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Author: Ashley Wentworth

It’s back-to-school season which means many of us are fretting about what to send in our kids’ lunchboxes, myself included. Unless your child takes advantage of the school meal program for all of their school meals, planning and packing lunches can be daunting. It seems like a constant battle between sending foods that support them during their long school day, and ones they’ll actually eat.

Here are a few ideas to help make packing for lunchtime easier.

Pack Enough Food

My first tip is to pack enough food. Many schools have time for a snack/breakfast in the morning in addition to a normal lunch period. This basically means packing enough food for two meals, especially if your child has a small breakfast at home or doesn’t eat before school. 

Having enough food to eat supports their energy, concentration, learning, and growth. I know if I’m hungry I usually am not productive and have poor focus and concentration. Our kids are no different. Being hungry can also cause irritability (hello, hangry!) and is distracting. 

Use School Programs

Take advantage of your school’s snack and meal offerings. Some states have adopted universal free school breakfast and lunch meals which is a no-brainer to help with your budget. Look over the menu together with your student and pick out some items or meals for them to try.

Make It a Joint Effort

Include your child in the planning and packing process for their school meals. Have them help you come up with some items or meals they might like to have for the week or over the next few weeks. You can include these on your grocery list and then have them available. 

Some families have kids pack their own lunchbox each day. 

Offer Options

Pack plenty of food and a variety of options. This will give them some different things to choose from. I know I don’t know what I want for lunch right when I wake up in the morning. Include items from all of the food groups, carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fiber, and fun foods can all be part of a school meal. 

Try to help your student explore which foods help keep them full and satisfied during their day. 

Kids go through phases of liking things and then not wanting them for a while, just like adults. If their tastes change, try to go with the flow and pick some new or different items to try. 

Make It Easy for Them

Kids often do not get a lot of time to eat lunch in school. Make it easier for them. For example, send oranges already peeled. Slice up apples. Have everything ready to eat so they don’t waste time peeling and cutting and end up with no time to actually eat.

Handy Lunchtime Tools

• Bento boxes are great with helping to include variety. There are many different compartments to have fun with. It also saves space to help include more food instead of containers using up the space.
• Small cooler/ice packs are great to help keep things that need to be refrigerated stay cold during the school day.
• We use our thermos a lot! We pack soup, macaroni and cheese, lasagna, shepherd’s pie, and more. 
• Cookie cutters can be used to make food items seem more fun and appealing. Cutting sandwiches, cheese, or anything into shapes automatically makes them more desirable to little ones. 
• I’m not sure about you, but I absolutely hate having a million plastic, zippered snack bags floating around the kitchen and the lunch box. We love our reusable snack bags! They certainly help save money as well. 

Ditch the Guilt 

When we think “processed” we usually think unhealthy, prepackaged food. But truth be told, most of the food we buy at the store is processed in some way. It’s ok to send processed convenience foods like dried or canned fruit for example. Fruits and vegetables don’t have to be fresh for every meal/snack. If your kids like them and eat them, it’s a win! 

Food Item Ideas

• Sandwiches!
• Wraps 
• Open-faced sandwiches 
• Pinwheels
• Sliders
• Fruits and vegetables, canned, cooked, fresh, dried, freeze-dried, or frozen 
• Write notes or draw pictures on bananas and oranges to make them fun
• Try different cuts to keep things exciting—sliced, cubed, or cut into fun shapes
• Send some kind of dip for fruits and vegetables if your child likes it better this way. We love mixing yogurt and peanut butter together for a quick fruit dip! Hummus, salad dressings, yogurt, or whatever your child enjoys.
• Leftovers from dinner
• Cheese—cubed, sliced, or string
• Popcorn
• Pretzels
• Crackers
• Nut butters if your school allows it, Sunbutter if not
• Deli meat and cheese rolls 
• Muffins or breads 
• Yogurt
• Homemade Lunchable style items

There are no rules when it comes to packing meals for your kids. Choose foods they like. If it seems like they are getting bored with things, try something new. Almost anything can be sent as a school meal—think outside the (lunch) box. Happy back-to-school!

Author: Carrie Myers

If you’re like many families, summertime means the loss of a normal routine and schedule. So, when back-to-school time inevitably rolls back around, those first few weeks can be rough—unless you’re prepared. Here are a few tips for easing into a new school year.

