How to ensure the egg yolk gets eaten

Hello! Thanks for joining me again, my names is Abbey, I'm a university qualified nutritionist and I'm here to show you how to pack a nutritionally balanced lunchbox, super quick!

To do that we always need to include something from each of the 5 food groups (fruit, vegetables, grains, protein, dairy).

Read on as I take you through this lunchbox plus share my top tip to ensure the egg yolk gets eaten!

Where possible I always try and save some protein from last nights dinner, however last night there were no leftovers so I boiled up some eggs. If your kids like eggs, it's such a great protein source and a great food to fill them up. My daughter loves the egg whites but is not a fan of the yolks. So my little tip to ensure she eats both is to pop the cooked egg yolk out, mix with some cream cheese and fill the mix back in. You can also add curry powder or any other herbs as well. Another way I ensure the yolks get eaten is to just mix the raw egg altogether and scramble or fry it or soak some bread in it and make french toast!

So that's our protein in the lunchbox and ready to go. Next I'm going to add some fruit, I'm using up the last of our chopped up rockmelon. I love trying to be organised and pre-chop fruit and veggies for the week!

Next i'm going to add the veggies, I pre-cut my carrot into sticks and put them in a glass jar covered with water and stored them in the fridge. They last for ages - just replace the water every few days - it's such a missive time saver! I'm also adding in cucumber - just a few slices and the the other vegetable I am including is cherry tomatoes. I would love to just throw in a couple of whole cherry tomatoes but Miss 5 just isn't there yet, she will eat the tomato but doesn't like the seeds so I'm just scooping them out for now. I will include the seeds over time but small steps work best when introducing new foods.

We now just need grains and dairy. For dairy I am using her favourite no added sugar Tamar Valley yoghurt pouch which is a good source of calcium. For grains I have been mixing up what I use and for this lunchbox I am including Organ Buckwheat Crispbreads. A great ingredients list, just buckwheat flour, rice flour and salt. They are so crispy and crunchy - my daughter loves them. I just cut them up to fit in the lunchbox.

So that's the lunchbox including all 5 food groups it's just the small little circle in the middle to fill. Today I'm just going to add in prunes as an extra small amount of fruit. I use Sunsweet pitted prunes - no additives or added sugar just 100% pitted prunes.

So that's it, a healthy lunchbox with something from each of the 5 food groups - Miss 5 will love it!

If you haven't yet downloaded my free lunchbox cheat sheet make sure you do! It will save you so much time deciding what to include from each food group! You can download it here.

See you next time

Abbey xo