It occurred to me today as I was packing Princess’s lunch that a note on portion sizes may be in order.
Princess is very petite, and very young. She is obviously not eating a portion the size of an adult. When I post the lunchbox report in the sidebar, it frequently looks like a lot of food, but there is often just a little bit of a lot of things. My personal philosophy is that variety is better than volume-she is more likely to eat a sampling of things than one big entree.
Here are some examples of the types of portion sizes I send in:
- Yogurt–I only send in about half of an 8 oz container
- Fresh Veggies–5 or 6 mini carrots, 3 or 4 cauliflower/brocolli spears etc.
- Pickles-either 3 or 4 “Hamburger Dill” slices, or one spear cut into 3 or 4 pieces
- Crackers (such as saltines)-approx 4 crackers
- Grapes-8 or 9 grapes (ie a very small handful)
- Canned Fruit-only what will fit very loosely in a 4oz gladware container (without juice) usually “precut” by me to make eating easier
- Marshmallows-for the Minis I sometimes send in a small handful, and sometimes only 5 or 6, depending on if their are any other sweets in the lunch.
- Cookies-one or two small homemade-again, depends on what else is included for sweets
- Sandwiches-I do usually send in a full sandwich-but I do not to the “deli” thing of loading it down with inches of meat. There usually are 1 or 2 slices of lunch meat. That is plenty.
- Burritos-a full one
- Leftovers-trail and error has taught me that she will usually only eat 1/2 to 1/3 of her little wide mouth thermos worth of any type of hot food I send in. So now that is all I send in. The one exception is tomato soup, which I usually fill almost full.
I hope that clarifies things for a few of you.
Everyone else, ignore it and move on to the next post!
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Its the same here. My daughters appetite has started to increase but she is more enthusiastic about eating if she has variety.
Great idea. My babe is only 15 months old, but she eats almost the same portions as your Princess. I like that you’re going to post the lunchbox meals every day. I’ll be looking for them!
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