Parents urged to pack healthy lunch

DIETITIANS AND nutritionists have called on parents to fill their children’s lunchboxes with nutritional food.

Call them the famous five if you will, but parents are reminded that bread, meat (or other protein), a piece of fruit, a dairy item (for calcium) and a drink (water or milk) are the five essential items for your child’s lunchbox.

“Basically, you’ve to remember that you need good representation from all food groups in school lunch boxes because they must meet one-third of children’s nutritional requirements for the day,” said Margot Brennan, of the Irish Nutrition and Dietetics Institute.

Brennan added that treats had no place in the lunchbox.

Yesterday the industry-sponsored Nutritional and Health Foundation re-iterated this message by issuing a set of tips which emphasise the need for a carbohydrate food (bread, pasta, noodles, potatoes or couscous), a protein food (lean cuts of ham, beef, chicken, turkey, tuna or egg salads), a piece of fruit (for fibre, vitamins and minerals), a drink (milk or water) and a dairy product (yoghurt, milk or cheese) in lunchboxes.

The continued inclusion of a dairy product as a staple of lunchboxes comes despite the recent European Food Safety Authority rejection of the Irish Dairy Council’s health claim that including three portions of dairy foods (milk, cheese and yoghurt) daily promotes a healthy body weight in children and adolescents.

Mary Flynn, chief specialist in Public Health Nutrition at the Food Safety Authority of Ireland said: “Basically, the evidence wasn’t strong enough for the claim but we would still say that children are healthier with three dairy foods in their diets.”