Mothers always want to give their children the best, but preparing a school lunch that is both healthy and, at the same time, appealing on a daily basis may become a daunting task, especially with our hectic lifestyles. However, some mothers do go that extra mile to make sure their children enjoy their meal and finish it!

Dawn Pace Axiaq does her best to give her two daughters, four-year-old Jade and two-year-old Julia, a healthy, tempting lunch.

“I want them to feel happy as soon as they open their lunch box,” the 33-year-old mother says.

She likes to prepare what she calls a “mix in a box”, meaning several food items all put together. For this purpose, she uses a type of lunch box that has different compartments. So she packs various crackers, sandwiches, mini tuna rolls or mini wraps in one compartment; sliced fruit in another; then vegetables such as cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumbers or diced carrots, peas and corn; and if there is any place left, she adds some cheese. Lastly, as a treat, she adds some raisins or a biscuit or two.

As an alternative to sandwiches, she boils some pasta/rice and adds it to the vegetables to serve as a cold pasta/rice salad.

Dawn knows she gives her children a lot to eat, but she feels “it’s best they have more rather than less. Also, it’s mainly fruit and veg, so it’s easily digested and they could get hungry again after a while”.

Her eldest daughter, in fact, usually finishes all her lunch while her sister tends to leave a little occasionally.

Dawn tries to make lunch even more fun by varying the contents from day to day and by cutting up their sandwiches into fancy shapes such as a car, a flower, a heart or a butterfly.

“I also cut up bits of cheese, carrots and cucumber into mini butterflies, hearts, rabbits, ducks and penguins,” she says enthusiastically.

She sometimes threads fruit/ vegetables/cheese on a small, coloured, plastic stick (similar to a toothpick but not as sharp) to create mini-kebabs, which seem to go down well with the girls. When things get a bit boring, she gives them a home-made tuna dip and and various crackers.

All this may seem very time-consuming, but Dawn manages to prepare lunch in the mornings: “It does not take me more than 10 to 15 minutes. Since what I prepare is mainly fresh, I’d rather prepare it in the morning to avoid it turning brown until they get to eat it, for fear that it will look less appealing and they’d leave it there. And if I can do it, everyone can! It’s really simple.”

I want them to feel happy as soon as they open their lunch box

Juanita Muscat’s main concern is to give her children, Nikolai, seven, and Gabriela, three, something healthy but that will give them enough energy to make it through the school day. Hence she tries to incorporate both proteins and carbohydrates.

She usually prepares brown bread with the minimum amount of butter and processed meats possible and gives them items like carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes, cucumber sticks, low-fat cheese sticks and hard-boiled egg wedges on the side.

Like Dawn, she likes to cut up the sandwiches in different shapes to make them more fun. Nikolai always finishes his lunch, while little Gabriela doesn’t always.

Juanita, 36, suggests cutting vegetables into sticks that children can pick up easily with their hands and that they shouldn’t be given messy things.

“Kids normally prefer to play with their friends at lunch time so eating is the ‘task’ they want to get rid of as quickly as possible,” she adds.

Juanita, who has left her full-time job to work from home in party catering, likes to prepare what she calls a “snail snack” that is a sandwich spread with different toppings in the shape of a ‘snail’. “It’s always a hit,” she claims.

Her children’s all-time favourites, however, are sandwiches with tomato paste, olive oil and sliced olives – which is also Juanita’s favourite “as it’s the fastest to prepare”.

Having early schedules, she prepares lunch for the whole family the evening before.

“I pack each lunch in plastic lunch boxes and refrigerate them overnight. The sandwiches go back to room temperature in time for lunch and they are fresh and ready to eat.”

What the nutritionist has to say:

Lunch should be one of children’s most important meals, maintains nutritionist Daniel Petre. And it should be filling enough to sustain the child until the evening meal.

“It actually depends on each child’s schedule as some study and then they have private classes until late; in this case, lunch should definitely be the most important meal,” he says.

Vegetables and fruit should be the key ingredients of lunch. He suggests a fruit as a snack for one break (apple or banana) and two sandwiches (four slices of brown bread with tuna with salad or goat cheese and tomatoes) or a vegetable wrap with chicken breast.

“If they are old enough, they can have a turkey salad or salmon salad or even brown pasta with vegetable salad,” he adds.

He is totally against giving children sweets, sugar-free products and drinks and says that they should only have treats over the weekend.

One of the issues he encounters is that parents do not find the time to prepare a healthy and varied lunch for their children.

“Our life has become so hectic that most parents do not have enough time to take care of their children’s lifestyle and, as a result, they tend to choose the easy/fast way: give them money to buy lunch from school or shops around school,” he claims.

Another problem parents may face is that their children may not like vegetables or fruit, so giving them healthy food becomes extremely difficult.

“This is, in my opinion, the exclusive fault of the parents,” Mr Petre points out. “A child has to have a variety of fruit and vegetables introduced to his diet by the age of three. After that age, it is difficult for a child to accept new foods into his eating routine.”

However, all is not lost. Parents can still encourage their kids to eat more vegetables and fruit by associating and combining them with foods they like, for example, by adding cheese to broccoli.

Mr Petre says that Maltese society is becoming more aware of “the almost epidemic effects of obesity” but that “it will take time and effort to educate the parents on how to take care of children’s eating habits”.

He claims that when parents ask him for advice, it’s already too late.

“So my first piece of advice is not to wait till your child is bullied at school because he/she is overweight; secondly, don’t try to change the child’s routine overnight as it would be a traumatic experience; and thirdly, children copy the behaviour of their parents, so if you want your children to change their attitude around food, start analysing your own eating habits.”

How to make Juanita’s ‘snail snack’ for your kids

Spread a piece of white sliced bread with ham/smoked salmon/cream cheese/tuna paste and layer with a piece of brown sliced bread. Spread some low-fat cream cheese or tomato paste (depending on the filling you choose) on the top layer and roll tightly into a cylindrical shape. If you flatten the sandwich with a rolling pin, it will be easier to form the cylinder.

Cut into slices in order to get the snail shell effect. Then stick something round at the top to make the snail head (an olive, cherry tomato or mozzarella ball) with a toothpick.