Lunch Box Veggie Ideas for Kids

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Struggling to get your kids to eat more fresh veggies? These creative and colorful lunch box veggie ideas are so fun and playful that your kids will look forward to them every day! I’m sharing my favorite mom-tested tips to help you turn your little eater into a veggie fiend in no time at all.

A collage of ten lunch box veggie ideas for kids.

Veggie Lunchbox Ideas

If you have a picky eater, I know that just thinking about trying to get them to eat more veggies may feel super stressful! There are ways to gradually introduce veggies to minimize the battles.

Just remember to start slow. Your child might only be able to tolerate teeny tiny pieces of bell peppers served in their food to start, but the more they’re exposed to the veggies, the more likely they will be to try them.

Over time, they’ll get used to the veggies and enjoy eating them on their own. These tips really do work!

Benefits of Adding Veggies to Lunch Boxes

Normalize eating a variety of vegetables as part of their everyday meals
Develop healthy eating habits for life!
Reduce the likelihood of disease and malnutrition
Incorporate more plant-based protein
Provide essential vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants their growing bodies need
Many veggies are high in water and are naturally hydrating.
The dietary fiber from vegetables can help keep them full longer, support their digestion, and also regulate their blood sugar.

6 broccoli and cheese pinwheels in a lunchbox.

A pita sandwich in a lunch box with cucumber and olives that look like eyes.

Best Tips for Introducing Veggies to Picky Eaters

If your little one avoids veggies like the plague, just adding them to their lunch might not work right away. It’s best to gradually introduce veggies in different ways, starting with small quantities.

For example, if you want to make this kale mac and cheese, start by adding one tiny piece of kale to their portion. This will allow them to see and taste the kale without it taking over the dish. They may not eat it at first but keep adding it.

Once they start to eat the kale, add two tiny pieces, then three, then four, etc. Go very slowly and increase at their pace. This can be a test of patience! You can also give them fun utentils like these mini tongs to make those foods that might be less appealing more fun to eat!

If you’re worried that your kids aren’t getting enough veggies, you can always serve recipes like my kid-friendly chili or hidden veggie pasta sauce, which pack in a ton of vegetables! I still recommend serving whole vegetables on the side though for the exposure.

Raw Vegetable Ideas to Serve

There are many raw veggies you can serve as finger foods for kids. These can be added directly to lunch boxes or served on skewers as a healthy snack. I love keeping these in my fridge at all times for easy snacks!

A lunchbox featuring a dinosaur sandwich, fruit and veggies with dip, and some cereal.

I love keeping these in my fridge at all times for easy snacks:

Carrot sticks or baby carrots
Cucumber slices or mini cucumbers
Celery sticks
Bell pepper strips or mini peppers
Snap peas
Cherry or grape tomatoes (cut into quarters lengthwise for little ones)

Creative Lunch Box Veggie Ideas

These veggie-packed lunches will make it so much easier for your kids to eat their veggies every day. If you use a bento box style lunch box, it can be easy to add some raw veggies to one compartment, then add veggies to the main dish. Just be sure to send an ice pack to keep everything nice and fresh until lunch!

1. Make a Fun Design

One key way to make veggies more exciting is to serve them in a fun way! Arrange your cucumber slices as a flower on crackers or design a silly face on a sandwich. It’s very easy, but it just makes things a little more playful.

2. Serve in Pinwheels

Pinwheels are rolled sandwiches, and it’s very easy to add small pieces of red peppers or shredded carrots to them. They’re so small that kids will eat them without a fuss, and there are lots of different options!

Make these carrot broccoli and cheese pinwheels, or roll up sliced deli meat and cheese with cucumbers and peppers. It helps to hide the veggies in the sauce whenever possible!

3. Arrange on Skewers

This is one of my favorite techniques because it’s incredibly simple. I like to keep a stash of small plastic skewers on hand, and then add a few cherry tomatoes or cucumber bites. The skewers are easier for them to hold, too.

A lunchbox with raw veggie kabobs cut into star shapes along with pita wedges, hummus and grapes.

4. Think Beyond Typical Veggies

Kids might have an immediate reaction to broccoli, but they might not know about Romanesco. Offering less common types of veggies can add a novel element that kids enjoy. Try serving corn on the cob, kohlrabi, purple cauliflower, rainbow carrots, French breakfast radishes, Mexican gherkins, and more.

A lunchbox featuring a small corn on the cob, carrot sticks, bell peppers, pita, and dip.

5. Cut into Cute Shapes

If you’re not sure where to start, try this! I keep a stash of cookie cutters on hand at all times, and these can be used to cut slices of fresh fruit and veggies into different shapes. Cucumbers are way more exciting when they’re trimmed into little chicks or flowers! It requires minimal extra effort and makes the veggies the start of the show.

Mini cinnamon rolls on a heart skewer with watermelon sticks, cucumber stars and dip in a lunchbox.

