Healthy and tasty snack ideas for lunchboxes

WHILE most primary schools now enforce healthy eating policies that don’t allow sweets, chocolate, fizzy drinks or crisps, it is not always easy to think of healthy alternatives that children will enjoy and parents often end up putting the same things into lunchboxes every day.

A healthy lunch should provide about a third of our daily nutritional needs and include a variety of breads and other carbs, protein, good fats for brain development, fruit and ideally some sliced vegetables, says nutritionist Nicola Murphy.

“One suggestion is to cook extra pasta or rice for dinner and use it to make a salad for lunch. You can add in some cold chicken or tuna, or some cubes of cheese and it will keep in the fridge until the next day. A larger joint of meat or salmon for dinner can provide sandwich fillings too. Fresh food is better for you and cheaper, as well as saving time for busy parents.”