Gold-standard lunchboxes are great, but sometimes life gets in the way. Here a nutritionist suggests ways to make healthy kids’ lunches that even stand a chance of getting eaten.
Gold-standard lunchboxes are great, but sometimes life gets in the way. Here a nutritionist suggests ways to make healthy kids’ lunches that even stand a chance of getting eaten.
- Perspective
- National
- Queensland
- Schools
By Felicity Caldwell
February 9, 2025 — 6.11pm
With students returning to school and kindy after the holidays, I asked a nutritionist to rate my kids’ lunchboxes on a random weekday.
The answer shocked me.
“I think they look fantastic,” said Rebecca Farletti, a senior public health nutritionist with Health and Wellbeing Queensland. “Ten out of 10.”
It wasn’t my best effort, I had warned – I’d just run out of homemade apple and blueberry muffins (made with a mix of white flour and wholemeal flour) so I subbed in a homemade cornflake biscuit.
I cook lunchbox snacks in batches and pull them out of my box freezer when needed.
And while I usually do a ham, tomato and capsicum sandwich on wholemeal bread for one kid, and avo and feta for the other, I decided to send nut-free chocolate spread sandwiches for both that day in the hope they’d get eaten.
But Farletti says I needn’t strive for perfection, which is reassuring.
“We can’t expect that every day,” she said. “We all live busy lives, and we all have competing priorities, and sometimes it’s just not on hand.
“Just having a packed lunch and having something that your kids will eat is the big important step, and then what we can do to add in more veggies and more fruit, that’s what we aspire to.
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“We don’t need to hold ourselves to the absolute gold standard day after day.”
If all this sounds like a humblebrag, I’d like to apologise because it’s not.
I’m blessed to generally not have struggles with fruit and veggies – my issue is uneaten sandwiches, particularly since my oldest graduated from kindy and started prep.
There’s so much to squeeze into a school day, teachers are stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to manage all the competing priorities.
But with just 15 minutes of eating time before play at both the first and second break, I think my son runs out of time to eat his sandwich.
Farletti’s sandwich tips – which coincide with National Lunchbox Week, from February 9 to 15 – include cutting sandwiches differently, experimenting with a wrap, or trying different fillings.
“I think one of my key tips is to be curious about why these foods are coming home,” she said.
“Maybe it’s getting a bit repetitious, or maybe, is the sandwich feeling a little too warm by the time it’s lunchtime, and could an ice pack be included in the lunchbox?”
Farletti says children should have at least one item from each of the five food groups in their lunchbox – fruit, vegetables, dairy, grains and protein.
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Recommended daily serving sizes and what that means in terms of actual apples, glasses of milk and slices of toast for each age group make my head hurt, so here’s a handy flyer to explain it all.
Farletti says for children starting primary school, parents can stick to familiar or well-liked foods for lunchboxes, particularly when kids are juggling new friends and classroom environments.
“I think maybe the best takeaway is just find an opportunity to add one more veggie somewhere,” she said.
Only 4 per cent of children eat enough vegetables to nourish their growing bodies, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2022 National Health Survey.
The gold standard is a high bar, but I’m going to start with an extra slice of tomato.
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