6. Incorporate into Baked Goods

This is one of my specialties! I often incorporate mild-tasting veggies like zucchini, carrots, and spinach into my baked goods, like muffins, pancakes, waffles, and cookies. They have such a mild flavor that you really can’t tell that they’re packed with veggies, and young kids mostly taste the sweetness.

My hidden veggie cookies and green monster muffins are great examples of this. They can also be made ahead of time for meal prep! These are great for batch cooking and can be frozen for months before you need them.

A lunchbox veggie idea featuring cubed melon, carrot sticks, blueberries, dip, sliced turkey and two green monster muffins with googly eyes on them.

7. Add to Pasta Salads

There are a few options here. First, you can chop your extra veggies into small bites to disperse them throughout the salad (my kids love Greek-style pasta salad), or you can add them to your pesto! My avocado pesto incorporates spinach and extra healthy fats while still letting the fresh basil flavor shine through.

Get creative and try adding cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, etc. As a bonus, pasta salads are such an easy meal to prep for lunches!

A lunchbox filled with veggie pasta salad, strawberries, nuts and Greek yogurt.

8. Add to Soups

Veggies are an essential part of layering flavor in soups, especially garlic, onion, carrots, and celery. But there are more options than that!

For picky eaters, blend the veggies into a puree and cook them into the dish, like my kid-friendly chili. They won’t know there are veggies in there, but it’s loaded with several different types!

Another option is to serve soups with extra veggies in the broth, like my Mexican Shell Soup, made with tomato sauce.

Check out these Healthy Soup Recipes for Toddlers & Babies for lots of recipe ideas!

A lunchbox with a bowl of soup in it along with fruits, veggies and crackers.

9. Serve Fun & Tasty Salads

This is a great opportunity to apply some of the other strategies from earlier on the list! Use spiralized cucumbers (my kids love this Cucumber Noodle Salad), or try adding little star-shaped cucumber slices to salads and trim the tomatoes into little hearts. It takes a little extra work, but it makes those salads so much more enticing.

Plus, the veggies can be part of the dressing for creamy salads! I like to blend avocado into my homemade dressings for extra creaminess, fiber, and healthy fats.

A veggie lunchbox idea featuring pasta salad, grapes, a cucumber noodle salad and crackers.

10. Serve in Sandwiches

This is one of my go-to options, and I don’t necessarily mean just adding sliced tomatoes and lettuce to a ham and cheese sandwich.

I often make really simple sandwiches with cream cheese or hummus, then layer veggies on top like these Mini Cucumber Sandwiches. They can even be open-faced sandwiches where you spread the cream cheese, hummus or tzatziki and arrange thinly sliced veggies into fun designs on top like these Greek Mini Pita Appetizers.

It’s so easy to do and perfect for sending to school in those lunch boxes! This is really handy for vegetarian lunches, too.

A lunchbox with mini cucumber sandwiches, fresh fruit and crackers.

11. Add to Dips

Guacamole is a classic veggie-packed dip, perfect for serving with tortilla chips, but you can also add veggies to hummus (like this sweet potato hummus), tzatziki sauce, and more. My veggie-packed marinara sauce is also a great dipping sauce for nuggets, fritters, or leftover pizza.

Even if you don’t add veggies to the dip, serving raw veggies with dips, like peanut butter, ranch or a Greek yogurt dip, can be a great way to make them a little more palatable and offer extra protein, too.

12. Roast them

Roasted veggies are generally sweeter and softer than raw veggies, which makes them wonderful for kids! Roasted sweet potatoes are a favorite as well as regular potatoes, broccoli, green beans, and more. They also make a great topping for wraps, gyros, and sandwiches.

13. Add them to pizza

This is such an easy option for adding veggies! If you cut spinach or bell peppers into tiny pieces, you can sprinkle them over the sauce before you add the cheese and bake. The pieces are so small that they really blend in, and they become part of the flavor of the pizza. Plus, you can use my veggie-infused marinara as a pizza sauce to add extra veggies to another layer!

Homemade pizza doesn’t have to be complicated either. I have a three-ingredient pizza dough that doesn’t require yeast, and you can cut the pizza into fun shapes or roll it up into air fryer pizza rolls! Serve them cold or at room temperature for a super easy, kid-friendly meal.

Make Ahead Veggie Recipes for Lunch Boxes

Most of us don’t have a ton of time in the morning to create these elaborate and ornate meals for our kids before they head out the door. Fortunately, I have lots of healthy veggie-packed lunch and snack ideas that you can make ahead of time and pack quickly!

Savory Recipes

I like to make a big batch of these healthy veggie-packed lunches on Sundays, then store them in the fridge until I need them. Warm up any soups to send in a thermos, but most of the other recipes can be served warmed up or at room temperature.

Try to incorporate veggies into your savory lunch recipes as often as possible. When veggies are normalized in meals, kids don’t fight them as much. They just become part of how they eat!

Sweet Recipes

Muffins and cookies are an excellent way to introduce more veggies into your child’s diet! These recipes all contain at least one type of veggie, but they either add to the flavor or stand back and let another ingredient stand out the most. They’re one of the easiest ways to serve extra veggies without a fight!