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    • breakfast
    • Main Dish
    • Dessert and Treats
    • keto recipes
    • Dairy-Free
    • Carnivore Diet/Zero Carb Diet
  • About
    • About Cara
    • Leaky Gut Treatment Through Diet
    • Healing Brain Trauma with Food, Supplements, and Lifestyle (Autism, TBI, PTSD)
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10 Real Food Packed Lunch Ideas

Home » Do it yourself and save » 10 Real Food Packed Lunch Ideas

I’ve been packing my daughter’s lunch for school, and snapped some pictures of what she’s been taking to give you ideas. We’re not on GAPS any more, but most of these are GAPS friendly.  I have a few lunch containers, so when we have leftovers I’ll often fill up one of the parts with the same thing 2-3 days in a row, and then round out the lunch with different sides to keep it from being repetitive.

For more help packing GAPS lunches, or packing lunches for children with sensory processing difficulties, see Packing Simple Lunches for the GAPS Diet.

Please note these are not perfectly balanced every time. I’m not perfect, and to feed your child you do not need to strive for perfection.  A lunch that doesn’t contain much protein, or contains more carbs than usual, can be compensated for with a nutrient dense breakfast and/or dinner.

Prior to school, our main meal of the day was lunch, we’ve had to switch the main meal to dinner.  The lunchroom is very chaotic and my daughter doesn’t eat nearly as much at lunch as she does at home with us.

Recipes/where to buy linked below.

Real Food lunch Ideas by Health Home and Happiness - make ahead, simple, no cutsey shapes, but nutritionally sound

Lunch 1: 

Banana (info about bananas on SCD/GAPS)

Snow peas

Gouda Cheese (contains K2, which is so good for development!)

Ginger Apple Salad

A Lara Bar (GMO Free- this is in her lunch when I am running behind, I keep a box of them hidden in the cupboard above the stove)

Real Food lunch Ideas by Health Home and Happiness - make ahead, simple, no cutsey shapes, but nutritionally sound

Lunch 2: 

Sliced apples

Snow peas

Baked Chicken Fingers

Ranch (this does migrate to the other parts of the lunch, so I don’t pack anything sweet in the divided container)

Sauerkraut (She LOVES this in her lunch and always eats the whole thing, it cracks me up)

gluten free lunch 7

Lunch 3

Homemade yogurt in the smoothie container– I do buy these as a treat (they are not GAPS friendly), and then we rinse out the container and re-use a few times.

Apples

Peanutbutter brownie (use sunbutter if your school is nut free)

Clementine

Snow Peas

Bison Snack Sticks

Real Food lunch Ideas by Health Home and Happiness - make ahead, simple, no cutsey shapes, but nutritionally sound

Real Food Lunch 4

Clementine

Snow Peas

Dates

Chicken Apple Sausage (Trader Joe’s)

Bubbies Pickle

Real Food lunch Ideas by Health Home and Happiness - make ahead, simple, no cutsey shapes, but nutritionally sound

Real Food Lunch 5

Kombucha Gummies

Bison Snack Sticks

Hard boiled Egg

Coconut Saffron Rice

Clementine

Snow Peas (I buy a bag of these and then divide them out for the week after we get home from shopping)

Real Food lunch Ideas by Health Home and Happiness - make ahead, simple, no cutsey shapes, but nutritionally sound

Real Food Lunch 6

Kombucha Gumies

Baby Carrots

Clementine

Monteray Jack Cheese

Leftover Tamale from dinner

Real Food lunch Ideas by Health Home and Happiness - make ahead, simple, no cutsey shapes, but nutritionally sound

Real Food Lunch 7

Cut up Cucumbers

Rice Crackers (gluten free)

Raspberries and Granny Smith Apples

Lamb from dinner

Mustard

Packed lunch

Real Food Lunch 8

Coconut Gummies

Bubbies Pickles

Plain Yogurt in a re-used container

Baby Carrots

Liverworst Sandwich on Sprouted Sourdough

 

 

Real Food lunch Ideas by Health Home and Happiness - make ahead, simple, no cutsey shapes, but nutritionally sound

Real Food Lunch 9 (short day, no snacks)

Salmon Salad

Gala Apple

Green Peas

Real Food lunch Ideas by Health Home and Happiness - make ahead, simple, no cutsey shapes, but nutritionally sound

Real Food Lunch 10

Snow Peas

Peanutbutter Brownie

Coconut Flour Crepe with Almondbutter and Jam

Clementine, raspberries

Plain Yogurt

Lunch Packing Equipment: 

I use these BPA free plastic containers, if they don’t make it back home, it isn’t the end of the world, and I have 5 of them so I can make lunches ahead of time.

