Sneak vegetables like lettuce or slices of cucumber, tomato, green pepper, roasted peppers, zucchini or sweet onion onto sandwiches. Eating fruits and vegetables reduces your child's chances of heart disease, cancer, blindness and stroke later in life. Putting veggies on a sandwich is one way to get more into your child's diet. Use whole grain bread instead of white bread for sandwiches. Most multi-grain, rye, oatmeal and pumpernickel breads in the U.S. are not whole grain.
Limit cookies, snack cakes, doughnuts, brownies and other sweet baked goods.
Sweet baked goods are the second leading source of sugar and the fourth leading source of saturated fat in Americans' diets. Pack baked chips, pretzels, Cheerios, bread sticks or low-fat crackers instead of potato, corn, tortilla or other chips made with oil or Olean. Avoid fat-free Max chips and Procter and Gamble's Fat Free Pringles. Also beware of Bugles, which are fried in heavily saturated coconut oil. One ounce has as much artery-clogging fat as a McDonald's Quarter Pounder.