Hi, my name is Leith Brooks, nutrition expert at Pottery Barn Kids,
and today, I'm going to talk about healthy lunches for your children.
The benefits of a healthy lunch include more energy and more focus to get your kids through a long school day.
We're going to choose seasonal whole fruits and vegetables, and whole grains to stabilize your children's blood sugar,
and a nutritional lunch gives your kids a chance for a happy and great day.
One of my favorite healthy lunch options is a roasted chicken sandwich.
It includes roasted chicken, which is a great growing protein for your child,
and it's something, also, that you can make ahead of time, which is very helpful.
I'm going to also add some sliced cucumbers, but feel free to add any other seasonal vegetable that your child particularly likes.
We're also going to add some lettuce, and to make it, we'll add a little bit of cheese,
which is a great, healthy substitute for mayonnaise.
And for a fun, different take on a sandwich, kids will really love
a star for their lunch box, and you've got a fun, healthy star sandwich
to give your kids a nutritious lunch.
Equally as nutritious and a different alternative, is a whole wheat wrap,
and with a whole wheat wrap, it's a great way to use, again, leftovers,
umm, beans that you've made or used the night before, you can use white beans, pinto beans, black beans,
and we'll put white beans, a great vegetable protein source for your growing child.
And added with brown rice, it makes a great protein source for kids.
And then we're going to add some vegetables. And a fun way to think about vegetables for you and your child
is to think about the color of the rainbow.
How many colors of the rainbow can you add to your child's lunch?
We're going to use cherry tomatoes,
which is really fun to talk about the rainbow colors.
And to add a little bit of green, we are going to shred a piece of lettuce,
and again, just remember that any way you can personalize this for what your child likes is great.
And you can sprinkle the lettuce on top.
And then what we'll do is fold up the sides, and roll and wrap,
the sandwich, and you have a whole grain wrap.
It's a great way to get vegetables and nutrition into your child's lunch.
So in addition to the sandwiches, I also like to use soup
to get more nutrition into my child's lunch. And with soup you can be very creative.
I used, in this soup, two different types of beans - white beans and chick peas,
and carrots and onions, a little bit of garlic, some tomato,
and I finish it off with some Swiss chard and some whole wheat pasta,
which again, is also a little bit of a sneaky way to get more nutrition into my child's lunch.
So you can see that it is full of vegetables, full of color, and full of flavor.
I made this soup last night for dinner, which makes it so easy.
All I have to do is reheat it in the morning, and grab the Pottery Barn Kids thermos,
and you have a fantastic, nutritional lunch for your kids, just within minutes.
We all know that kids love sweets. So as a healthy alternative
to cookies and candy and a lot of processed sugar, I reach for seasonal fruit.
And today, we're going to cut up some apple slices,
and then I'm going to make a very simple sweetened yogurt dip.
And the yogurt dip includes plain yogurt, with a little bit of maple syrup and cinnamon.
And it's a fun, nutritious, and sweet treat for your kids.
Another great way to get the sweetness from seasonal fruit is in water.
So using the Pottery Barn Kids canteen, I fill it up with water, and add slices of orange,
or lemon, whatever your child prefers.
Today we're going to use apples. And we're going to slice them,
into easily dipped slices.
And in the yogurt dip, I'm just using plain, whole milk yogurt,
so that has no added sugar. And what we're gong to do to sweeten the yogurt
is use some pure maple syrup, which is a natural sweetener, kids love it,
and it doesn't have all the additives and preservatives of other processed sweeteners.
Then we're going to add a pinch of just a little dash of cinnamon,
and what you have is a sweet treat for your child, at the end of their meal,
but also a nutritious one. Healthy lunches do not need to be complicated.
Pottery Barn Kids has all that you need. They have lots of different containers, different sizes, compartments,
kids just love it. If you follow these simple steps that we talked about today,
you will make a big difference in your child's lunch, so enjoy!