Some ideas to jazz up school sack lunches for kids

• Kids love crunch. Provide it with raw veggies or low-fat pretzels. Avoid chips and other high-fat, low-nutrient junk.

• Kids like small things. It makes them feel special. You can make lunch box treats more manageable for little hands. Cookies can be cut with smaller cookie cutters. Bake brownies in a mini-muffin pan. Cut sandwiches in four pieces.

• Make your own juice boxes. Recycle those pop-up water bottles. You can even buy the pop-up lids that will fit a plastic cola bottle. To keep the lunch fresh and the juice cold, fill the bottles halfway with juice the night before and put in the freezer. In the morning, fill the bottle the rest of the way with juice. By lunchtime, it will be thawed but still cold.

• Those prepacked munch-a-lunch things will bankrupt your budget. Cut cheese and sliced ham in 2-inch squares to include with crackers.

• Lunch items with some kind of dip are popular with kids. Get small containers with lids for the dip. Combinations can be pretzel sticks and peanut butter, bread sticks with low-fat Cheese Whiz, salsa with homemade tortilla chips, or carrots and celery with ranch dressing. A tablespoon of dip goes a long way.

• void fruit gummy things. Real fruit is cheaper. Buy the smallest apples or bananas, not the giant ones. Dried fruit is great. Dried fruit may seem expensive at first glance, but bought in large containers and divided out into small portions, it will provide for many lunches and keeps well in the pantry.

• When you bake cookies or other lunch box treats, be sure to explain to your family that they are for lunches. Bag them up and freeze them right away. If you bake a different kind of cookie each week, you will end up with a variety of cookies in your freezer in a short time.

Make your own:

Low-fat tortilla chips: Take corn tortillas and cut them in sixths (use a pizza cutter and cut through a stack of 5 or 6 at a time). Spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray, spread out the tortilla pieces in a single layer, and spray the tops with cooking spray. Lightly salt (the salt won't stick if you don't use the spray). Bake at 350 degrees until lightly browned and crispy. They will crisp more as they cool. You may have to repeat several times, depending on the amount of chips you are making.