TORONTO — There’s everyday meal prep, and then there’s back-to-school lunch prep for a fickle child whose favourite foods become their most hated overnight.
Packing a lunch box can be among the most stressful back-to-school tasks for parents of kids with evolving appetites and classmate allergies.
Even the best-laid plans can be upended by a sudden growth spurt or new school policy. But coming up with at least a rough game plan can save time, money and food battles down the road, say experts including Toronto dietitian Andrea Carpenter.
Carpenter’s main advice to frazzled parents is to accept that circumstances will change and to keep things as streamlined as possible.
“What I've learned as a parent is that nothing ever stays the same. So don't ever get too comfortable at any phase,” said Carpenter, whose service NutriKidz provides nutrition advice to families.
“I do think we need to give ourselves a bit of a break. And I also feel that we don't need to go crazy killing ourselves planning so much.”
She’s a fan of cooking enough food to generate two or three meals at once: tonight’s barbecue chicken dinner and salad can be transformed into a Caesar wrap for lunch the next day.
Cookbook author and blogger Aleyda Batarse employs the same strategy, but also urges parents to scale back if they want to see an empty lunch box at the end of the day.
“Don't do more than four things. Sometimes parents pack six things and kids don't need six things,” says Batarse, who suggests colourful finger food for toddlers and younger kids.
“They are overwhelmed by choices. They look at it and they don't know what to eat first and then they just kind of nibble a little bit.”
The single mom of three meal-preps at the start of the week to stock the fridge with hearty salads and sides that can be warmed up for quick dinners. She’ll also make oatmeal bars, cookies and energy bites for ready-to-grab nutrient-dense snacks, as well as dips and spreads like hummus, labneh and chia-spiked jam to jazz up school lunches.
The two biggest challenges she hears most from parents are the cost of groceries and lack of time.
"The one thing that saves my life is the meal prep on Sundays or Monday nights. I don't always get to it on Sundays, to be honest. The weekends are busier than the weekdays for me,” says Batarse, who created her blog, The Dish On Healthy, nearly a decade ago.
“I'll have three types of grains in my fridge at all times – a quinoa, a rice or a brown rice, and some sort of pasta salad or something that's cooked.”
Batarse’s recent cookbook, “Deliciously Nourishing Eats: Allergy-Friendly Recipes for Quick, Satisfying Whole Food Meals” includes lunch box tips and customizable recipes for diets that avoid gluten, dairy and refined sugar.
She says her older kids – 12 and nearly 14 – demand heartier fare like homemade sushi, ramen, pinwheels and sandwiches. Her six-year-old likes bento box-style lunches with cut-up salami and cheese or a grilled cheese with apple slices or leftover chicken Milanese cut into nugget-like squares.
After years spent honing her lunch box chops for two daughters, cookbook author and mom Aviva Wittenberg admits to feeling some relief that this will likely be her last school year making lunch, since her youngest is entering her final year of high school.
“It definitely carries a weight.… And when my kids were little, it felt like really a lot of work,” says Wittenberg, author of 2022’s “Lunchbox: 75+ Easy and Delicious Recipes for Lunch On the Go.”
One of her cook once/eat twice tricks is to repurpose a bolognese dinner into a handpie for lunch, aided by store-bought puff pastry.
"Dump some sauce on it, close it up, brush some egg and bake it," she says.
While kids’ tastes are notoriously changeable, she remembers fickle teachers too, like the one who didn’t like bento boxes because they made a big mess if tipped over.
“Which was sort of annoying as a parent but I totally appreciated that the teachers didn't want to have to clean up that mess,” says Wittenberg.
She’s a big fan of stainless steel boxes, noting her daughter's is still intact, unlike a plastic one bought for kindergarten.
Wittenberg likes to meal plan three-to-four days' worth of dinner and have a rough idea for lunch, which always involves a discussion with the kids.
“Especially when they were little, it was like offering them the feeling of control over what they were eating, which mattered, but also options that felt like good options from my perspective.”
School lunches are not the time to introduce new flavours or ingredients, she adds, but sometimes all it takes is a small tweak to jazz up a staple your child has grown tired of.
"I had one of those little crinkle cutters that I used to use with carrots,” she chuckles, recalling how they made carrots “delicious.”
"If it took me 30 more seconds but it meant lunch was eaten, then that was what mattered to me."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 27, 2025.
Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press
