Creating Healthy Lunches With the #FloraLunchboxChallenge

I'm a mum who likes to know what my child is eating so all of my children take a packed lunch to school but with the government always trying to encourage healthy eating and more and more schools policing just what us parents our giving our kids to eat, knowing how to meet those standards is beginning to prove quite tricky.

I'm quite lucky in the fact that I don't have fussy eaters, my children will eat what they are given, well unless I give my eldest a tomato, and this means they always get a piece of fruit in their lunch and some sort of salad in either a sandwich, wrap or pita or sometimes a salad by itself but I do allow the treats such as biscuits and crisps too.

Flora recently commissioned a study that revealed a small 1.6% of children's lunchboxes are meeting the school food national standards and only 1 in 5 lunchboxes, just 17% contain any sort of vegetables or salad. These figures shocked me as I've always maintained a balance diet with my children.

However these findings have prompted Flora to distribute 631,000 lunchboxes with handy recipe planners to retailers across the UK in a bid to help make packing lunches an easier task for parents, especially those with picky eaters.

I was kindly sent one of these sets along with some delicious simple-to-make recipes to try out on my children. I opted for the tuna, celery and mayo wrap (which I quite happily ate too). The great thing about all of the recipes is that you can make them the night before! 

All of the recipes can find be found here along with hints and tips on how to make the most of this meal.

But before you take a look at that let me share with you a few things that work in my house.

1.  Switch things up

And by this I mean don't always make the same lunches, eating the same food every day becomes boring, so instead of sandwich why not make a wrap or perhaps a pita bread filled with salad. You can switch crisps for popcorn and of course a different fruit each day to keep up with your 5 a day.

2. Let the kids help

I find letting my children help make their own lunches will in turn encourage them to eat it because they've had a say in what they are going to be eating and of course it allows them to gain a sense of independence at the same time.

3. Make food fun

Ok I know we teach our children to not play with their food but that doesn't mean we can't. If they are eating at home why not make a funny face out food? And if they are taking their lunch to school you can look at bento style eating, making there meal based around a certain theme or a certain colour or even popping in little notes of encouragement.

4. Try something new

The best way to encourage more fruit, vegetables and salads in a lunch is to encourage kids to try new foods, you may be surprised at how much they actually like and that will give you more of a variety to choose from when thinking what to make them next.

Healthy food doesn't have to mean that it becomes bland or tasteless and it doesn't have to mean something complicated to create either. Whether you have little or lots of time to make your child/ren's lunch just focus on what works for your family just remember to keep an eye on the nutritional value of what's in that lunch box! 

“This post is an entry for the #FloraLunchbox Linky Challenge, sponsored by Flora. Check out their lunch planner and recipe ideas here <http://www.flora.com/article/category/1104207/healthy-kids >”