How to make your child’s school lunch healthy and appealing

If you commonly open your child’s lunch box after school only to find half of its contents untouched, don’t despair; Sally Sampson, founder of the family cooking magazine ChopChop, has some tips to make school lunch planning and prep a little easier.

Involve your child in preparing his/her own lunches. “Kids who cook have a more diverse palate,” says Sampson, who has authored 21 cookbooks. “Cooking” could be as simple as tossing a salad or stuffing almonds into dates; whatever the dish, Sampson has found that children are more likely to eat it when they’ve helped make it.

Don’t force your child to eat a certain food. If your child is reluctant to try something new, just keep including it in his/her lunch box. Eventually, he/she might very well decide to give it a taste.

Combine new foods with favorite ones. Doing this can help overcome some kids’ resistance to eating unfamiliar or just plain unliked ingredients. “If you pair the hated food with the beloved food,” Sampson says, “it creates a conflict, and they’ll want to try it.” You may also surprise them once in a while by ordering from their favorite restaurant and getting their favorite lunch menu.

Shift (gradually) to healthier versions of familiar foods and opt for organic ingredients which you can get from a local health food store. Switching from standard pasta to whole wheat, for example, or from whole milk to low-fat is a relatively simple way to boost kids’ intake of nutritious foods. To make new flavors easier to get used to, start by substituting a quarter of the total amount with the healthier food, then slowly increase that quantity until the original food is phased out.

Apply the morning clothes principle to school lunches. The popular trick that makes it easier for some parents to get their kids dressed before school—you know, offering them shirt A or shirt B instead of the whole closet—works just as well with meals. “Do you want the apple or the banana with your lunch today?” lets children express their preferences without opening up the entire kitchen pantry for discussion.

Have a variety of food items readily available. This is a good one for parents and kids, and can be useful both for school lunch boxes and after-school snacks. For example, wash and cut up a batch of strawberries and leave the bowl on the counter; that way, you’ll reach for those first if your child needs a little something extra in her lunch bag or you need a quick bite before dinner.