Is there really a healthy school lunch that tastes as good as a chip roll?

Transcript from a 2008 interview

‘Bad’ food in kid’s lunch boxes traditionally give them hyperactivity, they don’t concentrate, they just muck up in class, that’s what we’ve known over the last 25 years. But traditional lunches that we ate 25, 30 years ago, those are the ones I want to see come back, rather than the pick-a-pack lunch boxes.

What is a pick-a-pack lunchbox?

A pick-a-pack lunchbox is everything in a packet, it all has additives, preservatives  not only is it bad for the environment, it’s bad for the body as well. What we want to do is go back to traditional lunches. A traditional lunch includes a sandwich, a piece of fruit, and a homemade cookie or piece of cake. What’s wrong with that? Why do we have to have muesli bars and cheese dippers people do, and jelly tubs full of additives. And you may think, aren’t all these things healthy, aren’t muesli bars good?

Here’s the thing: if you make them yourself, yes! But if you read the ingredients of most of the ones in the supermarkets, the additives, preservatives, flavourings and unnatural things that are in there make them no longer healthy. They’re just as bad as any cake with additives in it.

What’s the best thing to put in your kid’s lunchbox?

Fruit’s excellent. It’s got the fibre in it, it’s got the vitamins and minerals in it, and depending on the time of year there’s many great, interesting fruits: mangoes, we’ve got grapes, we’ve got strawberries, and so I would pack those. When we get to winter, we’ve got apples, oranges and bananas. No kid gets excited about that fruit. How do you make it appealing to them? Well, you have to start them early. That’s the thing is that you begin them early and they love fruit. Like my children, who are now teenagers, will go for fruit far quicker than they’ll go for other things. My daughter went and stayed at a friend’s place, and she was having like, pizzas and chips and everything like that. She came home, she went, ‘I feel so bloated. Just give me some fruit, Mum’, so this is a 16 year old girl that knows what bad food does to her.

The less exciting fruits can be made more interesting by cutting them up, making them into fun shapes. Using an apple spiraliser, a shape cutter and making sure they’re fresh. Keeping an ice pack in your kid’s lunch boxes can help their lunch last, and taste, better. Encourage your kids to put their lunchbox in the shade throughout the day as well.

On to sandwiches, don’t wrap your kid’s sandwiches in cling wrap. Most cling wraps are coated in additives  320 (Butylated hydroxyanisole) and 321 (Butylated hydroxytoluene) which prevents fats and oils from oxidizing and going off. There are concerns about hormone disruptions and carcinogenics and they’re not permitted for children. These additives, this cling wrap, they shouldn’t be used in lunchboxes because it will seep into the food.  

So, sandwiches with fillings such as avocado, lettuce, tomato, they’re great.

Can we talk about bread?  See, I don’t have a problem with white bread. I don’t have problem with white bread if the bread is made with traditional ingredients, which are five. But if you have a look on most supermarket breads these days, there’s about 50 ingredients with numbers that you don’t even know what they are, so you have to keep an eye on that. So as far as breads go, I go to my baker down the road, and they’re all over the place. Now, they traditionally make bread, and if you’re not near one, go and buy a couple and put them in your chest freezer or buy a bread maker to make bread at home.

So we have fruit, a homemade baked good and a sandwich. Is that enough? If you feed your kids a good breakfast, lunches should be as they normally are, like a sandwich, a piece of fruit, and even sometimes a cake or a cookie for fun. What I put in my kid’s lunchbox is this: so I put carrot and celery, tomato, red pepper (capsicum). This is a bit of cake that I’ve made with a bit of dukkah on it, sultanas and some nuts. And then I’ve just made an avocado, cheese, lettuce and pesto sandwich. Bear in mind that some schools you cannot take nuts and some schools allow it. Some don’t, and you have to find your policy with that.

Lunchbox hacks

So if you want to make a lunch box like this one, here are some tips to make it easier:

Prepare ahead. You can make dips like hummus or a Greek yoghurt dip on Sunday afternoon to be used throughout the week.

Wrap your pre-cut vege like carrot, capsicum, and celery in a moist tea towel. As long as this towel stays moist and in the crisper, this will last for four or five days.

Plan their lunches and their sandwiches in advance so you don’t waste time making decisions in the morning, you just follow your plan and get it done. Prepare vegetables like pre-wash lettuce, slice tomato etc. and make the sandwich in the morning. Or you can get your kid’s involved, encourage them to make their own sandwich in the morning!

A healthy kid’s lunchbox is all about being prepared and organised, reading your ingredients lists and only packing foods that meet your high standards.