​Easy and Healthy Foods to Slip into Your Kid's Lunch

Easy and Healthy Foods to Slip into Your Kid's Lunch

Around October, your kid will start complaining about the ubiquitous peanut butter sandwich, small apple, and bottle of water you pack in his lunch every single day. You'll tell him that food is fuel! Eat for life! Don't be picky! But he's not going to buy it. He'll point out that all of the other kids get exciting lunches. They get packages of bright orange cheese and peanut butter crackers, and they get fruit punch in a sippy box. They get Jello pudding cups and Nacho Cheese Doritos. They get Lunchables!

You, however, aren't about to fill your kid up with all that added sugar and all those nasty chemicals that'll addle his brain, lower his immunity, and promote lethargy and obesity. But you also aren't about to spend the next seven months listening to him complain about how boooring his lunches are.

So you'll Google "easy kids' lunches," and you'll get a lot of results, but at least half of those will be offered up by people who don't have kids. Waldorf salad? Couscous with raisins? Sweet potato vegetable dip? Puh-leeeze.

Healthy food doesn't have to be disgusting (to your child) or boring (to your child,) and it doesn't have to be a pain in the patootie (to you.) Here are some fun, healthy, and super easy (for real!) ideas for your kid's lunches that'll have the other whippersnappers scowling at their pre-frozen mini chemical pizza bites.

Reinvent the Sandwich

Mixing up the sandwich routine will make lunch a lot less boring. Try these tasty, healthy options instead. You can mix and match the fillings and "bread" or make simple substitutions to account for your child's picky unique palate.

• Taco lettuce wraps (pic featured above): lettuce cups that actually look like tacos full of the taco meat, cheese, and any veggies you can hide in there! :)
• Peanut butter and honey topped with sliced bananas, rolled up in a whole grain tortilla and sliced into little pinwheels.
• Pretty much anything on whole grain, teeny-tiny, small-slice bread like whole wheat sandwich thins.
• Turkey, lettuce, mayo, and cheese wrapped in a lettuce leaf.

Shake Up the Sides

Tossing chips in a bag is easy, but these healthier - and far more interesting - options are just as simple.

• Baby carrots and ranch to dip them in.
• Cubed or string cheese.
• Trail mix or mixed nuts.
• Banana chips.
• Pretzels.
• A boiled egg.
• Yogurt.
• Whole grain crackers and peanut butter.
• Popcorn.

Fill Up the Fruit

Slipping a whole apple or banana into your kid's lunch is the easiest possible way to ensure she gets a little fresh fruit during the day, but is she eating it? Mmmm, maybe. But these fruity treats are way more fun, and you won't have wonder if she's collecting them in her desk or locker.

• Cut an apple in half and slightly hollow out each side. Fill them with a mixture of peanut butter, honey, raisins, and nuts.
• Skewer grapes, strawberries, blueberries, or whatever kind of fruit the kid likes, into a colorful fruit kebab, and make a quick dip by mixing a little light sour cream with a spoonful of brown sugar. Be sure to cut the sharp edge off the kebab, though, so your kindergartener doesn't get arrested for bringing a deadly weapon to school.
• Use a melon baller to scoop out perfect spheres of fruit - melon, apple, pear, peach, mango, you name it - and include a small toothpick to spear them with and some sour cream and brown sugar mixture to dip them in.