Healthy and Easy Meal Ideas For Your Kids
Snack Trays Are The Way!
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It is crucial to provide your children with a healthy variety of meal options. The efforts you put in now are setting the foundation for their future decision-making abilities. Finding meals that are both nutritious and attractive to kids can be quite challenging. I can't count the number of times I've brought home vegetable-infused cupcakes or products containing concealed vegetable powders, only to face rejection from my kids. Keep reading to discover how we achieve success with snack trays and bento boxes in our household.
Breakfast Ideas For Kids:
I enjoy creating the illusion of choice for my kids. These divider trays are fantastic for offering three breakfast options. Typically, they select one or two items to munch on in the morning. Recognizing that my son dislikes grapes, I offer him watermelon instead. Meanwhile, my daughter adores grapes, so I include those for her. I've also included a high-protein cinnamon bagel. In case of leftovers, I often prepare a snack bag for them to take on the school bus and enjoy during their morning ride.
Other options for kids morning breakfasts are overnight oats (with ingredients of their choosing the night before), whole-grain toast with nut butter, banana slices, and cinnamon, or greek yogurt parfaits with berries and granola.
Lunchbox Favorites:
Many of us have kids who attend school during the day. This is where your creative side can come out. Change up their snack and veggies each day. My son is currently on a salami sandwich kick. I have actively moved to nitrite-free salami since it’s a part of his regular lunch routine. Another surprise food that I’ve placed in their lunches is yellow watermelon. Yellow watermelon is just like regular watermelon only without the lycopene. Think about how the kids would talk about this strange looking fruit - they’d all be guessing what it is an tasting to figure it out.
Packing your kids a balanced lunch with frequent changes keeps things interesting for them and also will keep them energized through the school day. Many kids have sports or activities after school - these are long days for our kids. Give them the energy they need. Other ideas for lunch are veggie wraps with hummus, turkey and cheese roll-ups (in a whole grain tortilla), and quinoa salad with veggies and feta cheese.
Snack Time Goodies:
I like to have a nutritious snack tray prepared before the kid get off the bus for the day. This is helpful so they don’t go straight into the pantry for carby snacks. In the above photo, you can see I give them each a selection of five or more foods. They often tell me “I don’t like X” once they see the plate. I encourage them to eat what they like and to try anything they haven’t tried before just once to know if they like it or not. My kids are great at tasting new foods with one bite to decide it it is for them. And yes, my son loves to eat herbs - parsley and dill mostly.
My kids are fruit and veggie eating machines. I think it’s from these snack trays. I rarely give dips for the veggies - the have learned to enjoy them as is in raw form. However, you can easily incorporate healthy dips such as ones with greek yogurt as the base or hummus.
Dinner Delights:
Dinners in our house for the kids can look similar to the above pictured foods served at snack, lunch, or breakfast. At dinner, we also attempt to incorporate chicken, beef, or fish into their diet. They enjoy eating meat and typically only have it at dinner time. As long a they are familiar with the meat product, I typically do not have an issue with getting them to have something for dinner. It is cucumber and tomato season right now, so we have fresh cut up garden vegetables with each meal. We all go crazy for these full-flavored delights.
Dessert and Treats:
We have plenty of desserts in our live. One of our favorites right now are making snow cones at home using natural fruit flavored beverage products. We also have a ninja creami - I typically take Oberweise Chocolate milk, freeze it, and turn in into a delicious ice cream treat for the kids. Add a scoop of protein powder to make it more nutrient dense.
If you haven’t tried the ninja creami, it’s an amazing appliance. You can also freeze a can of peaches and that in itself makes a high quality delicious sorbet.
Occasional treats are A-OK for our kids. We attempt to limit artificial colors and flavors in order to keep the treats as natural as possible.
Cooking Tips and Tricks:
Food preparation is something every person will need to learn and figure out. If they don’t, they will likely have an adult life of costly take-out. Share meal prep with your kids - they will enjoy learning from you and adding to the creativity of the meals they eat. Let them measure, chop (safely), wash fruits and veggies. Any of these steps will get them well acquainted with food prep for the future.
There are many different ways to incorporate healthier foods into your kids diets. There will be some trial and error, but the effort is worth the squeeze. Get creative, try new things (like yellow watermelon or rambutan), and celebrate when they find something new that they enjoy eating. Share in the comments any additional meal ideas that you have. Us moms love learning from each other!
