Maggie, Ellie, and Mama's Lunch Adventures

I'm a mom. These are my kids, heading off to their first day of school this fall. Maggie is the big sister on the left. She's in first grade. Ellie is on the right, and she goes to full-day kindergarten on Tuesdays, Fridays, and every other Wednesday. In their backpacks are lunchboxes (Littlest Pet Shop for Maggie and Hello Kitty for Ellie). Inside each lunchbox is:

• A peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with natural peanut butter, "all-fruit" spread, and whole wheat bread
• A piece of fruit (that day was an apple)
• Some sort of vegetable (that day was sugar snap peas)
• String cheese
• 100% juice Capri Sun
• A note from me telling them how awesome they are

It's not a bad lunch, right? But it is all they will tolerate when I make them take their lunch to school. No variety is allowed in the "entree" - It must be PB&J. The fruit gets eaten, but the veggies sometimes return home at the end of the day, limp and pathetic. If they see the cheese, they eat it. I send the Capri Sun 100% juice because if I tell them to buy milk, they will - I know this to be true - choose the chocolate milk EVERY TIME. (Why do schools sell chocolate milk? I have read that it's to get the kids to agree to drink their milk. Of course they'll drink chocolate milk, but really? Won't kids drink white milk anymore?) Anyway, if I send them with juice, I figure it's their one serving of juice for the day, and I'll feed them fat-free milk at home. So, that's what lunch looks like when I pack it.

However, given the choice, my kids would buy lunch at school every single time. I'm looking at the menu right now. Today they are serving up spaghetti tacos (what?), golden corn dogs (ugh), chef salads (sounds good!), and whole wheat bagels with cream cheese (for lunch?). This comes with their choice of milk (low fat white or chocolate) and unlimited trips to the "salad and fixings bar." The bar has a small variety of fruit (usually canned in light syrup), vegetables (lettuce, tomato, and a few others), and usually cold canned black beans or kidney beans.

I am writing this blog because although my girls don't know it yet, we are about to embark on a journey of discovery and adventure once a week. We are going to try to create lunches that will break us out of our rut. We're going to look for ideas that will excite us all - new main courses that will hold well until lunch time, creative ways to serve up veggies, new fruits to try! (Can you hear me encouraging them now?) I want to engage them in the process and get their feedback on the ideas we try out. Hopefully, at the end of it, they will ASK for me to pack their lunch now and then and will also enjoy putting some lunches together along with me. (When they are a part of the process, they're more likely to buy into it, right? That's what I always told clients when I was a consultant back in my previous life!)

When we create our lunches, we are going to compare the nutrient content to the standards put forth by the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Here they are:

"School lunches must meet the applicable recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which recommend that no more than 30 percent of an individual's calories come from fat, and less than 10 percent from saturated fat. Regulations also establish a standard for school lunches to provide one‐third of the Recommended Dietary Allowances of protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, iron, calcium, and calories. School lunches must meet Federal nutrition requirements, but decisions about what specific foods to serve and how they are prepared are made by local school food authorities." (NSLP Fact Sheet, available here)

I went on to My Pyramid Tracker and found that the daily acceptable range or recommendation for my children with regard to the nutrients listed in the NSLP standard are as follows:

• Protein: 19 g
• Vitamin A: 400 mcg
• Vitamin C: 25 mg
• Calcium: 800 mg
• Iron: 10 mg
• kcals: 1470
• Total Fat: 6-8.5 g
• Saturated Fat: <2.4 g

So, each week we will try out a new (and exciting!) lunch idea. The kids will help to choose what we'll make, and they'll be the taste testers. We'll be aiming at hitting the fat goals and reaching 1/3 of each of the above nutrient guidelines. We'll put our lunches through the paces over at My Pyramid Tracker to see how we do. We'll also use My Pyramid Tracker to figure out the nutrient values on the day's school lunch to compare our home lunch with whatever was served that afternoon in the cafeteria.

Hopefully, we'll share some great ideas and recipes that hopefully someone else can use! We'll also look for interesting and scholarly information to share about kids' nutrition and school lunches. I hope you'll come visit again!