So after a couple of months racking your brain about how to entertain the kids every day, they’re finally back to school. School uniform check! Sports kit check! Stationary check! Healthy packed lunches…hmm not yet got that sorted?

With fresh news of Jamie Oliver getting out there to the schools once again and banning butter on sandwiches, I think we’re all realising how important it is for kids to get the right nutrients on a daily basis, without all the junk food. Another factor is that the food needs to keep them full throughout the day – a hungry child is a grumpy one!!

When I first thought of ‘healthy packed lunches’, I came up with a couple of ideas:
- Always use brown/multigrain bread when making sandwiches.
- Where possible use organic vegetables & fruit – the less chemicals your children take in the better
- Try and get your children into the habit of eating fruit as a snack, so hold back on the chocolate bar and bag of sweets and swap them for an apple and some grapes or dried mango is really tasty.
- Instead of a bag of crisps, try giving your children some ‘Snack a Jacks’ instead.
The Food Standards Agency has a few good tips online such as drying out the salad with kitchen roll before you put it in the sandwich to avoid the sandwich going soggy – genius!

However, when I’d done a bit more digging around on the internet I found that there’s a load of options out there to make their lunch box more interesting:
- Try making a ‘Pitta Pocket’ instead of a sandwich by stuffing a wholegrain pitta bread with tasty ingredients.
- Home-made pizza is also a great choice. Cut a pizza base into 4 equal parts or use pitta bread and put a tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and plenty of chopped vegetables - peppers, onion, mushrooms and sliced courgettes on top and cook. You could also make a mini pizza using a wholemeal muffin cut in half and topped with vegetables or ham. Toast this under a grill for a couple of minutes for a fun and different snack.
- Make a rice/pasta salad using cooked brown rice and lentils / brown pasta - you could add chunks of cooked aubergine, pepper slices, chopped spring onions and pieces of cooked turkey or chicken. Try mixing with tuna and avocado, or chicken, sweetcorn, cherry tomato and spinach leaves.

There’s some ideas for the food covered however all hectic parents know that children have their own particular taste for what their lunch boxes look like. Girls normally want one adorned with their favourite pop star/film such as Hannah Montana or High School Musical, whereas boys tend to lean towards Transformers and car themes.

The most practical lunch box I’ve seen is one which premiered on Dragons Den a while ago but it’s ingenious. It’s called “Food for Thought”.

It is renowned for being ‘fruit friendly’ and has two sections at one end of the lunch box – one which is for an apple/orange and the other for a little circular container to put grapes/cherries/berries/raisins in, helping your children to get to their 5 fruit a day.

Hectic Mum top tip - To make it more girlie/boyish, you could buy a set of stickers to cover it in.

For those children who don’t need to take packed lunches to school then there’s less to worry about. However they always want a snack or two during the day so it’s best to try and get the fruit into them at this stage. These nifty little inflatable fruit protectors are great to stop apples/bananas/peaches etc from getting crushed and bruised in their school bags. All you do is put the piece of fruit into the case and blow it up! (Another Dragons Den ingenious idea!!)

Anyway, I hope that helps any hectic mums out there! Do you have any tips on packed lunches which are healthy and your kids like?

If there’s any last minute bits and bobs you need to get your kids to kit them out for school (clothes wise) then log onto the Get The Label site and check out some of the childrenswear products – there are some great jackets to keep them warm through the winter.