Wrap-Up Summer School Projects

If you neglected to go through your kids’ backpacks from last school year, now might be a good time to do so. Hopefully, you won’t find their summer reading list or some other summer project that’s supposed to be completed by the upcoming school year (and hopefully you don’t find that the stench you’ve been smelling is some critter they brought home and were supposed to take care of over the summer!).

Do School Shopping Early

This is especially important if you tend to procrastinate. Get school supplies, backpacks, lunch boxes, and any clothes and shoes well before the start of school (like two or three weeks before). This cuts down on the stress of last-minute shopping—and increases the chances of getting the colors and themes your kids want (unless you hate that cartoon character they’re crazy about, in which case, feel free to procrastinate).

Practice

Don’t wait until school starts to begin some sort of routine. Summertime often means later nights and sleeping in—at least sleeping later than during the school year. Two or three weeks prior to school starting, set a time for bedtime—and announce it early—like the previous week, but also early on in the day that you’re starting it—and remind them often throughout the day so that no one can say you didn’t tell them (little do they know, we moms know all their tricks).

How to set the earlier bedtime is up to you, but it definitely does not need to be all or nothing. Depending on when you’re beginning the earlier bedtime, try starting with 30 minutes earlier for the first few days and then add up from there. Just beware that they may have trouble falling asleep at first, since they’re bodies have adjusted to staying up later. This is where the bedtime routine comes into play. What do they normally do during the school year? Bath, brush, read—or something along those lines? If they’ve gotten out of that habit, now is the time to reinstill it.

On the other end, if they’ve been sleeping in, start setting alarms and practice getting up and getting “ready” in the morning. If you don’t want them to consider you a total summertime buzz-kill, allow weekends to stay on summertime.

Ease New School Year Jitters

Whether your kids will be in a new school this year, or you have a child who does not deal with change well, ignoring their anxiety will not make it go away. Start talking about how they’re feeling, answer any questions they might have, and start them on their new routine so that it becomes familiar to them.

Contact the school and their new teacher and ask if you can all do a meet-and-greet the week before school in their classroom. This will increase their familiarity and help them feel safe going there. If the child is in middle or high school, ask for a tour of the school and a meet-and-greet with their teachers. If they’ll be using a locker, ask if they could get their locker assignment and locker code or combination so they can practice opening it without trying to figure it out with the pressure of other kids and bells going off (I literally still have this recurring dream at least once a year that I cannot remember my locker combo and the bells are going off, I’m late…ahhhh!)

Make Sure You Still Squeeze in Fun

Summer is short enough, and the purpose of preparing for school is not to shorten summer even more. Even with easing back into a schedule and routine, be sure to add plenty of end-of-summer activities and family time (or downtime if summer has been all go, go, go). And while I do not recommend planning your family getaway for the last week of summer, if that is your thing, being prepared beforehand will be imperative!

Here’s to a safe, healthy, happy school year!

We’d love to hear your tips and what works for you! Drop us a line!

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Author: Ashley Wentworth

What type of milk do you drink? Do you know why you’re drinking that kind? There are so many options now. Sweetened, unsweetened, flavored, filtered—the list goes on and on!

Plant-based milk products are not new despite their trending popularity. Soy and rice milk have been around for quite some time as an option for those with vegan and vegetarian meal styles, religious preferences, lactose intolerance, lack of access to mammal milk (like cow and goat milks), and dairy allergies.

Types of Milks

Dairy

• Full fat, reduced fat (2%), low-fat (1%), and non-fat (skim)
• Ultrafiltered: Milk is filtered, water and some lactose are removed, lactase is added. This leaves milk with a higher protein content and lactose free.
• Lactose free: Lactase is added to the milk

Plant-Based Milk Products

•  Almond
• Soy
• Coconut
• Oat
• Cashew
• Rice
• Hemp 
• Flax
• Hazelnut 

What Is Lactose Intolerance?

Many people choose plant-based milks due to lactose intolerance and dairy allergies. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), estimates show that about 68% of the population worldwide and 36% of the population of the United States cannot tolerate lactose. Lactose intolerance is least common in those of European descent, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. 

Lactose is the type of sugar found naturally in milk products from mammals. Lactose is made up of two sugar molecules that need to be broken down by digestion in order to be absorbed by the body for nutrition. In people with lactose intolerance, there is not enough of the digestive enzyme, lactase, in their intestines to break down the lactose sugar. Some people have some levels of lactase and can tolerate small amounts of lactose but others cannot tolerate any lactose. 

