Brown Bag It

www.flick.com, photo by Jeffrey Beall

This blog post is going to be simple and obvious, but it may be the reminder (and motivation) some of us need. We're all busy, right? It's so much easier to go through the drive through at our favorite fast food restaurant at lunch time, or to send lunch money with our kids, than it is to take the time to pack our own lunches, but the benefits of packing healthy lunches for your family far outweigh the ease of buying what someone else has made. Here are some (obvious) benefits to bringing the brown bag:

You Save Money: I get asked all the time, "How do you afford buying all that healthy food?" Well, one easy answer is, "We almost never go out to eat." The amount of money we would spend taking our whole family out to eat two times per month easily covers the extra we spend on healthier foods. Let's face it: It costs less to pack your own lunch than it does to buy it. So, do we ever buy lunch? Well, of course we do, but not very often. I'd much rather spend that extra money on real food.

You Control the Ingredients: Even if you order a salad at a restaurant, are you really controlling the ingredients? How do you know they even washed the pesticide-laden produce? That grilled chicken you ordered--what did they inject into it, or brush over it? You don't know. Even some of my favorite restaurants, that I would consider healthier than the rest, add a lot of additives, sugars, and other disgusting things to their food. Of course they do! They're not in the health food business. They're in the "taste good" business.

You Get to Include the Food Groups (for real): When you pack a well-balanced lunch for your kids, you're probably not counting tomato paste as a vegetable, and the fruit you give them can be fresh, not dumped out of a can and enhanced with corn syrup.

You Can Limit Sugar: Want your kids to be able to concentrate better and do better in school? Want to avoid that 2:00 slump for yourself? Don't eat a lunch that's full of sugar! Hopefully, you wouldn't pack a lunch full of candy bars and Pop-Tarts, because the sugar content there is obvious, but a lot of other foods are full of hidden sugars as well. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Look at the ingredients in the bread, the peanut butter, and the jelly. Sugar, sugar, sugar, unless you have taken the time to specifically purchase each of these without added sugar. You can do it, actually, and it's not that hard (or expensive!) You just have to read the ingredients.
I can guarantee you, however, that if someone else is making that lunch, they aren't going to buy healthy varieties. You're not going to get fruit packed in fruit juice or no sugar added peanut butter. If you want to limit the sugar, you've got to pack it yourself.

Is packing your own lunches more work? Of course, but making healthier choices for your family requires a little effort. The benefits far outweigh the few minutes it takes to give your family the best each day.