Packing lunch: A long way from bologna sandwiches

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WASHINGTON When her daughter was 15 months old, Kim Becker beganpacking the girl’s lunch to take to a group playdate. Beckerwas following the popular cookbook Super Baby Food, whose recipesare as liberal with wheat germ as Paula Deen’s are withbutter. So one day, Becker baked Alexa and her playmate a treat ofmuffins secretly fortified with flaxseed and brewer’s yeast,figuring Alexa wouldn’t notice.
The toddlers excitedly tore into the dense cake and choked down thefirst bite. Then they put the muffins on the ground and ran away.
Great, Becker thought, I’ve got 22 left.
Packing a child’s lunch is truly a labor of love. It alsoinvolves guilt and anxiety. The container alone provokes all typesof questions: Is it made of vinyl? Does the vinyl have lead? Willhot food stay hot? Will cold food stay cold? Will the world endsooner because I used a sandwich bag instead of a reusable tub?
Add to these the usual trials of lunch packing — achild’s mercurial tastes, other parents who cut theirkids’ sandwiches like topiaries, the ever-present temptationof junk food — and you’ve got a microcosm of parentalangst in a 10-by-7-inch box with a handle.
Packing lunch is “the bane of every parent’sexistence,” said Becker, who now lives in Connecticut.“Funny how something so simple can be so complicated.”
The packed lunch began modestly enough: a sandwich in a dome-liddedsteel box carried by factory workers. The golden age of thelunchbox as pop culture time capsule and movie tie-in didn’tbegin until the early 1950s, when Thermos came out with a HopalongCassidy box.
The lunchbox became a childhood totem. “It is one of theearliest points when children get to choose something forthemselves. It’s an early test of consumerism,” saidDavid Shayt, a curator with the Smithsonian Institution’sNational Museum of American History. Lunchbox makers encouragedobsolescence by switching to thinner, more easily dented gauges ofsteel and rolling out new models each fall the way automakers didwith cars.
Today’s lunchboxes are too sterile for Shayt. “Themushy soft packs lack some of the 20th-century rigidity and JohnWayne swagger,” he said. “They look like a fanny packor something you stick a Nutri-Grain bar in, not a bolognasandwich.”
But lunchbox makers know what they’re doing. They’retapping into our avian-flu-freaked, mad-cow-manic,global-warming-worried zeitgeist.
Fear crept gradually into lunchbox design. Thermos boxes came withinsulated containers. By the 1980s, rust-prone metal was replacedwith easier-to-clean plastic. The plastic boxes, however,weren’t good at keeping food at safe temperatures to reducethe risk of bacterial growth. So in the ’90s, plastic gaveway to fabric or vinyl stuffed with insulating foam.
Environmentalists have raised concerns recently about the healtheffects of chemicals used to make vinyl and plastics. Now there arehigh-tech water bottles with descriptions straight out of alaboratory-supply catalog. Many lunchboxes are PVC-free, meaningthat they are not made with polyvinyl chloride, which can containlead. A popular alternative to vinyl is neoprene, the material usedto make diving suits. Another is FDA-approved food-grade PEVA, anon-chlorinated vinyl.
The biggest challenge, however, has little to do with suchexternalities. Consciously or not, many parents compare themselveswith some unattainable ideal.
Whatever you pack, being judged (by yourself and others) isinevitable. The crumbs in the Tupperware container say it all. Youknow instantly whether meatloaf dumplings were a success or a bust.And everybody else at your kid’s lunch table does, too.
The latest hot solution is the bento box. The art of the bento asperfected in Japan is a takeout or homemade meal made up of singleservings of rice, fish and vegetables, packed tightly into awashable container. Japanese parents have been known to spend hoursartfully arranging their children’s bento box meals, and thecontainers themselves can be quite elaborate.
Americans have embraced ersatz bentos, most notably in the form ofLunchables, those packaged meals of crackers, cheese and otherprocessed foods sold by Kraft Foods. Inspired by bento boxes,Lunchables have remained huge sellers for 20 years, owning nearly80 percent of the $750-million packaged kids’-meal market,according to market research firm Packaged Facts.
But for Deborah Hamilton of San Francisco, sending her son toschool with Lunchables is the ultimate defeat. Hamilton has triedto reclaim bento as a healthful solution to the lunch-packingconundrum. With her blog, Lunch in a Box ( www.lunchinabox.net ), she has become the Rachael Ray of bento, sharing tips andrecipes, as well as the reception her meals get from her 31/2-year-old son, whom she refers to on the blog as Bug.