Lactose intolerance is often associated with other digestive disorders like Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Crohn’s Disease, food allergies, or celiac disease.  

An intolerance or sensitivity reaction is focused in our gut and causes discomfort and symptoms such as bloating, loose stools, gas, abdominal pain, and diarrhea, per the NIH.

Lactose intolerance is different than a dairy or milk allergy. An allergic reaction uses the immune system to defend itself against intruders and results in symptoms like hives, rash, itching, swelling, respiratory distress, and sometimes as severe as anaphylaxis. 

A milk allergy can also have symptoms similar to lactose intolerance that occur in the gastrointestinal tract like nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Usually, allergies are triggered by exposure resulting in an immune response to the protein components of food. The main proteins in milk are whey and casein.  

Environmental Impact

Many people choose plant-based milks based on the lower environmental impact compared to dairy milk. The BBC reported on a study that suggests that dairy milk has the most significant impact on the environment in regard to land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and water usage. The same study suggests that almond milk has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions but uses more water than other plant-based milk products.

The dairy industry has been committed to making sustainability improvements when possible. According to New England Dairy: 

• Manure from cows is used as fertilizer for other crops.
• Restaurants and food companies can partner with farms to recycle food waste into feed for cows or for compost.
• Anaerobic digester systems are able to transform manure into renewable electricity.
• Dairy farmers can be great stewards of the land. They use rotation practices to reduce and prevent erosion, as well as injecting manure into the land to keep nutrients in the soil.

The US Dairy Industry has these goals for environmental stewardship for 2050:

• Achieve greenhouse gas neutrality
• Optimize water use while maximizing recycling
• Improve water quality by optimizing the utilization of manure and nutrient

How Do the Nutrition Facts Stack Up?

Despite the use of the word “milk” in plant-based milk products, their nutrition profiles are generally inferior and should not be used as a sole nutrition substitute for dairy milk. Many are fortified with nutrients that are found in dairy milk but always check the label to find out. 

Milk has thirteen essential nutrients: calcium, iodine, niacin, pantothenic acid, potassium, phosphorus, protein, riboflavin, selenium, vitamin A, vitamin B12, vitamin D, and zinc. Let’s see how different plant-based products compare (all are 1 cup servings or  246gm).

All nutrition data is from the USDA FoodData Central Database

Which One Should I Choose?

Here are some things to consider when deciding what type of milk to include in your meals.

• Dairy milk is often less expensive, more accessible, and has more nutrition than plant-based milks. This is especially important for people that face food insecurity or have limited access to food.

• If environmental concerns are a priority for you, a plant-based option may be the best fit. The closest plant-based option to dairy milk as far as nutrition is concerned would be soy milk. Many people have been avoiding soy in recent years due to concerns about soy consumption increasing risks for cancer, thyroid disorders, and hormone disruption. Many studies have shown that there is little to no link between soy and these concerns. In fact, soy has been shown to have a protective effect on many health concerns. 

• Dietary preferences and allergies may be the deciding factor for you. Choose a product that best fits your needs—there are a lot of options out there! 

Bottom Line

There are many types of milk to choose from, including dairy and plant-based. If you’re using plant-based options in place of dairy, there is a risk of nutrition deficiencies—like calcium for example. It’s important to find other sources of calcium and protein if you’re eliminating dairy from your diet.

Author: Carrie Myers

I try to avoid using the saying “The Good Old Days,” but in today’s highly technologically-advanced world, it’s hard not to use it. And yes, here it comes…

When I was kid…

We played outside. We didn’t have a choice. I laughingly recall standing at the front door during summer, face red and sweaty from running around, begging to come inside for a drink. Okay, that’s my child’s mind embellishing it a bit—we didn’t have to beg for a drink—but the point is, we played.

And we played outside—and so did other kids. There was never a scarcity of neighborhood kids to play with.

We played Freeze Tag, TV Tag, hopscotch, hide-and-seek, Red Rover, What Time Is It Mr. Fox, Mother May I, Red Light Green Light, Frisbees, Wiffleball, and Kickball—and dared whoever kicked the ball over the neighbor’s fence to climb over it and snatch the ball before their dog, a Basset Hound named Lightening, came screaming out of his house to chase us, his long, floppy ears flying out behind him.

