Toddler Lunches

Found this on another website. Hope it helps.

Simple and Nutritious Lunchbox Choices
Source: Bright Horizons e.family news - 9-10-08

Getting Your Child to Eat

Given the array of prepackaged convenience foods, it’s often hard to make nutritious lunchbox choices for our children. The best way to encourage our children to eat nutritious foods is to make them part of the shopping and meal selection experience. Let your children make soup, bread, sandwich spreads and fillings, and fruit and vegetable treats. Often we pack too much food in our child’s lunchbox and children tend to eat the “sweet stuff” – such as cookies and soda – first. Although it’s often more expensive, many individual serving foods like pretzel sticks, applesauce, cheese sticks or cubes, vegetable dips, and yogurt are nutritious, easy to pack, and attractive to children.

Try to make gradual changes that will result in a healthier lunch. You can pack the usual sandwich and add vegetables and dip instead of chips, or put in half of the child’s usual sandwich and add half of something new. Try white bread on one side and whole wheat on the other.

When making food choices for your child or guiding him to make his own nutritious choices, be aware of food allergies. Speak to your pediatrician before serving anything new like peanut butter or strawberries especially for children under one year.

Here are some guidelines to try to follow:

* Soup choices: lots of good canned soups; look for low salt
* Bread choices: whole wheat, muffins, crackers, English muffins, bagels, mini-bagels, raisin bread, rolls, and tortillas
* Filling choices: peanut butter, cream cheese, apple butter, hummus, American cheese, mozzarella, turkey, ham
* Vegetable choices: carrot and celery sticks, cucumber slices, green beans, tomato wedges, broccoli
* Fruit choices: apple wedges, banana, orange slices, melon pieces, applesauce, peaches, pineapple chunks, kiwi slices
* Drink choices: milk, water, 100 percent fruit juice

Here's a good one for the days you are at home:
My son loves the Pita Pizza's from J. Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious book.
Basically you take about as many whole wheat pitas as you need, spread some pureed spinach over the top (which I grab a few handfuls of baby spinach, put in a bowl with a little water and microwave it for about 40-60 seconds and put in my mini chopper until smooth) tomato sauce to cover the spinach, top with shredded mozarella or provolone cheese, add some oregano and heat in the oven for about 10 minutes until the cheese melts and before it starts to brown. Cut into quarters or pizza slices...
Oh, did I mention that my husband loves these too and we have them once a week. :) Hope you enjoy!

Hi J.,
I usually pack either the lunch meat, cheese, fruit choices other people have suggested, but to make it more exciting for my 2 year-old lately I've been putting it in a pita pocket and she loves it! Otherwise, I usually pack what we've eaten the night before like stir fry on rice, chicken or pork with couscous, pasta and sauce. She also likes "burritos" - basically anything rolled up in a tortilla.

Hope this helps,
D.

I make crescent wrapped cocktail weiners, freeze them and put them in their lunches. I buy pepperoni rolls made from a bakery (or make you own) and use them. Sometimes I make mini cheeseburgers or pasta and put them in a thermos.

My kids used to be big fans of beef vegetable soup. I would often drain the broth so it wasn't as messy. I would put pasta in it - the spiral pasta was easy for them to pick up before they mastered a spoon or fork.

How about rolled up lunch meat? My kids weren't big on bread at that age, so this was our alternative.

Thin slices of fruit have always been a favorite.

How about breakfast items like waffles or french toast?

Have you tried the various flavors of "applesauce" - pear, strawberry, peach, etc?

Cheese slices.

I used to cut up lunch meat and cheese with crackers for my daughter. I also used to mkae macaroni and cheese and mix hamburger meat in it. A nice fruit salad is good to.

Have you tried Gerber Graduates? My daughter is 2 and loves them.

My son (now 5) was never a sandwich eater. He preferred rolled up slices of meat, fruit cups, pickles, olives, pepperoni, string cheese, etc.
Cut small pieces of chicken or meat loaf and he can eat them cold OR warmed up. Or a small wrap with chicken lettuce, shredded cheese.

Send him to Japan to come live with his Teta..he can eat sushi. Your so funny. I saw J. K and I was like that is my sister.

beans are great too, garbonzo, Kidney. ect.