Picknic: Ingrid Kohlstadt MD, MPH's Top 100 Best Brown Bag Lunches

"As a grandmother; I can't wait to see the list and pass it on to my daughter...my grown kids pack lunch too!" -Dr. Miriam Alexander, Director of the General Preventive Medicine Residency Program at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health "Traditional foods from around the world are among the most healthful. The challenge has always been how to bring them to modern America. PickNIC found a way! It has the best ethnic culinary traditions 'in the bag' - trendy, tasty, convenient, and good for you." -Phil Meldrum, President of Food Match and Board Member of Oldways "Thank you for giving me a sneak peek! I can tell that a lot of time, effort, and research went into this project and I think it's fantastic." - Jennifer Salos, MS CNC; Certified Nutritional Consultant "This is exciting! I believe you will have 'egg-zactly' the results you envisioned. I would not be surprised if many of the children bond with your PickNIC menu and work to change their friends' and parents' diets as well." -Kathryn Poleson, DMD SIMPLIFYING NUTRITIOUS: The ember that sparked PickNIC was a rapid succession of requests I received in 2013 from kids, parents, grandparents and doctors. Each request had simplicity at its core. Youth participating in a nutrition engagement program wanted nutritious foods that appealed to them. They also wanted to be more involved in family food preparation. Parents were asking for simpler solutions which took less time and less money. Grandparents sought to help improve children's health, and they wanted to do so in ways that would be viewed as supportive. Several doctors in primary care and preventive medicine and two Johns Hopkins medical students initially voiced their request for practical tools to guide their patients' food selection. One benefit of crowd-source funding this public health initiative is that it provided us additional texture on PickNIC's anticipated users. Health care professionals of many specialties are among our backers and supporters. Exploring the components of best: PickNIC stands for Pick Nutritious Ingredients Cost-effectively. It was developed as a public health initiative to simplify and energize the brown bag lunch. Since brown bag lunches are generally served cold and forego refrigeration for a few hours, taste at room temperature and food safety were emphasized. There's no one store where all of the PickNIC foods could be found. The PickNIC team sought ethnically diverse cuisine and journeyed off-the-beaten-health-trail. Foods needed to taste good to most taste-testers. The voices and savory sentiments of taste testers were highly considered, especially the opinions of the youth. Then, each entry has been vetted by a leading authority on nutrition and food safety. REACHING 100: We selected 80 foods suitable as an entrée for a brown bag lunch. Forty are home packed and need overnight refrigeration. Forty do not need overnight refrigeration which allows them to be mailed as care packages or placed in lockers. Also, ten entrées are snack bars. The food technology advances have diversified the selection of healthful snack bars. Our list includes 10 beverages and 10 desserts. USING THIS RESOURCE: PickNIC is a resource for new ideas, practical tips, and cost and time saving solutions. It is not a metric for the best foods for any one individual. Remember that foods that are not listed in PickNIC may be very nutritious. PickNIC selected among nutritious foods for taste, appeal, practicality and cost, not only nutritional value. The 2014 edition is the inaugural PickNIC. The PickNIC team welcomes suggestions for future editions. -Ingrid Kohlstadt MD, MPH