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Think inside the lunchbox

By Laura Reiley, Times Food Critic
Posted: Aug 04, 2008 10:26 AM

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The snazzy insulated lunchboxes of today are a lot more high-tech than those retro-cool Scooby Doo metal lunchboxes, but the challenge of what to pack inside hasn't changed much. Your little darlings may be trading out the school lunch you so carefully packed for who knows what. The trick is to grab them with food that tastes good but has nutrition to last all day long. Here are 10 fresh ideas.

Take a dip. Make your own fruit dip by pureeing vanilla yogurt, cream cheese and thawed frozen berries together. Along with a plastic container of dip, send pieces of fresh fruit, Nilla wafers or other cookies.

Wrap it. Flour and corn tortillas break the monotony of regular bread sandwiches. Corn tortillas can be sandwiched with cheese and beans and cooked as a quesadilla in the morning (slice with a pizza cutter and pack wedges when cooled), or, if time is of the essence, a large flour tortilla can be topped with regular sandwich material, rolled up, and sliced into "pinwheels" for their lunchboxes.

Ants on a log. Dab low-fat cream cheese into lengths of celery. Separately, pack a handful of raisins or dried cranberries. Kids can populate their "logs" with "ants" as they see fit.

Peas in a pod. Whole green soy beans in the pod (called "edamame," available in most freezer aisles) or fresh English peas in the pod are fun to shell, easy to eat and seldom get the same reaction that a plate of green peas do at dinnertime.

Use your noodle. Last night's leftover pasta can become a quick pasta salad with a little bottled vinaigrette and the kids' favorite vegetables. Add diced cheese and chicken for a complete meal. Alternatively, thermoses will keep spaghetti and sauce warm all the way to lunchtime. (Pasta manufacturers now offer noodles that are a mix of whole-grain and white flours — an easy way to get in more whole grains.)

Go nuts. Nuts have recently been defined as "power foods," meaning foods that pack a nutritional punch in a small serving. A handful of almonds or dry-roasted peanuts, trail mix or nut-intensive granola can give kids a more sustained energy boost after lunch (as opposed to a fleeting sugar boost that leaves them depleted). Naturally made nut butters do the same thing. Pack lemon-rubbed apple wedges and one of the new "tube" versions of peanut butter. (www.peanutbutter.com/squeezeProducts.asp)

Fun with toothpicks. These tiny swords can infuse a little merriment into the proceedings, whether it's cheese cubes and cherry tomatoes or melon balls and pineapple chunks. Even better, pack the picks separately in a bag and allow your lunchers to assemble their own "kebabs."

Homemade Lunchables. The appeal of commercially available boxed lunches is interactivity. You can make your own version with a fraction of the fat, sugar and salt of those in the grocery store. Individually bag cracker rounds, cheese and meat slices, cucumber rounds, lettuce or sprouts; or accompany a toasted English muffin with a tiny Tupperware of tomato sauce, a bag of low-fat shredded mozzarella and pepperoni rounds for instant "pizza."

Ditch the mayo. Long ago, life was simple, cholesterol hadn't been invented, and bread was still the staff of life. The classic sandwiches — tuna salad, egg salad, chicken salad — once bound with a heavy slather of mayo and tucked into nutritionally bankrupt white slices, might breathe new life with a little tinkering, substituting low-fat yogurt or ricotta for that mayonnaise. This is a sneaky way to get more yogurt in their diet — a recent study of yogurt eaters reveals that getting enough calcium may in fact trigger the body to burn fat more efficiently and might reduce the amount of new fat produced.

Whole wheat. It takes eight slices of white bread to equal the fiber in one slice of 100 percent whole wheat. And when white flour is refined, 30 different nutrients are removed, only a handful of which must legally be added back in. Regularly eating whole grains — that's wheat, corn, oats and other grains that still contain their nutrient-rich bran, germ and endosperm — may significantly reduce your risk of heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, digestive- and hormone-related cancers, as well as obesity. But you can mix it up: whole-grain English muffins, whole-wheat tortillas or wraps.

Times Food Critic Laura Reiley can be reached at (727) 892-2293 or lreiley@sptimes.com.