Gluten Free Lifestyle

Back to School In Gluten Free Style Part 1: Lunch

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Making lunches can be stressful enough, making lunches for a child with food allergies even more so. When it comes to lunch, most children have two options:

Buy lunch from school

Bring lunch from home

Making school lunches is stressful, and even more so if your child has food allergies! Click To Tweet

Lunch From School

For a child with food allergies the safest option is always going to bring lunch from home, but sometimes it isn’t always possible. Miami-Dade Public Schools has a new function in which you can look up the ingredients of a specific school lunch. While it can be time-consuming, it can also be helpful in determining if lunch that day is acceptable for your child.

For Miami-Dade County the website is HERE. There is also an app available for download on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Other cities should have similar functions on their school websites.

Children who have diagnosed Celiac Disease should also file a 504 plan with their school. More information on what this is and how to file one visit the Celiac Disease Foundation.

Unfortunately, upon review of the daily lunches, unless you have prearranged something with your child’s school, a gluten-free lunch is a rarity.

Lunch From Home

Which brings us back to option two. Bring your own lunch. Bringing your own lunch is always going to be the safest option. Luckily there is a wide variety of gluten-free options available to help you make quick and easy school lunches.

Some great items to keep on hand are gluten-free granola bars, chips (most major brands are gluten-free, always read the label), cookies, and the always gluten-free- veggies and fruit. We have created a sample Back to School lunch menu for you. It can be downloaded here:
BACKTOSCHOOLMENU

Another great option to keep on hand for quick lunches on the go are Go-To Picnic. While they are a bit pricey, keeping one or two on hand for those morning you are running late is a great option. They can be found at Target, on Amazon, or on their website. These are also great to have on hand for hurricanes!

Have any tips or tricks for preparing gluten-free lunches? Comment below!

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9 Comments

  • Reply
    Suzanne
    August 12, 2016 at 7:50 pm

    Apples & peanut butter to dip is another easy GF fav! And Costco also has GF organic chicken sausage and GF organic chicken meatballs and those are fun with a side of Gf barbecue sauce or GF ketchup

  • Reply
    Suzanne
    August 12, 2016 at 7:47 pm

    I bake big batches of GF mini muffins and freeze them… Really easy to pop those into lunches! Our favorites are GF banana bread and GF pumpkin bread from Wellness Mama’s blog http://wellnessmama.com/3655/coconut-flour-pumpkin-bread/

    I also buy those little single serving Wholey guacamole and single serving hummus (Costco) and have those with cut veggies & GF crackers (we are loving the veggie flavor Good Thins but nut thins are awesome too!)

  • Reply
    Sandra
    August 11, 2016 at 2:05 pm

    Thank you for sharing your great ideas! I am GF and am considering putting my son on a GF diet due to health issues. I find it fairly easy to be GF but cringe at the thought of getting my son to conform to a diet. Your ideas will be helpful, especially with school beginning in a few weeks!

  • Reply
    Lauren
    August 11, 2016 at 11:53 am

    These are such great ideas! My son isn’t gluten free but my boyfriend is and packing his lunch is so hard! We usually just pack leftovers, but now he’s on the road a lot during the say without a way to heat stuff up so these ideas work even for adults!

  • Reply
    Carolyn
    August 11, 2016 at 10:04 am

    Thank you for sharing this! My son has multiple food allergies and it IS very stressful for me when he is at school. All of the ‘food events’ dont make that any easier, or worries about the other kids lunches. Thanks for the new ideas.

  • Reply
    Amber
    August 11, 2016 at 9:26 am

    I like the sample lunch plan. If you can just do that weekly and make my lunch easy. Lol ? Some of these brands I haven’t heard of, will have to keep an eye out.

  • Reply
    Jenn Peters
    September 19, 2015 at 9:32 am

    Hey there! Stopping by from the Sunday Blog Hop linky on BecauseImCheap.com Thank you so much for linking up! I love that there brownies and pudding cups are on your menu 😉 Hope to see you again on the next linky!

    • Reply
      Amanda
      September 19, 2015 at 9:38 am

      Thanks! Gotta try and make it easy, and who doesn’t love pudding cups!

  • Reply
    diana
    September 14, 2015 at 5:03 am

    That looks like what I would pack if I had to pack my daughters lunch… I hadn’t hear of Go-to Picnic, thanks for sharing!

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