For my daughter's lunch I send her sandwiches, usually jam, as that is what she asks for, a fromage frais pot, a piece of fruit - usually an apple, but sometimes grapes or a satsuma, and a sugar-free drink carton or a sugar-free Fruit Shoot. The sandwiches are on white bread - my sin, but it is British bread, not American, so no sugar!

Mother of four and Daycare Provider - here.

Not that that means I know anything but I do know this:

A child needs to see a food, on average, 12 times before they will even put it in their mouth. 12 TIMES. So be persistent. Keep offering that broccoli, steam it, chop it fine, make it in to little trees (heck make your own cheese sauce and top it with that if you hafta!) but if you are constant, they will eventually eat it.

Stay the course, Mommas! I've turned lots of "anti-vegites" into zucchini lovin' little ones.

Thanks for the suggestions! I love the batwich idea--that's so clever! There were a lot of great ideas. I feel like the lunches I pack are so boring (a constant rotation of turkey and cheese, ham and cheese, or tuna sandwiches, with a similar rotation of side dishes), and half the time, I can't even recognize what's on the school menu--anyone know what "scoops with meat" are? Tacos? Nachos? Potato skins? It's a mystery to me.

The one good thing I have to say about the cafeteria lunches at my son's school ties back to what mortonpixie said. Each month they pick a fruit or vegetable of the month, and serve that several times a week. In September it was peaches and it's broccoli this month. I only get him the school lunch once in a blue moon, but at least he sees the fruits and vegetables on the other kids' plates. I'm hopeful that one day he'll eat more than the five vegetables and two fruits he does now.

My guess would be Fritos Scoops (my favorite Frito shape) with a chili style meat?

It would be nice if someone could provide parents with at least a photo of the food they are serving the kids.

Just for kicks, I'd like to defend my school district where I'm a teacher and my MIL is a cafe manager. Out of 30 plus schools in the district, not one has a deep fryer--they have been banned. Older schools that had them had them removed and replaced with extra large sinks.
Nothing is fried, and there is a fresh fruit AND veggie available for the kids to choose every day. All bread products are whole wheat, the milk flavors are non-fat, and the kids have to specifically request ketchup--it's not even on display as an option.
A vegetarian/kosher meal is offered every day (salad, yogurt/egg, veggie soup) along with a more meat based entree.
The only chips I've seen sold here are baked doritos. I've worked here 4 years and I've never seen any snack cakes, candy bars sold here. Fruit bars and ice cream are only sold on Fridays here.
Any parent who requests it is given a packet that lists ingredients, calories, fat, fiber, sodium, cholesterol, and sugars for every single food and drink item sold. I even have a copy.
Obviously, my district is not typical--I freely concede that there are some schools with minimal nutrition standards.
I'm sorry to be on a soapbox, but it hurts to hear people making all-encompassing judgments about school lunches when I see my MIL work so hard to give her students healthy meals. She even cooks some food separately for her Hindu students, just to make sure they aren't ingesting pork products.
btw, we are in a very small town in TX. This isn't a huge city school district.
For those of you with concerns about your schools' cafe's, petitions and school board meetings have been very effective for us.

I just checked the menu for my local school district and the lunches offered are reasonably healthy. They have many more healthy choices than we had when I was in school. You can tell there is a focus on kids getting more well rounded meals and some thought was put into them.

This made me look at the school lunch for my elementary school:

http://www.nusd.org/files/_JEJgq_/5a....2010_Menu.pdf

Wow - what a change from when I was younger. A, full nutrition facts for the recipes (WOOHOO). B, a veggie and fruit of the month (double WOOHOO).

Some of the sodium and calories are still higher than I'd like - but wow, what an improvement from the lack of data and lack of veggies of my youth.

Your school sounds wonderful! The cafeteria has been petitioned, our school just doesn't have the funding to change it, and it's a school on a military base. I swear, they have chili and chili-topped food at least twice a week, and a fried entree at LEAST 3 times. I've seen the menu for a week consist of hot dogs, corn dogs, fried fish fillet, breaded chicken patty, and baked potato with meat sauce. That was from one week earlier this school year. The sides aren't much better. Their hamburger patties come plain. If they want tomato or lettuce, it's one of the 2 side dishes they are allowed to pick. Granted, there are some kids who depend on the school for a meal. I relished school lunches as a kid because, well, let's just say my mom wasn't very reliable. They weren't the greatest, I STILL don't know what was in those fiesta sticks, but sometimes it's the best the kids can get.

Can I ask--what do some of you pack for your kids?

They key for me is having lots of bags and containers. We have Lock&lock containers for when it is a cold lunch and Ms Bento for when it is hot. I also have 2 Thermos brand thermos containers. I have 2 hard metal lunch boxes and 2 insulated BYO cloth ones. Also have about 6 lunchbox reusable ice things, but in a pinch I'll stick ice inside a lock&lock container.

I don't always have time to wash the day's before so having extra sets is a lifesaver -- esp those cloth bags when she spills. Thankfully I can run the metal ones thru the dishwasher.

I try to have this in the garage freezer for freaky crazy days as back up:

• Amy's Veggie Loaf
• Amy's Pesto Bowl
• Amy's Pizza Snacks
• Chung Potstickers

Then I can throw it in with a v8 and applesauce and call it good.

