As the old adage goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. The same sentiment holds true for kids, who can be quite stubborn where food is concerned. At home, parents can monitor what their child is - and is not - eating to make sure they learn to make healthy choices. Now that the school year has started, however, ensuring that the kids get a healthy lunch can be harder.
One thing you can do is, as we have mentioned before, get your child involved in preparing the lunch. S/he can pick out the fruits and snacks that look the tastiest from the healthy foods you have available (aiming for fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean protein most of the time, of course). If it is hard to get your child going in the morning, however, you might not have time for this bonding activity. So, other tips include:
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Making sure food is fun and easy to eat, pre-cutting fruits and vegetables and making interesting wraps, rather than the same pb&j and an apple.
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Use dips, like low-fat ranch, hummus or other favorites to encourage kids to eat vegetables.
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Kids like consistency, but need enough variety to stay interested. Try making a different food every day, but keeping Mondays as "peanut butter day" and Thursdays as "pasta day."
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Make the effort to prepare a quality lunch. If nothing else works, a little guilt never hurt your cause.
Have more tips? Put them in the comments. You can never have too many!
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