• Great
tasting lunches!
• Lunches that make
you happy, help keep you healthy and give you lasting
energy!
• Something healthy
that is fun to eat! |
|
•Your
children get a nutritious, great tasting lunch that
is made fresh daily
• Lunches are high in fruits,
vegetables and fibre, and designed by health-care professionals.
• Food is professionally
prepared with high quality ingredients and individually
packaged in inspected facilities.
• Your mornings will
be easier. Go ahead, sit down and enjoy your breakfast!
• Safety is a priority
and we respect the nut-free environment |
 |
|
|
• A
proactive approach to youth nutrition.
• Simple program delivery,
tailor-made for your school.
• Potential for fundraising.
“The students love FUNchboxes.
They love the freshness of the ingredients.”
Cristane
Lavoie, Principal,
J.L. Couroux Elementary School.
|
|
|
Enticing eats
Almonte doctor puts the fun back in school lunch
Michele Oberoi, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Pizza, hot dogs, chicken fingers, chocolate milk -- it's only
been a few weeks since classes started and already your chequebook
is empty and your kids are primed for yet another school season
of nutritionally questionable fundraising lunches.
It's a Catch-22 situation for parents who want
to support the fundraising efforts of
|
|
cash-strapped
schools and enjoy a day off from making lunches, yet who
also want to ensure their children are eating well.
Balancing the needs of parents, schools and
children is tricky, but Almonte |
|
physician
and Diet Deck inventor
Dr. Sonja Wicklum has risen to the challenge with her newest
creation, called FUNchboxes.
Designed
to appeal to discriminating kindergarten to Grade 8 palates,
FUNchboxes are individually packaged lunches high in fruits,
vegetables, and fibre, made fresh daily and delivered straight
to the classroom. "We supersize the fruits and veggies," says
Dr. Wicklum. "It's fun to eat."
And nice to look at.
Read more > > |
Doctor packs fun into children's
lunches
Michael McKinnon
The Medical Post
Published: November 21, 2006
Fed up with seeing what unhealthy items parents were packing into their kids'
lunches, Dr. Sonja Wicklum created healthy FUNchboxes for distribution in Ontario
schools
A rural Ontario physician is dispelling the myth that elementary school children
don't want to eat healthy foods.
Dr. Sonja Wicklum is the creator of FUNchboxes, a
|
|
selection of healthy lunches
delivered to schools in Carleton Place,
Ottawa and Almonte (where Dr. Wicklum lives, about 40 minutes
outside Ottawa).
“School is where we teach health and nutrition and I think
now we really have to model it there,” says Dr. Wicklum, a
member of the Canadian Society of Clinical Nutrition who also
works in the weight management clinic at the Ottawa Civic Hospital
and at Almonte General Hospital. “We've seen the changes in
the vending machines, but we all know they're not the greatest
changes; they're compromises. Pop's out, but it's replaced
with some fruity drink with a high carb count.”
|
|
FUNchboxes are not the typical kid-friendly
meals of chicken fingers and fries, but a mix of garden fresh
vegetables, cheddar cheese slices, ham, whole wheat breads
and fresh fruit salad. Each meal contains as many as four servings
of fruit, vegetables and whole grains—and children from kindergarten
to Grade 8 are gobbling them up.
“That's the really fun part of this,” says
Dr. Wicklum. “I've actually had about a dozen calls—and it's
typically parents of young boys—who have said their child is
now eating vegetables at home. The thought I jump to is that
it's just the effects of positive peer pressure.”
Read
more >>
|
One Less Meal to Make
SavvyMom.ca
Published April 17, 2008
Quick, name the one thing that is the bane of your existence
on weekday mornings—besides getting out of bed, of course.
Chances are if you’re like many of us with school-aged
kids, the most dreaded morning chore you face is making lunches:
the constant need to be inventive, the challenge to find something
the kids will actually eat, the chronic guilt induced by stuffing
too many nutritionally deficient snacks into the bag while
thinking about all the plastic heading for the garbage. (Shame.)
Enter FUNchboxes—an Almonte, Ontario-based
company that can do the job for you, at least some of the time.
The brainchild of Dr. Sonja Wicklum, a doctor with a special
interest in nutrition, FUNchboxes sends
healthy lunches into schools for kids whose parents have ordered
them.
|
|
Intended
for kindergarten to grade eight students, FUNchbox meals are
made fresh daily, are high in fruits, vegetables and fibre,
and are designed by health-care professionals. They’re
delivered throughout the Ottawa area, not just inside the greenbelt,
but as far and wide as Greely, Carp, Carleton Place and Barrhaven.
Delivery to areas east of the city, like Orleans, is expected
to start soon.
Every week,
kids have a choice between either the ‘Steady Eddy’ or
the weekly special. The ‘Steady Eddy’ is clearly
intended for cautious eaters—it’s always a whole
wheat bun, cheddar cheese, fresh fruits and veggies, and sometimes
a dessert. The weekly special, for more intrepid eaters, varies
from whole-wheat chicken Caesar wraps to Greek salads with
pita wedges (to name just two examples), always with fresh
fruit or veggies and dip on the side.
FUNchboxes was launched September 2006 in three schools, and
now serves 43 schools. Most schools offer the meals weekly,
although there is no limit to the potential frequency.
|
|
Schools pay $3.99 plus tax per FUNchbox, and can either charge
parents the same amount, or ask a little more ($5 is a popular
amount) and raise money at the same time. Even better, FUNchboxes
arrive in 100 per cent biodegradable containers made from
sugar cane—unbleached,
non-toxic and chemical-free. They can be composted, and
take just 60 days to break down.
A mom of two herself,
Dr. Wicklum started FUNchboxes because she believes kids
in elementary school are at an age when it’s still possible to influence
their eating habits for the better—a process she believes
is more effective when it’s hands-on rather than theoretical.
If you’d like your school to offer FUNchboxes, you’ll
have to bring the program to the attention of your parents’ council
so the school can make arrangements.
Even if it’s only once a week, it’s one less lunch
you have to make! |
