Whether you’re a mum, dad, grandparent or carer (or perhaps a kid yourself), my aim is to inspire you and the family to enjoy healthy recipes to supercharge ALL your lives.

Being a mum and step-mum, it’s that time again when you're getting ready to send the kids back to school, which means for me and many parents and caregivers... busy schedules and challenging lunchbox fixing!

If you’re looking to supercharge your child's lunchbox and get creative I'd love to share some of my simple tips, that have really made life easier in the kitchen.

Being an ex English teacher, I've really seen the impact that nutritious meals can have on students, a nutritious lunch can really make a big difference to their mental clarity, focus and behaviour in the classroom.

When it comes to packing and presenting lunchboxes that your kids will enjoy and devour, much of the battle will be in communication and variety. Unfortunately, taking the “You’ll get what you’re given” approach that many older generations may have experienced, is a sure fire way to ensure that kids are removed from a relational experience of food.

My Fruit Scones for lunch in a healthy lunchbox, image by Hannah Phillips

What we're all aiming for is a place where children are able to freely and creatively engage in the process of making healthy food choices, and learn how to take responsibility for what they're eating. By opening up a relevant two way conversation about the importance of eating real foods, and giving them the opportunity to make some choices about what they may be able to have in their lunchbox, will more likely result in an empty container on their return home from school.

Some of the things I've figured out along the way are:

Let your child be involved in the purchasing of their lunchbox, make sure it's sturdy with a strong lid, insulated or comes with an ice pack... no parent likes to find a black mushy banana on the return trip home!. If they choose one that they love, they won’t mind toting it around, hey you can never be too cool for school! If you’re using plastic then BPA free makes a good choice too.

Choose a lunch box with separate pockets or sections and make sure it is large enough to hold a flask or drink bottle.  Using smaller lidded containers will protect the lunchbox and its contents and alleviate the need for foil and cling wrap. They're useful for dips, salads, fruit, wraps and casseroles.

When attempting to expose your kids to new, more nutrient dense real foods, it’s a no brainer that a dull, monochromatic spread of food is unlikely to entice their taste buds. Not only do we eat with our mouths, but first and foremost with our eyes; so presenting a visually appealing, colourful lunchbox is a must.

A nutritionally balanced lunch box should contain an array of food from various food groups.  Avoid a mid-afternoon dive by including plant-based treats like fresh juice or smoothies, chopped up veggies and hummus and seeds, smash up blueberries and strawberries instead of jelly and sugar rich jams.

Use different types of fruits and vegetables, seeds, coconut flakes, full fat calcium rich dairy foods, protein rich foods such as meats, eggs, seed butters, pulses and tuna and oily fish.

If your child is gluten free, there are a bunch of really healthy bread options in my book Supercharged Food for Kids  or the eBook version here, things like wraps, breads and tortillas which will be a good source of long term energy.

Here’s a Supercharged Tip: Make a “rainbow salad” with different coloured ingredients such as purple cabbage, red tomatoes, green snow peas, orange carrot and yellow capsicum.

There are a few simple swap outs you can make that will improve your child’s diet enormously.  If you’re in doubt remember to try and choose wholefoods, which are as close to their natural state as possible.

Eating seasonal fruit and vegetables that are in abundance will be less of a strain on the purse strings. Buy dried beans they are more economical than canned. Swap margarine for real butter, use full fat dairy in place of low fat, which is often compensated with sugar and additives, choose real cheese instead of plastic cheese slices, try and choose organic meats where possible.  Major supermarkets now carry very affordable organic meat.

Using real food will teach your child to appreciate food’s natural flavours and develop an understanding of what real food actually tastes like.  If you can, skip the sugar-filled, artificially flavoured yoghurts in the supermarket and instead opt for full cream plain yoghurt with mixed fresh berries in a fun container with an animal shaped spoon.

You can make chocolate yoghurt with cacao powder and a touch of natural sweetener, or avocado and chocolate mousse using an avocado, a banana, two tablespoons of cacao powder and sweetener of your choice. Adding Chia seeds to yoghurt, which are flavourless will provide sustenance as well as essential protein, calcium, vitamin C, iron, potassium and Omega 3 essential fatty acids. You can add seeds to nibble mixes too, along with coconut flakes, Vitamin c rich goji berries and dehydrated fruit.

Making kids lunches interactive and less soggy is also important. Separate dry and wet ingredients such as dressings, sauces, spreads and slices of tomato for crackers and sandwiches in mini containers, and let them engage in some of the construction of the food.

Mix up textures of smooth yogurt with crunchy pumpkin seeds, or gluten free sandwiches with contrasting fillings of creamy avocado, “hairy” sprouts crunchy slithers of celery with a homemade mayo.

