Before you start planning tomorrow’s lunchbox, I thought it would be useful to make a quick list on what SHOULDNT go into the lunchbox. This is because of the gross amount of things you can find in any supermarket today – things, which masquerade as “healthy” items but are actually NOT.
Here’s what to be wary of:
1. Fruit Drinks – if its not 100% juice, its got very little of the real stuff in and probably masses of flavourings, sugar and coloring. Better choices to give are homemade smoothies or pure juice.
2. Fruit Snacks – I plead guilty to this as seen in my last post’s mention of fruit roll ups (but my daughter loves them!). Anything that says “with real fruit!” on it probably has very little fruit and gargantuan amounts of sugar. Yikes.
3. Processed Snacks – Cheese strings, cheese and cracker packs, and obviously crisps (despite being wholewheat etc) can be loaded with salt and saturated fats. Not good.
4. Flavoured and Kid’s Yougurt – Kids yogurt tend to be sweeter or worse, with those add-ins like sprinkles, chocolate etc which mean too far too sweet. Think of it as 5 teaspoons of white sugar in each pot.
5. Cereal Bars – On the outside these do look convincingly healthy, but the reality is actually about 40% sugar, 30% fat and some major cavities tomorrow. Did I scare you enough?
Originally posted on September 13, 2006 @ 3:02 pm
