Nutrition

10 Tips to for a Healthy School Lunch

With school re-starting all over the country, it's time to start packing lunch again. And just as breakfast acts as fuel to start your day, lunch helps get us through the next several hours. By lunchtime, you're sometimes running on empty. A balanced healthy meal refuels your body and brain to continue throughout the day. (Lunch should provide 25 to 33 percent of your daily nutrients and calories.)

Follow these 10 tips for a healthy meal to keep you alert throughout your afternoon.

Include Items from the 5 Food Groups. Be sure grains, veggies, fruits, meat and beans, and milk products are represented in your daily diet.
Get Help. Talk to your parents about buying your favorite healthy foods when they grocery shop.
Pre-Cut Veggies. Celery, carrots, cherry tomatoes and fruits like grapes and berries are great mid-day snacks.
Granola Bars. With fewer than 200 calories, these are great snack options.
Pasta and Vegetable salad. Prepared the night before, these meals are easy to store and pack.
Toss pasta in a tomato-based sauce. Use light dressing or fat-free mayonnaise for salad.
Tuna or Chicken Salad. Easy to make and change up by adding onion, celery, almonds or dried cranberries.
Deli Meat. Add a good mustard and cheese to two slices of whole-grain bread.
Eat Smart. Avoid chips, sodas, packaged cookies and desserts, and other sugary or fatty snacks.
Practice Portion Control. You can have dessert, just don't over-do it. Pack two cookies, not five.
Low-fat Alternatives. Pretzels and popcorn are delicious and healthy alternatives to chips.

Learn more about eating well.

Content Editor Web Part ‭[5]‬

Good Choices

Sport vs. Energy Drink

Sports drinks: Helpful to athletes exercising at high intensity for 60 minutes or more.

Fluids supplying 60 to 100 calories per 8-ounces helps supply needed calories required for continuous performance.
It's unnecessary to replace sodium, potassium and other electrolytes during exercise since you're unlikely to deplete your body's stores of these minerals during normal training.
If, however, you find yourself exercising in extreme conditions over three to five hours (a marathon for example) you likely want to add a complex sports drink with electrolytes.

Energy drinks: Beverages like Red Bull contain large doses of caffeine and other legal stimulants like ephedrine, guarana and ginseng.

Energy drinks should not be used while exercising. The combination of fluid loss from sweating and the diuretic quality of caffeine can leave you severely dehydrated.
These drinks can contain as much as 80 mg of caffeine, equal to a cup of coffee. Compared to the 37 mg of caffeine in a Mountain Dew or 23 in a Coca-Cola Classic, that's a big punch.
While not necessarily bad for you, energy drinks shouldn't be seen as "natural alternatives" either. Claims like "improved performance and concentration" are misleading. You wouldn't use Mountain Dew as a sports drink.
Energy drinks should be treated carefully because of how powerful they are. Their stimulating properties can boost the heart rate and blood pressure (sometimes to the point of palpitations), dehydrate the body and prevent sleep.

(source: Brown University Health Education Dept.)

Snack Smart

Breakfast: The Meal of Champions!

While skipping breakfast to get more sleep or to spend extra time choosing an outfit may seem an insignificant sacrifice, allowing time for a healthy breakfast gives your body several advantages:

Your brain functions better. Research shows students who eat breakfast get higher grades, pay closer attention and participate more in class discussions than breakfast skippers.
Less likely to be overweight. When you skip breakfast, you usually consumer more calories throughout the day.
Better chance of consuming five daily servings of fruits and veggies. Breakfast can also help you consume important nutrients like calcium, Vitamin C and fiber.

5 Quickie Breakfast Ideas for a Productive Day

Fruit smoothies (banana, blueberries, strawberries, mango, etc.)
Yogurt topped with granola or sliced fruit
French toast, waffles, pancakes (wheat or whole grain)
Cold cereal with milk (whole grain cereal, reduced fat milk)
Hot cereal-oatmeal, Cream of Wheat, grits