This water bottle is a favorite, and is easy to open for an elementary school student, but more re-useable and easier to clean than regular water bottles.

Metal utensils aren’t allowed at our school, so I use these biodegradable alternatives to plastic.

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← Slow Cooker Baked Potato Bar- Ready When You Are! I Made a Kombucha Mother (SCOBY) from my Store Kombucha! →

About Cara

Cara is the main author here at Health Home and Happiness. She loves the health and energy that eating well and playing well provides and has a goal to share what she's learned with as many families interested in making healthy changes as possible.

She helps other families achieve health in simple steps through healing their gut with the GAPS Diet and helps them stock their freezer for busy days with the Allergy-Friendly Afternoon Freezer Cooking Class.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. jania hill

    October 13, 2013 at 9:12 pm

    Will You Please Post More of This ItHelps Me And Its Healthy

    Reply
  2. Matt @ Your Living Body

    October 14, 2013 at 10:57 am

    How does your daughter like these foods? My parents did a pretty good job of not packing junk foods in my school lunches (not Paleo but by most people’s standards, pretty health). I used to get jealous of the kids bringing out their fruit rollups and fruit candy that their parents gave them but what my parents did definitely set up healthy eating practices for the future and I’m glad they did it.

    Reply
    • Cara

      October 14, 2013 at 12:10 pm

      She likes them a lot. It helps (sadly) that the school that she goes to has like 90% of the kids on school lunch, and school lunch is g-r-o-s-s there. Picture some sort of bread with a sprinkle of low fat cheese microwaved in a cellophane wrapper.

      We had an issue in preschool in another district when one family sent in pudding cups every day for snack. The teacher told me that she ‘didn’t like what I sent’, yeah, if you’re sitting her next to someone eating pudding cups, that would make sense! But I just said I’d feed her when she got home, since she was only in school for a couple hours.

      Reply
    • Alicia

      November 8, 2013 at 9:56 am

      When I was a kid in school, I remember being a bit jealous of the other kids fruit roll-ups and such, but they were jealous of my lunches too. I remember getting comments like: “Wow! She has fruit! I wish I could have fruit.”. It always seemed rather bizarre to me that fruit (which we always had on hand) was such a novelty to the other kids.

      Reply
      • Cara

        November 10, 2013 at 11:52 am

        My kids have fruit all the time, but they still prefer it to fruit roll ups :) My daughter gladly takes any of the fruit that the ‘school lunch’ kids don’t want.

        Reply
  3. Christina

    October 14, 2013 at 11:21 am

    Thank you so much for posting this! My girls are 2.5, and I really struggle with feeding them real food. One is a pretty good eater, but right now only eats what is familiar (bacon, potatoes, and snacks) and the other will hardly eat anything at all (loves bacon, some fruit and treats). I know that toddlers go through ‘food phases’, but it’s always nice to see real food examples that I can at least try out to see if they will taste it, plus keep for later :) Thanks so much!

    Reply
    • Cara

      October 14, 2013 at 12:12 pm

      Christina, this article might help you :) https://healthhomeandhappiness.com/my-child-needs-gaps-but-wont-even-touch-that-kind-of-food-how-to-get-kids-with-sensory-issues-on-the-gaps-diet.html

      Reply
  4. Shellee

    October 15, 2013 at 10:57 pm

    Hi,
    These are great ideas, Just fyi you can get the exact same dates at Costco for 1/2 the price. Not sure if you already do or not.

    Reply
    • Cara

      October 16, 2013 at 4:05 pm

      That’s where I get them, I just wanted a link to give people :)

      Reply
  5. Kristin

    November 1, 2013 at 1:45 am

    What time of sprouted bread do you but? I’ve seen the Alvarado St. bread and it looks pretty good, but not all of the flour is sprouted. Can you offer any insights into sprouted breads and whether or not there are companies that make 100% sprouted products?

    Reply
    • Cara

      November 1, 2013 at 1:05 pm

      That’s what I use :)

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. The Complete Guide to Packing Healthy School Lunches says:
    August 28, 2014 at 8:58 am

    […] – 10 Simple Healthy School Lunch Ideas Mama and Baby Love – Real Food Lunch & Snack Ideas Health, Home, & Happiness – 10 Real Food Lunches for a Kindergartener Keeper of the Home – Healthy Back-to-School Lunches Made […]

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