Tips on packing healthy school lunches kids will eat

Thousands of students in the Tampa Bay area head back to school next week, meaning parents will be packing school lunches again - and trying to give their children a leg up with a healthy meal.

Schools work hard to serve nutritionally balanced meals, but packing a healthy lunch at home can be a challenge. Busy schedules can leave little time for meal planning, and the seemingly endless supply of prepackaged foods - many full of sugar, salt, calories and fat - can be tough to resist.

Eating a healthy lunch, though, is especially important for students.

"Lunch plays a critical role in children's overall health and school performance," according to the American Dietetic Association. "When children skip lunch, they are likely to have trouble concentrating in the classroom, lack energy, lack energy for sports and overeat on low-nutrient after-school snacks."

A good place to start planning healthy lunches is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's MyPyramid food guidance system. The food pyramid lays out healthy eating strategies based on the five basic food groups: grains, vegetables, fruits, milk and meats and beans. The USDA's site also allows people to develop personalized food plans, based on a person's age, size and level of activity, or look up foods' nutritional information.

Here are a few general suggestions from the American Dietetic Association:

• Ask kids to help plan their lunches. "When kids help plan their lunches, they are much more likely to eat them."

• Make a plan for the week, bagging items for each day on the weekends.

• Keep a checklist of what foods kids like from each food group.

• Come up with a list of alternatives for picky eaters. For a child who doesn't like sandwiches, pack a wrap, cracker sandwich or a slice of lunch meat wrapped around a cheese stick.

• It doesn't matter how healthy lunches are, though, if kids don't eat them. Experts suggest making lunches as fun as possible. A visually appealing lunch has a better chance of competing with a cleverly packaged store-bought item. The American Dietetic Association recommends choosing bright and colorful foods or experimenting with shapes - cutting sandwiches with cookie cutters, for example.

Liz Watt, a registered dietitian with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, suggests parents follow an 80-20 rule: Pack 80 percent healthy items and 20 percent "fun foods," such as a cookie or a piece of candy.

"You're not being too strict about it, and you're also not giving them a bunch of junk food," Watt said in a piece published by UNC Health Care this month. "If it's like that, it's more likely to be eaten."