Teaching Kids About Food to Cut Costs

Posted on: October 9, 2008

Planning lunches with children offers parents a teaching opportunity for both nutrition and cost-savings

By Bev Bennett
CTW Features

Making school lunches gives you the opportunity to choose the most nutritious foods for your child while saving money. That's fine for you, but your child probably doesn't care that you're providing vitamin-packed fruits or low-fat sandwiches. He just wants a good-tasting lunch. And, if it's too cool to trade, that's even better.

You can accomplish all your goals, including cutting costs, if you engage your child in the project, say nutrition experts.

"If you don't want your child to toss the lunch, get him involved," says Netty Levine, registered dietitian at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles. Start the process early by featuring at dinnertime the kinds of foods you'd like to add to lunches. Then include your child in shopping decisions and lunch preparation. Throw in an appropriate bribe and you've got a winning formula, say nutrition experts. Serve whole wheat bread and whole wheat pasta at home, says Levine.

"Introduce foods at home in the presence of your child's friends. New foods are more acceptable that way," Levine says.

Plan lunches from healthful dinner leftovers, says Marilyn Swanson, RD, Ph.D.

"If you have an Asian salad, for example, you can use the leftovers for lunch. Cold pizza, especially if it's a vegetarian pizza, is good," says Swanson, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston.

Processed meats can be pricey and high in sodium.

Swanson gives a nod to peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat bread instead. She also suggests going beyond traditional sandwiches and offering whole-grain flour tortillas filled with beans and salsa.

Take your child shopping. Read labels together so your child can spot true whole-wheat bread from brown colored imitations. Whole wheat should be the first item on the ingredient list. Similarly look at the ingredients on juice packs, and opt for 100% fruit juice, not fruit drinks.

"Even though they [fruit drinks] may cost less than fruit juice, they're more expensive in terms of nutrients," Swanson says. Talk about convenience and cost, looking at the price difference between baby carrots and whole carrots you have to cut up, for instance.

"You don't have to buy little packages of baby carrots. You [and your child] can buy real carrots, slice them up on a Sunday night, pack in snack containers and use the savings to buy a book," Swanson says.

Keeping Food Safe

You may be concerned about food spoiling, especially at the start of the school year when the temperatures are still high. Freeze a bottle of water or a package of 100% fruit juice overnight. Drop it into the lunch box to keep other foods cold. Freeze a carton of fruit-flavored fat-free yogurt.

"It will partially defrost by lunchtime," says dietician Netty Levine, Los Angeles. Substitute salsa for creamy vegetable dips. Salsa is acidic so it doesn't spoil as easily as cream-based dips.

Make lunch foods such as vinaigrette-dressed pasta salad, the night before and refrigerate so the foods go into the lunch bag cold, Levine says.

Bev Bennett, a veteran food writer and editor, is the author of "Dinner for Two: A Cookbook for Couples" and "30-Minute Meals for Dummies"