But usually I just set aside some of dinner for her next day lunch. Lately it was stuff like

Tacos -- with the shell, lettuce, and tomato in a lock&lock and the meat/cheese in a thermos so it stays hot.
Chicken and spanish rice in a thermos
roast potato, brocc in thermos
Veggie soup in thermos
bagel & cream cheese

The sides try to match the thermos. I try to have these bite size and easy for her to eat with her fingers where possible:

• grapes
• baby tomatoes
• baby carrots
• pepper strips
• apple sauce
• banana
• peaches
• pineapple
• watermelon
• cheese sticks
• broccoli
• crackers
• orange sections

Sometimes there's dips -- like yogurt for fruit, hummus for veg.

Drinks:

• lemonade
• Celestial Seasonings tea
• honest Kids juice pouches
• v8
• rice milk
• soy milk

I try to avoid PB&J burn out. Though I'll do that once in a great while.

HTH!
A.

It's really awful. I work at a school and our cafeteria actually serves reasonably good food. I let my son buy his lunch at school as long as he promises to choose white milk and eat his veggies. They serve fresh veggies and fruit and whole grain breads so I'm not too dissapointed in his choices most days. The thing that shocks me is the sack lunches I see children bringing in!!! A bag of cheetos and 3 cookies is NOT a lunch. Are these parents letting the kids pack their lunch by themselves? It's really not good.

I am currently substitute teaching in elementary schools, and I notice that the meals vary from school to school. Some schools have more healthy foods available and most don't even have a cafeteria. I've seen many canteens at schools that mostly serve junk food including hot dogs, hamburgers, pogo sticks, chips, and chocolate bars.

I know that the schools in my area have advanced in offering more nutritious snacks then in the past, but they have a long way to go in my opinion. There was a huge debate about getting rid of vending machines a few years back, and many schools have gotten rid of them.

I think that the kids that bring lunches to school, aren't always packed with the healthiest food either. I sometimes think that some parents need to be educated on providing healthier snacks. Some kids are hyper enough without feeding them constant sugary snacks. It saddens me that healthy eating in schools is not a #1 priority, considering the number of obese children in the the United States has tripled since 1980s. Estimates suggest that approximately 25 percent of children and adolescents in the United States are either overweight or obese. In Canada, childhood obsesity have almost tripled in the last 25 years.

The school I substitute at just started a free breakfast program, as studies show in lower income areas, like the one that district is in, most children do not get a breakfast at home and test scores rise exponentially with the introduction of school breakfast programs. They actually do a really good job there. The breakfast is always a piece of fruit, like a banana or apple slices, a milk, and something healthy-ish. One day it was pbj sandwiches, another it was honey buns made from sweet potatoes.

The lunches there are what really impress me. There is the standard fare of milk and an entree that is not stellar, such as a burrito or cheeseburger, but for the sides, the kids get to take whatever they want from a salad bar. Most days they get a choice of fresh fruit, fruit cocktail, fresh salad, applesauce, and baby carrots with ranch. I wish my school lunches had been like that.

Know what burns me up about it?? The fact that teachers and the administrators say that the kids won't eat the healthy food. That is so wrong! The kids want the fruits and veggies. For my son's 7th birthday, I sent a snack of fresh grapes, cheese cubes and carrots and celery with ranch dip. The teacher called me to tell me how excited the kids were, they were more excited for the fruits and veggies than cupcakes. I am a Girl Scout leader and our girls ask for healthier snacks. They say they feel better when they eat healthier, and I have found that it's actually cheaper in the long run to buy healthy stuff and cook it yourself, but unfortunately most schools have things prepared already and it's just all reheated.

My 12 year old gets the following in his insulated lunch kit:

1. Sandwich on white bread in a resealable container
2. 414 ml bottle with water from a Culligan cooler in it
3. A peanut-free granola bar for nutrition break
4. 5 salted soup crackers in a resealable container
5. Baby cut carrots in a resealable container

And sometimes he'll get a pack of 2 oatmeal raisin or chocolate chip cookies. If he comes home with the carrots and crackers I let him eat them after school as a snack before supper and won't pack as much in his lunch all week. (He has a shorter lunch break in grade 7 than he did in grade 6. So sometimes he doesn't get the time to eat everything I send with him.)

My daughter's school district has "eh" lunches. They're not horrible, but they aren't great. The salad bar horrifies her, though. She claims it's "germy" because the sneeze guards are too high. Since she is a young lady who will easily eat two giant bowls of greens in a sitting and call it good, I believe her. Unfortunately, packing is difficult when her backpack already weighs 30 lbs and her small locker is at the wrong end of the school.

When she does pack, though, it's usually bento. I have a few bento boxes, but her favorite is a multi-tiered, insulated one.

The bottom tier is the largest and usually holds a green salad (dark, mixed leafy greens with veggies) and a small container of balsamic vinegar or Caesar dressing. The next largest tier holds onigiri. I try to fill the onigiri with some sort of protein. They're then wrapped in nori. The next tier can be anything from pressed hard boiled eggs to fruit to vegetarian sushi (no sashimi, I'm not risking food poisoning!). The smallest tier usually holds berries or other fruits. Sometimes we'll toss something in there that she can snack on earlier in the day, since she is one who gets sick when she tries to eat first thing in the morning.