Healthy Ideas For Kids Lunch Boxes

Healthy Food For Lunch Boxes

When packing your kids’ lunch boxes, think fuel!  The food you put in your child’s lunch box or brown bag lunch should sustain her/him for the day.  Your lunch box food can give your child the ability to be a better student.  A well-thought-out healthy lunch is the best investment you can make in your child’s education.

Quick and Easy Lunch Box Check List

Use this quick and easy checklist to ensure you are packing a lunch that is nutritionally sound.  Pack kid-sized portions and choose one from each group to give your child all the building blocks of life.

• Vegetables: baby carrots, celery, cauliflower, green leaf lettuces, cherry tomatoes
• Fruit: fresh, dry or natural juice
• Protein: Lean meat, legumes, hard boiled egg, nuts
• Whole Grain: whole wheat bread, whole wheat pita, Triscuits, whole grain tortilla (NOTE: Gluten free? Must be whole grain: brown rice, whole kamut, etc.)
• Dairy: milk, yogurt, cheese, cottage cheese

Healthy Kids Lunch Box

Your kids deserve a healthy lunch. Kids will eat a healthy meal when it’s packed in their lunch box in a creative and fun manner.  Try to think outside the box.  Kids love salsa, so offer a prepared salsa with red beans stirred in and whole grain corn tortilla chips. Try some apple chips instead of a fresh apple or to replace the raisins.

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Kids Play In Dirt – Boost Immune System

Children Who Play In Dirt Are Healthier

Kids Outdoor Fun  – Playing In Dirt As a kid I spent most of my life outdoors playing in the dirt. Literally, we played in the dirt a lot! Within a short walk from our house was a sand-dirt quarry. We spent many weekends and afternoons having fun playing in the dirt. From climbing dirt piles, to digging holes and tubing down huge piles of dirt or gravel we REALLY played in the dirt.

It seems like kids do not get as many opportunities to play in the dirt anymore. It is a shame!

Almost every kid has heard it from time to time; “Don’t play in the dirt!” but when you are a kid, your imagination takes off when you see that pile of dirt. It may turn into a landing site for a large army or hospital helicopter. It may be a complete town with several little roads and several house sites. It could be the coolest drag strip where some of the most popular Nascar drivers go to practice. Whatever their imagination dreams up, that pile of dirt can mean a full day’s play. However if you are a parent that pile of dirt means germs and bacteria, dirty clothes, and a messy child.

Regardless of what parents think, a child needs the dirt to play in. Granted, it’s not the cleanest thing they can play in, but after all, it is dirt, right? There are actually benefits to a child playing in dirt.

Boost Kids Immune System

When a child plays in dirt, they are exposed to several different types of bacteria that you cannot find anywhere else. These tiny micro-size bacteria interlaced in the dirt can make your child stronger and build his or her immune system to build resistance to some colds and viruses. That alone is good enough for most parents to consider allowing their child to play in the dirt, but there are other benefits.

Children Develop A Love Of Outdoors

It goes without saying: if a child has the chance to play outside, she will understand and respect nature more because she is around it so much. A child allowed to play in the dirt can see a butterfly or several different types of insects and out of natural curiosity, will want to learn more about it.

Dirty Kids Have More Motivation

Kids that play outside, whether in the dirt pile or not, tend show more self-motivation. Outdoor activities require creativity and stimulates the imagination. This helps kids to get up and get going. They can explore or create adventures in the dirt, sand box or just in the woods that they cannot duplicate anywhere else.

Dirt Help Fight Childhood Depression

You might wonder how this is possible. There are neurons that can produce serotonin. The serotonin does many things, including acting as a natural anti-depressant. When the hands touch the soil, there are certain types of bacteria that can encourage the neurons to begin producing serotonin. This will result in a happier child and reduce the chances of your child developing depression.

Happiness – Health In A Pile Of Dirt Outdoors

A child playing in dirt and outside in general tends to laugh more. Everyone knows that laughter is important, but it is also healthy because laughter can reduce stress, which can decrease the chance of obesity, high blood pressure, even juvenile diabetes.  Children who spend more time outdoors tend to be happier children.

