Hi Friends,

It’s that time of year again - Back to School! We’ll be sharing plenty of back-to-school content over the coming weeks to help you feel ready to start the school year. If you’re dreading school lunch packing, then this podcast episode is for you. Anna and I offer realistic advice to simplify packing lunches.

Key Points

* Why lunch packing feels overwhelming

* The pros and cons of bento-style lunch boxes

* Easy, practical ways to streamline lunch packing

* How to deal with uneaten lunches

* Ideas for lunches to pack

Resources

* Simple Black Beans and Rice Recipe

* Easy Black Beans, Corn & Tomatoes

* Sunny Side Up Nutrition: Lunch Packing Ebook

* Pottery Barn Bento Lunch Boxes

* Pinney Davenport Nutrition, PLLC

* Lutz, Alexander & Associates Nutrition Therapy

Transcript

Ep. 105 – Back-to-School Lunch Packing Tips

Anna: Alright. We're back. We're back. Elizabeth, this is so much fun. I'm excited to talk to you about lunch packing. Woohoo!

Elizabeth: And guess what? I'll start the episode by saying I am finished packing lunches.

Anna: Oh, I'm so jealous.

Elizabeth: because my youngest is about to go off to college.

Anna: Wow.

Elizabeth: So I'm a little sad because it's been a big—it's been a job that I've always done.

Anna: Yes.

Elizabeth: Not in the summers. They do their own lunches in the summers, but during the school year...

Anna: Well, you have a lot of wisdom to pass on. And I'm so jealous. I have another nine years of lunch packing. That's all. No big deal. Well, school is about to start for us, I guess at the end of the month. End of August here.

Elizabeth: Yeah, it starts, I guess, mid-August here. It starts August nineteenth, I think. Here.

Anna: Wow. Wow.

Elizabeth: In Alexandria City. I don't know about the rest of the DC metro area, but yeah, it's coming up. Summer has flown.

Anna: And I know when school starts approaching for me, I start to think, oh gosh, we've got to get back to lunch packing. My child's at a camp this week that they don't have to pack lunch, and it was like celebration time.

Why do you think it's so dreaded? Why do you think packing lunches is such a dreaded thing for so many parents?

Elizabeth: I think, in part, because you have to come up with ideas for what to pack. So it's one more thing you have to think about and manage as part of the mental load. Often we do it in the morning, and mornings for many people tend to be rushed. And I think other reasons that make it dreaded is it's just kind of a boring task and you do it over and over. I mean, if you think about the number of years your kids go to school, that's a lot of lunches.

Anna: Yes - so true.

Elizabeth: And as I always share, I opted—and I'm not saying people have to do this—but I opted to pack my kids' lunches all the way through high school. I felt like that was a job I could do. And in my mind, they were still learning what goes into lunch, because they would see what I packed.

But back to what you think people dread about it... I also think kids have different likes and dislikes. And if you have multiple kids and you're trying to keep things simple and pack the same things, that can be tough.

Anna: Can be, can be. You need to have the items on hand, right? There are all these steps: the items on hand, the proper packing stuff, the containers or lunchboxes—whatever that looks like. If there's utensils involved, there's just... there's a lot.

Elizabeth: And I'm going to say this—I don't know if I'm jumping ahead—but one of the things I’ll say is about the lunch packing supplies, the lunch boxes and bags. I think the bento boxes are great. I use a couple different ones for my younger daughter. However, I almost always have to pack something outside that bento-style box. It's very hard to give kids enough in those, and I'm not criticizing them. I'm just saying this because we see them so often on social media. Every time I see them, I think, oh, that can't be enough for a child. Maybe it's just the way it looks on the screen.

Anna: Right. Right.

Elizabeth: Again, they're great because young kids can open them up and see everything—they don't have to open a bunch of containers. So there are some real benefits. But you also have to think: what’s going to fit in there? Sometimes I have to change what I'm using because it didn’t fit.

Anna: Oh, totally.

Elizabeth: I'm like, what of this is going in there?

One piece of advice is to have a number of different things that you use so you’re not just restricted to one type of container.

Anna: Right. I agree. I think that makes total sense.

And, you know, of course we're talking today about school-aged children. So that could be anyone from age three—if they go to preschool or daycare—up to eighteen. And so, of course, there are different needs and different size containers.

But I'm with you. Some of those bento-style boxes are not enough for my older children. I do use—and we've written about this—the Pottery Barn ones for my younger child.

Elizabeth: Yes.

Anna: They're a little deeper, I think, than some of the others. But there are lots of lunches that don't work in that.

Elizabeth: Right? Can you still buy those? We'll look and see if we can link to them in the show notes.

Anna: I just bought our new Pottery Barn lunch box. We buy them because they have a strap, and she needs one she can throw across her body. And then the bento boxes they sell fit in there.

Anna: But again, we don’t work with Pottery Barn.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Not sponsored by Pottery Barn. Just sharing helpful information.

Anna: Yes.

Elizabeth: We keep this ad-free for you all.

Anna: Alright, so I'm kind of curious. Do you feel like there are some main pitfalls that make packing lunches harder for people than it needs to be? What are the things you commonly see when you work with parents?

Elizabeth: I mean, I’ve seen so many different things. Let me think of a good example. I've seen parents come in who are packing their child the same thing every day, and they're worried about doing that. And I think that's okay.

School cafeterias typically are very busy, noisy places. They have a short time to eat lunch. It’s not like a calm, pleasing environment. So just send what they'll eat.

I think parents also may feel pressure to pack some sort of perfect lunch. You see these on social media. And if that brings you joy, that’s great. It’s okay if it brings you joy to cut the veggies into little shapes and stars.

But in my mind, for some people, that’s a form of pressure for the kid to eat the food.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic again.

I just think parents are under so much pressure—to be perfect, to plan something different every single day—and it’s just not realistic.

Anna: That’s right.

Elizabeth: We're all about simplifying things.

Anna: Right. But I think you’re exactly right—that pressure of “It needs to be this. It needs to be this. It needs to be this…” It doesn’t. I think that’s the biggest pitfall: succumbing to that pressure.

Elizabeth: I think you’re right. And if your kid likes the school lunch? That is great. We're not saying in this episode that parents have to pack their kids’ lunches.

Anna: That’s right.

Elizabeth: We are big fans of school lunches.

Anna: Absolutely. I’m very excited when my child wants to buy the school lunch. Unfortunately, they prefer packed lunch.

Elizabeth: In some schools—honestly, like in my kids’ schools—the schools were just too big. I mean, the high school had 4,500 students. There’s not enough time to get in line, get lunch, eat, and get back to class. So it’s really hard to make that happen. Even in elementary school.

Anna: Yeah, that makes sense. I’m going to circle back to something you said a few minutes ago because I think it’s important: you said you packed your children’s lunches all the way through, which is great. Like you said, it was modeling, and they could focus on other things. And some parents do it differently.

So I’ll share what we’ve done. When they’ve gotten to a certain age—upper middle school, maybe—I might have them help me. I’d say, “I’m going to make the sandwich. Why don’t you grab a fruit and some chips?” So we’d do it together.

But what I’ve also noticed is that as my oldest child got busier and busier, I went back to packing her lunch.

Just to give you a picture—there’s no wrong or rig