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The Healthy Kid's Lunchbox

Creating a healthy lunch day in, day out is a daunting task. Using this five-point template can help to ensure that you are getting the nutrition right, while appealing to your children’s tastes.

Remember, just because lunch is in a sandwich box, it does not lessen the fact that it is one of the three main meals of the day. So it needs to be just as nutritionally balanced, appetising and interesting as the dinner you serve at home.

1.    Carbohydrate for energy: Go for wholemeal tortilla wraps (0.9g salt per wrap), mini wholemeal pittas (trace – 0.3g salt per pitta), Kingsmill 50:50 bread with 0.8g of salt for two slices. For something different homemade pasta, brown rice, couscous and bulghar wheat salads are good carbohydrate options for packed lunches – and can be made with tiny amounts or no salt if you prefer.

2.    Protein for growing bodies: Chicken, turkey and lean beef that you have roasted at home to control the salt are great for filling sandwiches, wraps and pittas, as well as adding to pasta and rice salads. Salmon and tuna canned in olive oil are also ideal, while pulses like chickpeas or red kidney beans added to pasta salads, as well as pots of humous or a pureed down bean-packed winter soup are vegetarian options.

3.     Dairy for strong bones: Try a matchbox-sized chunk of cheddar or Edam cheese, or yoghurts or fromage frais. Remember that even plain yoghurts have 7g of sugar per 100g, which comes from the milk sugar lactose, and plain fromage frais have 4.2g of milk sugar per 100g, so you need to subtract these figures from the quantity of ‘total sugars’ on the nutrition labelling to get a fair idea of the added sugar content. Try packing plain yoghurts and sending fruits like chopped grapes in a little pot to be added by your children. What’s more, sesame seeds are very rich in calcium and can be incorporated into salads and mixed into sandwich fillings.

4.    Fruit and vegetables: Obvious ones like cherry tomatoes, cucumber sticks, satsumas and grapes count, but so to does sweetcorn added to tuna as a sandwich filling, salad in a pitta or wrap and vegetables in winter soups.

5.     Drinks: Water, diluted orange juice or, occasionally, a small fruit smoothie. One 250ml smoothie or a 200ml carton of fruit juice counts towards one of the ‘five a day’.