Healthy Eating
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At Wild Monkeys Childcare Ltd, we encourage healthy eating. We provide healthy, home-cooked food for lunches, snacks, and dinners, and encourage parents to send in healthy packed lunches if they choose not to have our meals. We also request that parents put iceboxes in their children’s packed lunches. We understand that it can be hard to know what makes a packed lunch ‘healthy’, so here’s a list of suggestions as recommended by the government.


We are also a peanut-free setting, due to severe allergies. Please do not include food in lunchboxes that is labelled as containing peanuts (this will usually be in bold on the ingredients list). Any products in lunchboxes which contain peanuts will be sent home with a reminder note. Thank you for your understanding!


  • Base your child’s lunchbox on foods like bread, rice, pasta, and potatoes to keep them fuller for longer. Choose wholegrain where you can.
  • If your child doesn’t like wholegrain, try making a sandwich from one slice of wholegrain/brown bread and one slice of white bread.
  • Pick lower fat sandwich fillings, such as lean meats (including chicken or turkey), fish (such as tuna or salmon), reduced-fat cream cheese, and reduced-fat hard cheese. 
 
  • Always add vegetables! Cherry tomatoes, or sticks of carrot, cucumber, celery and peppers all count towards their 5 A DAY. Adding a small pot of reduced-fat hummus or other dips may help with getting kids to eat vegetables.
  • Try and avoid crisps. If your child really likes their crisps try reducing the number of times you include them in their lunchbox and swap for homemade plain popcorn or plain rice cakes instead. 
 
  • Try adding bite-size fruit. Try chopped apple, peeled satsuma segments, strawberries, blueberries, halved grapes or melon slices to make it easier for them to eat. Add a squeeze of lemon juice to stop it from going brown.
  • Swap cakes, chocolate, cereal bars and biscuits for malt loaf, fruited teacakes, fruit breads or fruit (fresh, dried or tinned – in juice not syrup).
  • Get your kids involved in preparing and choosing what goes in their lunchbox. They are more likely to eat it if they helped make it.

For more information on healthy eating and healthy packed lunches, visit the government websites:

https://www.nhs.uk/change4life-beta/healthier-lunchboxes
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/the-eatwell-guide.aspx
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/childhealth6-15/Pages/Lighterlunchboxes.aspx
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