Back to school healthy lunch box guide

Back to school also means back to lunch box filling! These days, more and more schools are banning certain foods in packed lunches, which often means us mums are to struggling to find foods to pack!

However, preparing a nutritionally balanced lunch box that your kids will love as well as refraining from packing nuts and processed sugar, is actually possible!

As there are different rules for each school, we have created a general guide for a safe lunch box that is simple, healthy and most importantly – YUMMY!

School lunch box rules

Do not pack food that can trigger allergies – like nuts!

A common item banned in most school lunch boxes are nuts. This includes any kind of food that has a nut trace – like certain cakes, peanut butter sandwiches, almond meal etc.

Try using seeds to replace nuts so your child is still experiencing that nutty taste in the form of these Nut-Free Super Seeds Muesli Bars (recipe available in the 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge recipe hub).

Some ways to avoid risk of anaphylaxis is to encourage your children not to share their foods, wash their hands after eating and get help from a teacher if another child looks unwell.

Meal plan in advance

Plan: Use our 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge shopping list to keep track of all your ingredients and what is low and needs topping up. This will not only ensure your never left unprepared but will be a nice rest on your grocery bill as you won’t be buying unnecessary items so frequently.

Prep in advance: Involving your kids in the cooking process of school lunches can be the difference to an empty lunch box come home time and a full one. Get your little ones excited to help by picking out their lunches and snacks for the week and start prepping with these Kid-Approved Healthy Pizza Scrolls.

Love your leftovers: After dinner, spoon the leftovers into portion containers and transfer to the fridge or freezer! This is the most efficient method for busy parents.

Storage

Are your kids sick of their soggy sandwiches? To keep things fresh and appetising, try adding a frozen drink wrapped in a plastic zip lock bag as a substitute for an ice block cooler. Alternatively fill your child’s water bottle with water and freeze it, then place it in the lunch box to keep food cold.

Checking if your kids school bags are kept outside or stored away from the sun is key to preventing food from going bad.

Pack healthy sweet treats

This doesn’t need to be difficult. Avoiding packaged and processed foods is a great rule of thumb when packing your child’s lunch box as it ensures your child is being given nourishing, wholesome lunches and snacks.

Yes, it can sometimes be easier to throw a packet of crisps or a store bought ‘healthy’ bar into the lunch box when you’re frantically trying to get out the door, but meal prepping can actually make up for this. How? By making double the night before and using leftovers for lunches, preparing earlier and then freezing also saves more time and keeps your kids healthy!

If you have a fussy eater who can’t bear the thought of a lunch box without some kind of ‘junk food’, try your hand at baking healthy treats such as this Flourless Chocolate Cake which has NO sugar at all but tastes amazing.

Healthy ratio

Nutrition experts says a lunch box has 4 components, a main item, a fruit or vegetable snack, a second snack, and a drink.

As most kids are in school five days a week, their lunch box constitutes as a high portion of their daily food intake so ensuring multiple food groups are covered is essential.

An easy way to create a balanced lunch box is to include an item of food from each of the 5 food groups:

• Vegetables.
• Protein, including meat, poultry, seafood or plant-based protein.
• Grains or foods high in complex carbohydrates.
• Fruit.
• Dairy or foods high in calcium.

Here is a Healthy Mummy approved day in a balanced lunch box:

Fruit and vegetable break:

Carrots and grapes (fruit, vegetables)

Morning tea:

Nut-Free Honey and Raspberry Muffins, cheese with seed crackers (grains, calcium, protein).

Lunch:

Chickpea, Courgette and Tomato pasta (grains, vegetables, protein).

Need more healthy recipe inspiration?

Join the 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge

Want access to thousands and thousands MORE healthy recipes just like this recipe? Then be sure to check out our 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge.

Our 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge is a family-friendly, breastfeeding-safe program designed FOR MUMS to help them tackle their health and lose the baby weight. 

Every week you are given a different meal plan to follow and each month we add 100+ NEW recipes to our Challenge Recipe Hub. That way, you’ll never get bored and stay on weight loss track while digging into healthy, yummy recipes.

Learn more about our 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge HERE.