We climbed trees and swung from the branches. We did cartwheels and round-offs (I have a scar on my knee to prove a bad landing) and rode bikes.

We tossed the baseball around, jumped rope, flew kites, and hula-hooped (well, I attempted to anyway).

We roller-skated and skateboarded down what seemed like a gigantic hill at the end of our street. Going back now, I see it’s just a small noll (hey, everything looks bigger from a kid’s perspective).

If we were at my grandparent’s farm, just four miles from our house, we fished in the ponds, walked through warm cow manure barefoot (you haven’t lived until you’ve had the warm squish of cow poop between your toes!), fed the animals, “helped” my Gramps and aunt milk the cows (and run when milk came squirting at us), swam in the pool, and jumped on the pogo stick.

How many kids do you see playing like this anymore? Probably not many.

Instead, our kids are living in caves, eyes glued to screens, watching garbage that adds nothing but trouble to their brains and bodies.

Case in point: A 2022 report in BMC Public Health suggests that young children who go over the recommended one-hour screen time limit experience developmental deficits, specifically in the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive health domains.

But when parents limit screen time, research suggests positive results. For example, a 2022 study in JAMA Pediatrics links less screen time, instigated by parental interventions, with an increase in physical activity.

But how do you get your kids off the phones and out the door? Here are five tips to get them—and you—moving.

5 Tips for Getting Kids Off the Devices and Moving Outside

Set Boundaries

Assuming you own the phones, computers, tablets, and gaming systems and pay the bills for them to run, you have a right (and I dare say, a responsibility) to decide how and when those devices are used (and even if your teen is paying for theirs, if they still live under your roof, the same parental rights apply, in my opinion). You also have a right to check those devices. This is made easier by setting clear boundaries—and putting them in writing.

I’m a fan of writing up contracts, especially as kids get older and take on more responsibilities. Lay out the rules for using the devices and make sure everyone understands them, including the consequences of breaking the rules. Then have each one sign the contract, make copies for each person, and also hang a copy of the contract for all to see. Then the tough part—the follow-through. You must follow through with the consequences if they break the rules. Yes, they might “hate” you for a bit…but not for long if they want it back.

Be a Role Model

Parents are kids’ first role models. Don’t give them any ammunition to use against you, claiming that you’re a hypocrite—like telling them to get off the devices and go outside while you’re face-deep in your own devices, scrolling through social media, and never go outside to “play”). And while I do not believe parents should have to entertain the kids, it does help them to become more active if the parents are also active—including together as a family. This can be as simple as going for a walk after dinner most nights or discovering a new swimming hole in your area.

Introduce Them to Games You Played as a Kid

Depending on your age, you may or may not remember or recognize the games I mentioned earlier in this article. Do an internet search of the games, or borrow or buy a book, like 101 Playground Games, to get ideas.

Get Creative

Sit down and design a simple obstacle course with your kids. Have them draw it out and then create it in your yard. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Use what you’ve already got. Or do a nature scavenger hunt. Go camping or hiking. Visit the local park. Plant a garden. Mow the lawn. Rake the lawn. Walk dogs. Stack wood. Assign each kid a housekeeping duty, crank the music, and make it a dance party (yes, I’ve been known to dance with my vacuum). Formal exercise isn’t the only thing that counts as physical activity.

Get a map of the U.S. or another part of the world and map out a route from point “A” to your destination; decide how many miles each family member needs to contribute to the “trip” each week to get to your destination. This is where some inexpensive pedometers come in handy, or measure out a trail in your yard or neighborhood so that you know the distance. Plan a fun, active adventure when you get to your “destination.”

Physical Activity Inside Counts, Too

While I love seeing kids getting outdoors more, I know that sometimes that’s not possible. What are some ways to be more active indoors? There are all kinds of exercise, yoga, tai chi, and boot camp types of videos out there. You could teach your kids very basic exercises that only require their own body weight, like push-ups, squats, and planks. Get some fun, kid-friendly exercise equipment and teach a “class” a couple of times a week.

Bottom Line

Becoming more active doesn’t have to be a burden or “one more thing” you need to add to your plate. By cutting down on screen and device time, you make space for physical activity. And by adding music (and maybe a little competition) to activities you already do, you can sneak movement into your family’s day without them knowing that they’re exercising. Make movement fun again!