Healthy school lunchboxes
Packing your child’s lunchbox with healthy foods, including vegetables and fruits, can help kids to concentrate, learn, and enjoy playtime with their friends.
Packing a healthy lunchbox
Filling your child’s lunchbox with food and drinks from the 5 food groups helps them develop healthy habits for life. Here are some examples of lunchbox friendly foods (and don’t forget the water bottle!).
- Salad and raw vegetables such as lettuce, baby spinach, avocado, carrots, cucumbers, celery, capsicum, cherry tomatoes
- Fresh or frozen cooked vegetables like peas, green beans, corn on the cob, broccoli, edamame beans
- Canned vegetables and legumes like corn, beetroot, chickpeas, lentils or kidney beans
- Baked vegetables like pumpkin, sweet potato, potato
- Vegetable or legume-based meals such as zucchini slice, frittata, dhal, rice paper rolls
- Whole pieces of fruit like apples, bananas, mandarins, pears, plums
- Cut-up fruit such as strawberries, kiwi fruit, watermelon, oranges
- Canned fruit in natural juice such as pineapple, peaches
- Frozen fruit like mango or mixed berries
- Dried fruit like a box of sultanas, dried apricots, prunes or apple rings
- Bread, rolls, wraps, roti, naan, pita bread, damper
- Rice, noodles, pasta, quinoa or cous cous
- Plain rice crackers, corn or rice cakes, wholemeal or wholegrain crispbread
- Raisin or fruit bread, scones or pikelets
- Meals made with grains such as sandwiches, sushi, pasta salad, fried rice
- Plain and flavoured milk
- Yoghurt in a tub
- Cheese slice, stick or cubes
- Custard (choose types with a Health Star Rating of 3.5 or more)
- Rice pudding
- Tzatziki or raita
- Plant-based milk, yoghurt or cheese alternatives (choose types with added calcium)
- Canned tuna or salmon
- Lean cold meats like chicken, beef or ham
- Hard boiled eggs
- Baked beans, canned mixed beans
- Tofu
Don’t forget to include a bottle of water too. Water is the best drink for kids and tap water has added fluoride to help protect teeth.
Planning your lunchbox
Packing a healthy lunchbox the night before can help save you time in the morning before the school rush. For example:
- Cutting vegetables for dinner? Try chopping extra vegetables like celery, carrot or capsicum into sticks and store in the fridge overnight.
- Slice up fruit or add frozen fruit to yoghurt in a reusable container and keep in the fridge.
- Make sandwiches, rolls or wraps. Leave wet ingredients like tomato in a separate container for your child to add at school.
- Make or buy plain popcorn and store it in snack-sized portions.
- Cook extra serves at dinner to pack for lunch the next day.
- Use leftovers to make something new for lunch. You could use leftover stir-fry as the filling in a sushi sandwich or roast leftover pita bread to serve with hummus and veggie sticks.
If you’re buying packaged snacks, you can check the Health Star Rating on the label to see how healthy they are. The more stars, the healthier the choice.
Multicultural family lunchboxes
Adam Liaw, one of Australia’s favourite chefs, has some quick, easy and affordable lunch ideas you can use to create your own delicious lunchboxes at home.
Adam's multicultural family lunchboxes
Read transcriptFor more tips from Adam, check out these fact sheets, which are available in English and 39 languages.
Safe school lunchboxes
Young children don’t have fully developed immune systems. This means they are more at risk of food poisoning. Lunchboxes can warm during the day, which encourages food poisoning bugs to grow. Here are some easy ways you can help keep lunchboxes at a safe temperature:
- Add a frozen water bottle or freezer brick to the lunchbox in the morning to help keep it cool until lunchtime.
- Use an insulated lunch bag to help keep food cold.
- If you’re making lunches ahead of time, keep them in the fridge until your child leaves for school, or you can freeze them in advance.
Learn more about safe lunches for kids.