For some reason, children never like it when you try to get them to eat healthy. School lunches are supposed to be really healthy for kids; but what they end up being is, cheap and full of cheese and grease. About the only way you have of making sure that your child has healthy lunch meals at school is to make sure that you see your child off to school with one tucked into his bag yourself. This way, not only do you make sure that your child eats healthy, it saves money, too.

Some people misunderstand what a home packed lunch really means. It isn't about buying a cheese and cracker package from the store and tucking in into the backpack. While that might do a day or two of the month, when you are extra busy, your child really deserves healthy lunch meals everyday. It doesn't really take much out of your day to make something from scratch. Let's look at what you can rustle up everyday to make sure your kid gets the nutrition he needs cheap lunch ideas for work.

To make sure that your child really goes along with your plan, you need to bring your child into the decision-making process. Let your child pick out a few of the things that he is willing to eat at lunch everyday. If bread is a part of the lunch plan, make sure that you choose whole grain bread.It doesn't have to be dark, rough and coarse stuff anymore. They make wonderful whole-grain bread now that is indistinguishable from white bread in softness and taste. Healthy lunch meals have to have fruit in them, or juice.

Now it might be tempting to simply grab canned fruit or a juice box to throw in the lunch box and call it "healthy". That's not really how it works, though. As the First Lady Michelle Obama says, we all need to boycott juice boxes; they all have precious little fruit in them, and they are mostly artificial flavoring and sugar. When you're going with fruit, go natural and fresh. Putting vegetables in your child's lunchbox is a great idea too. Kids like celery and peanut butter, or baby carrots and dip.

Of course, healthy lunch meals need protein in them. You could go with lunch meats if you want to; but for something a bit more adventurous, you could try trail mix or string cheese. If your kid's school doesn't have any rules against peanut butter, that could be great too. Of course, just because you want your child to eat healthy lunch meals every day doesn't mean you have to make heavy weather of it. Make sure that you cut your kid a little slack with something like a cupcake or a candy bar. He will really be surprised