Usually, children receive a lunch (school menu) that tends to be monotonous or boring, and sometimes not nutritious at all, due to its lack of variety, vegetables, fruits, and legumes. Additionally, many times the same school menus are added with sweets or desserts high in sugar and saturated fats. How to achieve a nutritious and delicious school menu? At KiwiBlóg, we want to emphasize that one of the main objectives of the school menu (lunch) should promote a balanced diet through a variety of foods, preparations, and textures, prioritizing the most challenging foods in children's diets - legumes, fish, fruits, and vegetables - and based on the recommended servings and frequency for each age. Currently, the team responsible for the cafeteria or the company managing the food in schools or educational centers has dietary advice when designing the menus. However, nutritional balance is not achieved solely with lunchtime food, even though it accounts for about 35% of the daily energy that children need. It is necessary for breakfast and dinner to complement lunch, and here is where parents come in, taking responsibility for educating their children in good eating habits.

To achieve this, it is essential to know what our children eat at school.

Important recommendations

• - Include foods from different groups: Fruits and vegetables, cereals or tubers, and animal-based foods.
• - Avoid industrialized foods as much as possible (these tend to be high in fat, sugar, and/or sodium).
• - Take some time to prepare lunch with fresh foods most days of the week.
• - Ensure that lunch is varied. There are many different options that children may enjoy.
• - It is important to plan the menu for the entire week in advance to save time and have all the necessary ingredients on hand.
• - Offer fresh fruits and vegetables to the child in their lunch.
• - Avoid sugary drinks. Lunch should always include some beverage to keep children well hydrated, but all sugary drinks such as sodas and industrial juices should be eliminated.
• - Avoid very sweet or sticky foods that can promote the development of cavities.
• - Serve small portions of food. We must remember that lunch should represent at most 20% of the total daily calories, which equals about 200 calories for preschool children and about 270 for school-age children at most.
• - Serve lunch in a clean lunchbox and in pleasant, unbreakable, and easy-to-handle containers.
• - Allow children to participate in planning their meals and even in preparing simple dishes.
• - Take advantage of interactions with other people to offer the child foods that they may find difficult to accept at home.
• - Include a surprise for the child, especially for the younger ones, in the lunchbox sometimes.

Recommended cooking recipes for your children: Corn Flakes Breaded Chicken Chicken Rolls Sausages with Puff Pastry Salmon and Cucumber Sandwich Chicken Nuggets with Quinoa