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Finally, a child in daycare! For most families, starting kindergarten is a new and exciting time, especially if it is the first child to attend kindergarten. Many daycare centers provide breakfast and lunch for the kids, but in some facilities you have to pack a lunch box yourself for breakfast or a snack. It should be healthy, but also provide energy, because daycare can be quite stressful for your child. Sugar, empty carbohydrates and fatty snacks have no place in children's lunch boxes - instead, there are delicious vegan alternatives. So that you don't run out of ideas and can pack more than just boring bread in the lunch box, we have collected five tips and tricks for you. This way, even picky eaters can look forward to their snack at daycare.
Vesper Kita: 5 Healthy and Vegan Alternatives
Over time, only the same bread in the lunch box can lead to your child just poking around in their breakfast out of boredom or even bringing the boxes home completely untouched. But not all parents have the capacity to make elaborate bento boxes for their child, bake them specially, start cooking in the morning or make every meal an experience for small children. Nevertheless, you can offer your child more than the same spread in the lunch box every day. The alternative is variety and fresh products. We have summarized the five most delicious vegan ideas for your lunch box for you in a practical article here.
1. Kindergarten skewers
Everything tastes so much better in small, bite-sized pieces. If mom or dad have prepared the snack and served it with a little love, children would probably eat pretty much anything or at least try it. If you want to offer your child a healthy alternative to white bread with chocolate spread, but are unsure whether it will be accepted, then try this slightly different idea for packaging vitamins and nutrients:
What you need:
- Wooden skewers
- A round cookie cutter
- Wholemeal bread or wholemeal toast
- Vegan cream cheese and cheese cubes, vegan sausages
- Cocktail tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and other beloved vegetables
- Grapes, pears, apples, tangerines and other delicious fruits
How it goes:
To make healthy and vegan kindergarten skewers, first spread the cream cheese on the bread or toast and make small sandwiches, which you then use the round cookie cutter to cut out. Now alternate cocktail tomatoes, sandwiches and cucumbers on the skewer. Do the same with sausages, peppers, cheese cubes and other vegetables. Fruit can also be used to make delicious snacks for kindergarten, quickly and easily. Try combining cheese with grapes, cucumber and tangerines or putting an apple slice between the sandwiches. The possibilities are almost endless.
2. Pretzel snacks with raw vegetables
Do you know the small bread rolls and pretzels from the refrigerated section? Not a significant amount for adults, but just right for your child's lunch box. Ready in the oven in minutes or our pro tip: even quicker in the air fryer. Deliciously topped with vegan sausage or vegan cheese, your child will certainly be delighted to see the small pretzel or child-sized bread roll when they open their box. You can also cut a few raw vegetable sticks out of carrots, peppers and cucumbers and put them in the lunch box with delicious hummus or a dip made from vegan yoghurt or quark.
3. Exotic Overnight Oats
Prepared the day before and simply packed from the fridge into your daycare backpack in the morning, this snack idea is not only super healthy, but also time-saving and stress-free. If your kids are skeptical about exotic fruit, you can of course use local fruit as an alternative. But one thing is certain: this tip is not just a great breakfast for children!
What you need:
- A screw-top jar
- oatmeal
- Coconut milk or other plant-based milk
- Exotic fruits such as mango, papaya or bananas
How it goes:
Layer oat flakes, your exotic fruit and, if you like, some maple syrup or another sweetener in your screw-top jar. Now carefully pour the coconut milk or your plant-based milk up to the rim of the jar and close the jar properly. Put it in the fridge and the next morning you will have a delicious porridge with fresh fruit that tastes like the Caribbean. Thanks to the screw-top jar, you don't have to transfer the oatmeal; you can just put the jar and a spoon in your kindergarten backpack and you're ready to go.
4. Underrated all-rounders: rice cakes
When you think of rice cakes, you probably don't have the absolute taste experience on your tongue. But wait: The rice cake is completely underrated and so versatile that you will be surprised. Did you know that you can conjure up an excellent vegan minced meat from the crispy rice-based cake? The crispy slices are also a great alternative to plain bread and are just as great toppings. Crushed into small pieces, the rice cake is a great topping for yoghurt and muesli and with a delicious nut butter, dark chocolate and a little caramel you can make almost healthy bars very quickly and easily. Give it a try.
5. Quick wraps for kids
Crisp salad, vitamins and nutrients, colorful vegetables and a yogurt sauce to die for: wraps are quick to make and popular with children. The different consistencies are fun and you can use almost anything that the little ones like - the perfect kindergarten snacks. To prevent the tortillas from getting soggy too quickly, you should make sure that you put a layer of crisp salad between the yogurt sauce, cream cheese or other toppings. A combination of vegan sausage and vegan cheese is particularly popular - simply roll it up and secure it with a small skewer.
As you can see, the kindergarten box doesn't always have to be filled with fancy treats. Sometimes it can be quick and still be healthy. We hope that our ideas have given you some inspiration so that your child's food is varied and balanced without you having to dig through countless recipes. All of our ideas are vegan, of course, and are delicious even without meat substitutes. And if the next lunch box only contains bread instead of grapes, quark, sausages and vegetables, your little one will still enjoy it - because nobody has to be perfect all the time and children don't need works of art in their snacks every day, they need attentive parents.
