Bento or Bust: Why This Is the Perfect Lunch Box for My Kid (and Maybe Yours) — Think Outside the (Lunch) Box

In theory, a lunch box only has a few specific jobs: It has to transport food from your kitchen to your kid’s cafeteria, it should keep a meal reasonably intact and possibly cold, and a nifty design on the box or bag itself carries serious importance for most little eaters.

But more matters than whether Batman or Elsa stares up at you each morning — think parental sanity, environmental consciousness, and crucially, whether your child actually eats what’s inside.

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I Pack My Kid’s Lunch (but Not Because It’s Healthier) — Think Outside the (Lunch) Box

September brings many things, chief among them the switch back to school — school wake-ups, school bedtimes, schoolwork, and school lunches. For many parents, this means asking a question about lunch, which theoretically constitutes about a third of the food our kids eat: Who’s going to make it?

I think it’s worth parents’ time and money to pack their own kids’ lunches, but perhaps not for the reasons you might think.

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