(Lifestyle) Nutritionists recommend discarding the easy and preparing healthy lunch boxes

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Avoid cookies, juice boxes or snacks high in fat, sugar and sodium.

The school year begins and nutrition professionals recommend that the school snack should contain fresh products with a high nutritional value and limit ultra-processed products such as industrial pastries and foods with a high content of sugar and saturated fats such as fatty sausages.

 On returning to face-to-face classes, Dr. Cinthya Rodríguez, representative of the College of Professionals in Nutrition of Costa Rica, recalls that the snacks when preparing to send to school are different from those offered if they are receiving virtual classes at home.

“At home we have the opportunity to prepare more elaborate foods without having to think about heating them or keeping them refrigerated, but at this time, when the classes will be face-to-face, we must be very creative to prepare healthy snacks that the children like and thus manage to avoid the temptation to send packaged products such as boxed juices or cookies, which in most cases are high in fat and sugar”, added the specialist in pediatric nutrition.

Schoolchildren need snacks that provide them with the necessary nutrients for their development and provide them with the necessary energy for academic activities and extracurricular activities such as football, gymnastics, etc.

Therefore, parents should keep in mind that if a child does not eat snacks, their learning is significantly affected, concentration, problem-solving ability and muscular coordination decrease, Rodríguez commented.

One way to get them to eat their snacks at school is to involve them in planning, buying, and preparing snacks. They are more likely to eat the snack they have chosen from the healthy options that you as an adult give them.

Three tips for preparing snacks:
Make a weekly menu, this will help you have everything you need at home to prepare them.
Prepare as much as you can the night before, for example, have fruit ready to eat and in portions.
Have the containers ready to send the snacks, now in the market we find many special containers to keep food at the right temperatures.

Some ideas to get creative with snacks are:
Prepare sandwiches in different shapes, in triangles or diamonds and you can also use cookie cutters of different shapes, for example dinosaurs, hearts, stars, etc.
Change the type of bread, you can use pita bread, square bread or tortillas to make different preparations such as taquitos or burritos.
Offer different types of cheese in different preparations, squares, sticks, balls, triangles.
Try to vary the fruit and just like sandwiches, you can send it in different shapes using cookie cutters.
Offer toppings for kids to dip on, eg guacamole, refried beans, hummus.
Some snack ideas:
1. Peanut Butter Banana Roll Ups. Small flour tortilla, with 1 tsp peanut butter and 1 banana. Place the peanut butter and banana on the wheat tortilla, roll up and cut into thin pieces.

2. Fruit salad with yogurt and granola. Strawberry, apple, diced watermelon place in a half cup container. 180 ml of liquid yogurt and in a separate container place 1 tablespoon of granola.

3. Pressed corn tortilla with beans and cheese. Spread half a tablespoon of beans on each of the tortillas. Put cheese. Join the two tortillas. Place in a pan to brown them. ½ cup of watermelon

4. Chicken taquito. In a skillet, mix the chicken (1 tbsp shredded chicken, ½ tsp onion, ½ tsp butter) and season to taste. Cook for a few minutes. Place the mixture in a regular corn tortilla. Roll them in the shape of a taquito and wrap in waxed paper

5. Cheese sandwich. A slice of square whole wheat bread. Slice of white cheese. Fold the bread and form a triangle.

6. Bean burrito. (small flour tortilla with beans and cheese), 1 apple, homemade fruit juice.
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