Soups can be frozen in single portions and then heated and placed in a thermos for lunchbox use. Incorporate leftovers into lunch the next day.  Grains, meats, vegetables, eggs and undressed salads make excellent additions to a lunchbox.

When it comes to drinks, rather than providing a reconstituted fruit juice, why not try a “green monster”, blending green veggies such as spinach, celery and cucumber with apple, pear and lemon juice for an exciting, eye catching addition or try a green slushie. If you child doesn't like anything green, then flasks of chocolate milk can be made at home with rice or oat milk or banana smoothies help them feel full for longer too.

My favourite smoothie to make for the kids is a Very Berry Shake. It's also a good one when you need breakfast on the run. This shake will provide ample energy when time is short.

Very Berry Shake

Serves 1

• 125 g (4¹₂ oz/1 cup) fresh or frozen mixed berries
• ¹₂ banana, peeled and frozen
• 250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) oat milk
• 4 ice cubes

Whizz all the ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Always remember to encourage your child to drink water, it hydrates, regulates body temperature, and helps prevent constipation and urinary tract infections. It is also important for your child’s oral health, their immune system, digestion and weight management.  Make it fun for them and give them a straw, add some ice and squeeze fresh lemon in to or a mint leaf give it a hint of flavour. You could even drop a couple of frozen berries in.

Investing in a water filter is preferable to tap water. If you’re still having trouble getting your child to drink more water set a pee challenge!  The lighter the pee the better.

Here’s a Supercharged Tip: Keep pre-cut sticks of celery, carrot, cucumber, and capsicum in the fridge for incredibly quick last minute snacks or as a colourful addition to lunch boxes.

For healthy lunchboxes it’s a good idea to always keep a variety of fresh fruit and veggies in stock. Having raw fruit and veg that can be simply cut up is the easiest way to ensure that kids are snacking on fresh, nutrient rich foods.

I’d love to hear about what you put in your healthy lunchboxes, so over to you guys!

You can purchase my Supercharged Food for Kids book here or the ebook version here.

And for a delicious after school snack that the kids will love, why not try my Chocolate Popsicles, they're a big hit at home! I hope you guys love them as much as we do :).

Chocolate popsicles

Makes 4

• 2 bananas
• 65 g (2¹₄ oz/¹₄ cup) nut butter
• 60 ml (2 fl oz/¹₄ cup) coconut milk or coconut water
• 2 tablespoons cacao powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon honey or sweetener of choice
• 4 iceblock (popsicle/ice lolly) moulds and sticks

Whizz all the ingredients in a food processor to combine.

Pour into the ice block moulds and add the sticks, then freeze until set.

Happy lunchbox fixing! And I'd love to hear some of your favourite things to include in your school lunch boxes below.

To get fit and feel better, we can push ourselves to our limits at the gym, leave eight hours between our low-carb, low-fat and scarily high amounts of protein meals, and drench them with a side of celery juice. Oh, and don’t forget about getting into ketosis and only eating green vegetables with the added bonus of feeling starved, exhausted, hangry and never satisfied with your body! 

Sounds like a great time… said no one… ever. 

Fad diets. Urghhh.

Fad diets are the ones that praise eliminating certain foods, or only eating particular foods. While they promise quick weight-loss, this weight-loss is not usually sustainable and can often wreak havoc on our minds, bodies and gut microbiome.

You and the planet are much better off with a high plant based flexitarian approach with diverse ingredients. And for all the strict vegans and people worried about climate change there is an interesting article over on the Guardian here  which suggests that unless you’re sourcing your vegan products specifically from organic, “no-dig” systems, you're actively participating in the destruction of soil biota, promoting a system that deprives other species, including small mammals, birds and reptiles, of the conditions for life, and significantly contributing to climate change.

Diet plays a key role in regulating the health of the microbiota. Eliminating certain food groups or following a specific elimination diet can starve good gut bugs, ruining our microbiota and intestinal lining.

Having healthy, diverse and happy gut bugs ensures we’re protected against pathogens, helping to regulate our immunity and absorb all the nutrients we ingest.

Let’s start with carbohydrates. Ahh, the low-carbohydrate diet, a classic one followed by many. Before we start, let’s get one thing straight. There are two different types of carbohydrates – digestible carbohydrates that we’re able to, as the name suggests, digest, such as sugar and starch, and non-digestible carbohydrates such as fibre. Fibre is accessible to the gut and is vital for digestion, absorption and transportation of nutrients. 