Build A Sandbox

You may not have a quarry or a big pile of dirt in your neighborhood, so just build an inexpensive wooden sandbox and fill it with some cheap sand or dirt.  There are more ways to play in dirt than just sitting in it and digging with the hands. You can purchase a small shovel and pail at your local Dollar Store. Buy sand toys at a discount when summer is over and they can have several different ways to play and it will cost you very little.

Other Play In Dirt Ideas

Teach your child to garden. Growing your own food is wonderful and if you can interest your child, you are giving them the gift of a lifetime. Buy some seeds, find a spot to plant them and get down on your knees and work the soil to prepare it for the seeds.

Go on a nature hike and while you are out, take a picnic along so you can enjoy the wonderful sites. If you can’t go hiking, then your own backyard can be transformed into a hiking trail.

Kids Need More Dietary Fiber

Foods High In Fiber

Studies have shown that on average American kids get less than half of the fiber they need in the foods that they eat each day. Dietary fiber is a big part of a healthy lifestyle and plays an important role in many aspects of a long and healthy life. Kids need dietary fiber to grow up and stay healthy. Fiber plays a huge role in digestive health as well as heart health. Fiber is easy to find in everyday foods that we feed our kids, with only a couple of quick switches in your accustomed foods and meal planning.

Foods Good For Your Heart

Foods that are high in fiber are good for your heart and are the basis of all healthy diets. High-fiber foods low in processed ingredients make up all heart healthy diets. The foods that are good for your heart are always the natural ones with very little processing. Print out this heart-healthy high-fiber chart and hang it on the refrigerator as a daily reminder to add more high fiber foods to your kids’ diets.

Do you like this reminder? Print it out to hang on the ‘fridge, share it with friends by linking to this page from your site or bookmark it to your favorite social group below.

High Fiber Foods List

Here are a couple of quick high-fiber food switches that are easy to incorporate into your family’s meal planning. Make these high-fiber switcheroos and set your kids up for a healthy high-fiber Diet.

High Fiber – Low Carb Foods

Eating high-fiber whole foods means that you will be eating lower carb foods too. Here are some easy switcheroos that you can make at breakfast.

• Switch Rice Krispies to a bowl of oatmeal
• Have Wheatena instead of cream of wheat.
• Eat Cheerios instead of Special K
• Have whole wheat toast instead of Wonder bread.
• Make Hodgson Mills buckwheat pancakes instead of Bisquick pancakes.

Healthy Heart Diet Menu

Fiber is key to a healthy heart. It is easy to make some quick switches at lunch and get more good-for-your-heart foods in your diet menu.

• Have brown rice instead of white rice with your stir-fry.
• Use Ezekeil bread instead of white bread.
• Use whole wheat wraps for your burrito instead of white flour wraps.
• Make a pizza crust using half white and half whole wheat flour.
• Put your tuna on a whole grain rye bread not enriched rye.

High Soluble Fiber Foods

Foods that are high in soluble fiber are good for your digestive tract and have more vitamins and minerals too. Here are some high-soluble-fat snacks:

• Eat Triscuits instead of saltines.
• Enjoy corn tortilla chips instead of potato chips.
• Get brown rice cakes at your health food store instead of white.
• Pop your own popcorn instead of buying Cheese Doodles.
• Buy Ak-mak wheat crackers instead of Keebler Townhouse Wheats.
• Try Carrs Whole Wheat crackers instead of Ritz whole wheat
• Go Kashi TLC Cheddar instead of Nabisco Chicken In A Basket

High Fiber Foods To Eat For Dinner

Incorporating high-fiber foods into dinner is a simple change too. Try some new grains for dinner. You will find them a tasty change that the whole family will enjoy.

• Enjoy millet or quinoa instead of couscous.
• Make your lasagna with whole wheat pasta instead of white pasta.
• Put barley in the soup instead of enriched noodles.
• Throw a hand full of brown rice into your white rice medley.

Kids Deserve Diets For Healthy Hearts

The whole family’s health and wellness will benefit. Your children are establishing their eating habits now for the rest of their lives. These whole grain choices will give your kids and the whole family the high-fiber nutrient-packed foods that they deserve. Whole foods make up all healthy natural diets, and whole foods are naturally high in fiber. Make the heart-healthy, high-fiber switcheroo for your children.   You can research advancements in heart bypass surgery here.