With the kids back at school for their first term of 2019, we can imagine the stress that parents can go through when it comes to organising packed school snacks and lunches.
With the revised school nutrition policy being implemented, more effort is now required of parents in Seychelles to ensure that the food and drinks they send their kids to school with are healthier.
We know how potentially time-consuming and costly buying and preparing healthier foods can be, and we want to help make this part of the journey easier for parents.
Here at GOPI Supermarket, we have a selection of ingredients and food items that tick all the boxes:
Healthier
Affordable
Easy
Kid-Approved
We chose some of these ingredients and items and have thought of a few snack and lunch ideas that parents can use to make quick and easy meals without compromising on the health or those fussy taste buds of our kids.
Snack Box Items
Fresh Fruit
Choose from our range of
fresh fruits like apples, oranges and pears to make refreshing snacks. Quickly turn them into bite-size pieces using our convenient , pop them in a snack box, or make smoothies using milk or yogurt blended together with the chopped up fruits. Our can come in handy here if you want to make a big batch of smoothie for several children ahead of time and need to store it in the fridge.
Shree Ganesh Natural Sweet, No added sugar
These come in a box with 4 different flavours: Strawberry, Cranberry, Orange & Multigrain, and are all made with healthy ingredients like cashews, pistachios, almonds, blueberry, cranberry, oats, flax seeds and orange. Each sweet is individually wrapped, making it easy to pop into a snack box.
Dry Fruit & Nuts
If your child is not allergic to nuts, we have a range of peanuts, cashews, almonds, pistachios and hazelnuts which are known to be healthy sources of protein and fat, all of which can be mixed with some of our dry fruit options like raisins, dates and figs to make a sweet, crunchy snack.
Popcorn
They say that when eaten plain, popcorn is a healthy, wholegrain food containing fibre. The best part is that kids love popcorn, making this an ideal item to add to their snack box. The supermarket stocks plain maize kernels which can be used to make healthier popcorn at home.
Lunch Box Items
Fresh Vegetables
As much as possible, we are encouraged to add fresh vegetables like tomato, green pepper, cucumber, carrot, eggplant and cabbage to children’s lunch boxes. You’ll find all these and more in our fresh fruit and vegetable section. Again, to make things a little easier, we have available as well as . If your child is not a fan of vegetables, mix them up in rice and pasta dishes or in sandwiches, wraps, pancakes and chapatis where they are not so obvious.
Patanjali Navratan Multi-Grain Flour Mixture, Wholewheat Atta Flour & Gram (Chickpea) Flour
Navratna Atta flour is actually a mixture of Amaranth, Maize, Sorghum, Water Caltrop, Soybean and Pearl Millet! All three of these flours can be used to make batches of healthy, savoury or sweet pancakes, wraps or chapatis which can then easily be filled with a mixture of your child’s favourite lean protein, vegetables and fruits.
Frozen Vegetables
It doesn’t get better than this: nourishing vegetables, already prepared and ready to use. We have a variety of these including green beans, green peas, carrots, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, and cabbage. How about mixing one or more of these in your filling for those pancakes?
The kids will be so happy to be having pancakes for lunch that they won’t even notice all the veggies inside!
Beans and Legumes
We stock various types of plant-based protein like beans and legumes: red lentils, moong dal, black dal, chickpeas, green peas, red and white kidney beans. The dry versions simply need to be soaked and boiled or you can also choose our canned versions with water to have an easy, healthy protein source at hand.
Paneer (Cottage cheese)
Paneer can be used in food in a number of ways that children will love. Try making paneer skewers, paneer pasta and baked paneer patties to add some protein and calcium to your children’s meals.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
For added taste and healthier fat option, we have bottles of Extra Virgin Olive Oil which can be drizzled on vegetables / salads, pasta, used instead of butter/margarine, or used at the end of cooking for a burst of flavour.
For easy and effective packing and storing of school snacks and lunches, we have plastic airtight containers in various sizes, lunch boxes, cling film, and even some very loveable cartoon-themed 3D lunch bag and bottle sets for both boys and girls so they can even be trendy when carrying their goodies.