Carbohydrates are essential for maintaining the health of our microbiome, energy stabilisation and hormone regulation. With limited carbohydrates, we have limited gut diversity which is never a good thing and starving ourselves of essential fibres and prebiotic rich ingredients.

When it comes to carbohydrates, it’s important to include a variety of different sources for microbiota diversity and anti-inflammatory effects. Choose nutrient-dense carbohydrates, such as whole grains like oats, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and brown/red rice, legumes such as beans, chickpeas and lentils, fruit and starchy root vegetables like pumpkin, sweet potato and beetroot. 

Some of my favourite gut-friendly and carbohydrate-loving recipes include:

Waffles with Fresh Strawberries and Coconut Yoghurt

Vegetable Marrakesh Casserole

Golden Gut Pumpkin and Nut Loaf  

There’s a lot of talk about cutting out fat to lose fat, but generally fats don’t make us put on weight. They’re essential for hormone balance, the health of our skin and nutrient absorption.

On the other side of the scale lies the high-fat diet. One of the biggest diets going around at the moment is the ketogenic diet, a high fat and low carbohydrate approach. The ketogenic diet was initially developed to treat epilepsy, but it’s reached fame for its ability to quicken up weight loss. The aim of the ketogenic diet is to reach a state of ketosis, which can help with weight loss and lowering blood sugar levels.

Recent studies have indicated that being in the state of ketosis can cause an increase in the gut bug Akkermansia muciniphila, a bacterial species that can cause harm (1).

While the jury’s not quite out yet on this one, many people are now having to relook at their gut health after taking up the keto approach.

When it comes to what to eat, it’s more important to have a balanced diet and eat a moderate amount of high-quality fats such as avocado, hemp seeds, nuts, chia seeds, flaxseeds and oily fish.

For all of your gut-loving delicious recipe needs plus the latest gut health research and information, get your hands on my latest book, Supercharge Your Gut.

Some of my favourite gut-friendly recipes rich in good-quality fat include:

Salmon and Coriander Fish Cakes

 Turmeric Seeded Loaf 

Supercharged Egg Hoppers with Peanut Sauce  

Dietary changes can cause imbalances in the diversity of your microbiome, causing gastrointestinal dysbiosis and potentially causing irritable bowel syndrome, irritable bowel disease, asthma and more.

If you're looking out for your gut, the best piece of advice I can give you is to follow an approach that looks after the health of your gut, a diverse high plant based approach with all the necessary amounts of fibre, protein, good carbohydrates and good fats. 

If you're not sure where to start, it helps to begin with a clean, toned and efficient gut. For people who don't have the time to start from scratch when it comes to cleansing the gut, try my Love Your Gut powder. It's a vegan, gluten-free whole food that can improve digestion and nutrient absorption, and reduce gas and bloating and help your gut to work more efficiently and productively. 

I’d love to know – which fad diets have you tried? Have you noticed how they’ve affected the health of your gut? 

If you’re looking for a gut-friendly snack that’s full of goodness, these tasty crackers are on regular rotation at our house, where they’re affectionately known as ‘buck cracks’.

Simple and quick to make, they’re a convenient snack when you feel jelly legs coming on.

If you’re looking for more information on the best way to feed your gut, my book Supercharge Your Gut is definitely one to add to the book shelf.  

Gut Buck Crackers

Ingredients:

• 100 g (3 1/2 oz/1 cup) almond meal
• 35 g (1 1/4 oz/1/4 cup) buckwheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
• 100 g (3 1/2 oz/1/2 cup) flaxseed (linseed) meal 
• 1 tablespoon dried mixed herbs
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
• 1 free-range egg (optional and if you are vegan, it can be replaced with 1 TBS ground flax to 3 tbs water and mix until absorbed)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Method:

Preheat the oven to 175°C (340°F).

Grease a large baking tray.

Combine the almond meal, buckwheat flour, salt, flaxseed, dried herbs and lemon zest in a bowl.

Whisk the egg  (or flax mixture if using) in a small bowl, then slowly whisk in the olive oil. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix to form a dough. If it’s too dry to roll out, mix in a little water.

Roll the dough out on a sheet of baking paper, to a thin rectangle measuring about 25 x 35 cm (10 x 14 inches). Place the baking tray face down over the top, then invert the two together so the dough is on top. Peel off the baking paper.

Using a sharp knife, cut the dough into 5 cm (2 inch) triangles or squares. (Alternatively, you can leave it whole and break into pieces once cooked.)

Bake for 12–15 minutes, or until crisp, turning the crackers over halfway through. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely before serving.

The crackers will keep for up to 1 week in an airtight container in the pantry.

(1) https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-017-1175-y