Registered dietician Megan McNamee, co-author of the New York Times bestseller "Feeding Littles Lunches," joins "CBS Mornings" to share back-to-school meal ideas designed to win over even the pickiest eaters.

Registered dietitian Megan McNamee, co-author of 'Feeding Littles Lunches,' offers advice for parents looking to make school lunches more appealing to picky eaters. She suggests introducing variety in small ways, such as changing the shape of vegetables or swapping out fruits, to help children become more comfortable with new foods.

McNamee also recommends alternatives to common allergens like peanut butter and demonstrates how using fun sandwich cutters can make meals more enticing. For children who prefer snacks, she suggests assembling a balanced 'snack lunch' with items like whole grain crackers, cheese, fruit, and vegetables, making lunchtime less intimidating and more enjoyable.

Creative school lunch ideas for kids who are picky eaters

Back to school week, it continues this morning with more lunch ideas. Today for your picky eaters, they're going to love these. Registered dietitian Megan McNamee is the co-author of the number one New York Times bestseller, Feeding Littles Lunches, and today she shows us how parents can get creative and add all-important variety to meals. Take a look. All right, we're back with a picky eaters edition of all this, starting with the simple cream cheese bagel, but you have some kind of variety here. Yeah, so this is an example if you were to offer the same food every day and you're like, okay my picky eater does not want to stray from what they're eating. This is how you could offer variety in small ways. So say you're serving the cucumber, you could literally just cut it a little bit differently with a crinkle cutter, and I know that sounds silly, but when kids are used to seeing a little bit of change, they get used to seeing more change. Another option would be instead of serving blueberries, to serve it with strawberries. So it's about introducing a different texture. Different texture, yep, or entirely different food, but you're doing it slowly. You're not necessarily replacing everything in their lunchbox. This is how you can make slow steps to help with picky eating. Okay, this next one, peanut butter and jelly, but you've made some changes, improved upon it, and it's interesting how. So okay, great question. So I know that a lot of schools don't offer or don't allow peanut butter, so there are alternatives like a sun butter, sunflower seed butter, or granola butter. So that's what you could use instead if you wanted to, but I wanted to show this option. It's kind of fun. If you know those frozen peanut butter and jellies, you can actually buy these little cutters. Oh, I was wondering what those are. Yeah, so you literally just press it on the sandwich, and that was smashed raspberry, by the way, in case you're wondering what that was. I was wondering. It's a fun alternative if kids especially, they love it. So you just put this there and use a fork to mash it? Yeah, mash it into the bread, and then you put the cutter in first, and then you do the sealer, and it seals the edges just like one of those store-bought ones, and then I didn't cut it all the way through, but then you have your little sandwich here, and you can pop it into your lunch. Look at that. Isn't that fun? Yeah. My kids are kind of suckers for this. If they don't like a type of sandwich I serve, I use this instead, and it really helps them enjoy it more. I think just it's easier to eat, it's more fun, and they tend to like it that way. So this is a great tool for picky eaters. So it's like the principle of you eat with your eyes before your mouth. Exactly. So this last one, snacks are sometimes the only thing you can get your kids to eat. Can you make a lunch out of only snacks? Absolutely, and sometimes we just call it a snack lunch, or we're just eating snacks for lunch today, and that might just, that rebranding is enough for kids to want to eat it. So this is an example of some whole grain crackers. We've got some cheese and some cut up meat stick, quartered grapes if you have a kid under four, or you can serve them whole. A lot of parents don't realize bell peppers come in these little mini bell peppers, and maybe some chocolate chips if you like, and that's an option that looks like a snack box. It doesn't look intimidating like a big lunch, and kids tend to grab toward this, but it's still balanced. It's still offering what they need. I love it. Cool. I love it too, Tony. Why do round sandwiches taste better? They just do. I can't explain it. I can't either, but they do. That'll do it for us. CBS Mornings Plus, up next. See you tomorrow.

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