Now that we’re a few months into the school year, are you running out of ideas for packing your kids’ lunchboxes? The trick is to find healthy foods that your child likes, but also include a well-chosen treat so he or she isn’t the only child at the lunch table without a cookie or chips. That’s hard for a kid!

I usually recommend the 4-to-1 rule for lunchboxes – four nutritious foods and one treat. So you need a main entrée, fruit, veggie, drink and a small treat. Many kids open their lunchboxes and gobble up the treat first, so keeping it small leaves room in their tummies for the good stuff.

The main entrée can be whatever your child likes – a sandwich, cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs or a thermos of soup.

Throw in fresh fruit or perhaps the packaged fruit cups with no added sugar. If your child eats raw veggies only if she has dip, pack a little container of dip. (Better to eat veggies and dip than no veggies at all.)

Good drinks are milk, chocolate milk and water or occasionally a 4-ounce 100% fruit juice in addition to water.

The treat can be a tiny candy bar or small bag of snack food such as animal crackers or tortilla chips. A homemade cookie or muffin is even better.

If you choose a store-bought snack, read packages very, very carefully – so few are worth eating. The most important thing is to avoid giving your kids snacks containing trans fat, so avoid any food with “hydrogenated” oil on the ingredients list.

Of course these are just suggestions, and you know your child best. So … what do you pack in your kids’ lunches?

Beth Bence Reinke, MS, RD