More than 2 Dozen Gluten Free & Grain Free School Lunch Ideas
If you've been reading here for a while, you might have noticed that one of the things I try hard to do with my kids meals is to provide variety, and to continually expose them to different foods, or at least to different ways of serving the same foods.
You may have also heard me talk about how much I believe in "everything in moderation". We don't follow any specific kind of "diet", other than eating just real food. (I don't consider that a diet though, I consider that to just be normal.) We don't have any food allergies or specific food intolerances, there isn't anything that we can't eat. We are omnivores, who eat all real foods, in moderation. But moderation to me means that we don't eat all the things all the time, and we shouldn't eat all the kinds of things at every meal.
So even though I don't have to for a dietary reason, you will still find me fixing meals for my family that are gluten free, grain free, nut free, dairy free, meat free, etc.
I believe in doing this to provide variety for my kids, and I think it's good for them to learn that they can have a great meal even if it doesn't include bread, or dairy, or meat, etc.
I think that sometimes limiting things from our meals also provides a great learning opportunity for the kids - we have had conversations about what is gluten, what it means to be gluten free, or nut free, what it means if someone has a food allergy.
Even though we don't have any food allergies I still want my kids to understand and be aware of what that means, so that they can be understanding and supportive of their friends and classmates who do have food allergies, and understanding of why they maybe can't take certain things to school.
Hats off to the moms who are getting extra creative in making those well rounded meals for their kids with food allergies or intolerances every single day. My occasional lunches are just a drop in the bucket compared to what some folks do, but hopefully they can give you some good ideas.
All of my lunches are packed in Easy Lunchboxes.
I'll write a whole post about how much I love them one of these days. But in the mean time, click the link to the right to order some for yourself. These are our favorite set - the "brights" colors, but they come in other colors too.
Now, here you go. 28 Gluten free (and mostly grain free) lunches!
(including a few that could be very easily adapted by just swapping out a few crackers.)
Note that where I have used chips or tortillas in these, they are gluten free corn chips and tortillas, unless otherwise noted.
The following lunches do contain some small amount of cracker or bread, but they could easily be adapted to be gluten free. In most cases I would just swap out the crackers for a gluten free cracker of your choice. Or leave it out all together and put a little extra fruit or protein in its place.