Meal composition for school children

[karaj]

My children, aged 1,3 and 6 are doing a whole 30 from today.

I provide their lunches for school and preschool, but I wonder what people's thoughts are on children's meals following the template during the day.

At school my eldest daughter has fruit snack at 10ish, followed by morning tea at 11ish and lunch at about 12:30. 

Should I try to make sure every time she has food that she follows the meal template or will it not really matter if she is eating a piece of fruit by itself? In her lunchbox today she has two pork patties, slices of cucumber, two pieces of fruit, cashew nuts and coconut chia pudding. This is typical of the type of lunch I always pack, they might have tuna salad or hard boiled eggs in place of the patties, carrot sticks, snap peas. I realise also it's a bit light on veges, but being winter here I'm struggling with ideas of fresh veges and they wouldn't eat cold cooked veges if I packed them.

[Tom Denham]

I wound not worry about trying to provide a mini-template meal at snack time for children. A piece of fruit in a circumstance like this should be fine. 

 

The coconut chia pudding doesn't really make a good Whole30 menu item. Your version may not be particularly sweet, but it is dessert-like and we want you to not eat dessert during a Whole30. 

[karaj]

Thanks Tom. I get what you are saying about the chia pudding. I did tell my kids I wouldn't change their lunches. I think my six year old particularly notices her lunches are different to most other kids. They are not sweetened at all but they do give an easy to eat source of fat that I know the kids will eat to give them energy and focus for learning.