing, but sometimes it is nice and one place it can work is with very young children who aren't massive sandwich fans. Changing the shape can help. Using something like a star or heart shaped cookie cutter on the finished sandwiches as those shapes don't make much waste or cutting them down into little tiny single bite squares and then lining those up in the lunch box can look fun because you see all the ends of the sandwiches or even threading them onto a skewer. None of those things take too much time, but they can make sandwiches seem smaller, more accessible and less overwhelming to a little child.

If you want to increase your child intake of wholemeal bread but they won't eat a whole sandwich of it, then consider doing one side in white and one side in brown. It can look quite fun. Or use a 50-50, but don't get too hung up on it. White bread gets demonised a lot, but it does still give them a lot of energy and you can build in that extra fibre with other things.

If you want a sort of bready main course but not just an ordinary bread sandwich, then think about alternating with things like thins. They're great for kids who aren't big bread fans but like the fillings. Or use wraps, either into a full burrito style wrap for older children or you can roll them up in a sausage and then put them in the lunchbox cut side up so you have the nice wheel shapes. These are called pinwheels on American blogs and videos and look very pretty.

English muffins, flatbreads, mini-naans or pitas made into little pizzas are great. Quesadilla triangles are also fun. Our kids kept their quesadillas simple, just tomato puree, grated cheese and then sometimes some ham but you can do all kinds of fillings. The same with what UK people call pinwheels and what Americans call pizza rolls which is puff pastry spirals with a savoury filling. Our kids loved these and they were one of the unusual lunches that they never got teased for because their friends were so keen on them that they always wanted to be given a spare and they didn't want to burn their bridges. I'll link to a recipe in the show notes in case you don't know what I'm talking about but they're really good because you can make them at the weekend, they're pretty quick and they're good for days in the fridge.

Bagels can also feel a bit fun and a bit different from a sandwich. A halved one for little ones means you can make it once and have two days in a row in one prep session.

Subway style rolls go down really well with lots of teenagers. They have them in supermarkets now, they have names like Metro roll at Aldi and they're really nice and soft. You can freeze them when you get them home and just use one or two a week as a change from sandwiches. If your child finds them too bready then slice them in half and scoop out some of the bread in the middle and add some extra filling.

Don't forget things that aren't sandwiches but are still essentially a dough with a filling like pasties or samosas. You can get really good ones in the shops now, especially in the freezer section, but you can also make them at home easily if you can't find ones that you like. Rice paper rolls or sometimes called summer rolls also look really fun because you can see through them. They often have crunchy elements which a lot of kids really like and they're also good if you have a coeliac in the family. They're great paired with a little pot of dipping sauce and if you have a little budding chef in the house they can have a lot of fun making them with you and the fact that they look better with brighter colours in can encourage them to include some vegetables. They are obviously a lot more effort, so that's just an idea for now and again.

Also don't overlook breakfast-coded things like scotch pancakes, rolled up flat pancakes with, say, cream cheese and fruit or nut butter in, if that's allowed, waffles, savoury and sweet muffins, French toast cut into soldiers is a good way of getting some egg into children who don't like eggs, and mini frittatas cooked in muffin tins, so little dinky ones, are great for kids who do like eggs and you can make them in a big batch and freeze them. And while we're still on the breakfast theme, if your child likes oatmeal or overnight oats, then there's no reason they can't have that for lunch if they like it.

Other alternatives to bread as a main starch are pasta salads, couscous and other grains, cold potato wedges with a dip, plain nachos to dip into things, watch the salt on the packet, cold noodle salad if your child likes a noodle bowl or potato salads are great too for those that like them. If your kid loves mac and cheese you can bake it into silicon muffin cases and that makes great little bites for lunch boxes.

On the sweets end of things, different schools allow different things so I won't go into that in detail. But things like popcorn drizzled with melted chocolate or energy balls made with cocoa and dates and oats or fruit dipped in a little chocolate are some halfway house between no sweets and sweets if you feel like you're trying to bridge a gap between what their friends are having and what you feel comfortable with. I'll link to some of those ideas in the show notes.

Joanne Roach (12:40)

So that's a lot of ideas, so I'll put some links to some of the recipe ideas in the show notes and don't forget that the full transcript is there. So when you're thinking about lunch boxes next you can go to those show notes and jot some ideas down from there. It's episode 29 so that will be thefoodies dot org forward slash ffk29 so that's F F K for Food For Kids and the number 29. But if you go on the website and search on lunch boxes it should come up.

Also, because I personally find it easier to see ideas for lunchboxes rather than just hear and think about them, I'm going to link to a series of four posts by a great creator called What Lisa Cooks. She does loads of lunchbox ideas that she uses for her two sets of twins. And these four posts are lots of ideas for non sandwich based lunches with pictures of them to get inspiration from. The main thing to remember is that it's great to try your best with packed lunches to give them a good variety of wholesome foods. But the most important thing is to make sure that they have something in every lunchbox that they will feel confident eating, doesn't make them feel too much like an outsider (unless they're comfortable with that) and just makes them happy to eat and then get outside to play.

And on that note, my last point as someone who's worked in school dining rooms a lot, please don't send in too much food in lunch boxes. Often children end up throwing away good food and feeling guilty about it because their friends have finished eating and gone out to play and they're trying to finish up and they just want to go out and join them. Or they can find big portions overwhelming and it can put them off at the start. If you tend to put things in their lunchbox that are either for morning break, afternoon break or on the way home, make sure that they know which items those are. Firstly so that they can make sure that they're foods that are safe to eat after the four hour window of safety for chilled foods, but also so that they know they can ignore them at lunchtime and any overzealous lunchtime supervisors know that they're okay to leave them too. Label them if necessary. My daughter was very upset for a while at primary school when a lunchtime supervisor who meant well wouldn't let her go out to play until she'd eaten everything in her lunchbox. And this is not helpful for their understanding of their own bodies or their relationship with food. So I had to go in and speak to them about it because she was quite a slow eater and I did send less stuff in and that was helpful.  Have some patience with your child having phases of not eating a big lunch and try to pack some foods that can be reused safely if they come home uneaten as discussed in episode 26 with Jenna Brown.

Remember that school lunchtime is as much about them learning to socialise with each other and have time to play as it is about the food that they eat and try to relax about it as much as possible. I know that's easier said than done, but also cut yourself some slack. If you've come away from this episode with one or two new ideas, do check out the show notes for some of those links and let me know in a DM if you have any cool ideas that I haven't mentioned. I'll be back on Monday and I hope to see you then and in the meantime, happy eating!