Children with diabetes, like all other children, need a good, healthy, well-balanced and appetising lunch to get them through the day. Lunch should provide approximately one third of your child’s daily food requirements. A healthy lunch should include an item from each of the following groups.
Bread, Cereals, and Potato group
These carbohydrates should take up most of the lunch box space (for example, bread, crackers, rolls, baps, pitta bread, rice, and pasta.
Fruit and Vegetables Group
These foods provide a rich source of vitamins and minerals (for example, fresh fruit, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, mini boxes of raisins or dried fruit, small tin of fruit in fruit juice.
Milk, Cheese, and Yoghurt Group
This group contains calcium-rich foods, important for healthy bones and teeth, for example, cheese slices, triangles and strings and yogurt – check with your dietitian. Also include a carton of milk.
Meat, Fish, and Alternatives
This group contains protein rich foods important for growth, for example, tinned tuna, sliced ham or beef, chicken, corned beef, eggs, cheese, and peanut butter.
It is useful to put labels on foods with the grams of carbohydrate written on it. This will help your child learn about carb counting and help anyone assisting your child at lunchtime.
See some ideas for school lunches, click here.
See more information about about healthy meal planning here.
Further lunch ideas are available on the INDI website www.indi.ie and also on the START campaign on the safe food website at www.safefood.eu.
