AIBU to hope Bento boxes for packed school lunches never take off here?

[LightDrizzle]

Luckily I’m an old bat and it wouldn’t directly affect me but while it’s a Japanese thing that is sort of cute at a distance, the thought of parents, and let’s face it, mostly women, thinking they have to put mental and physical effort into carving Squishmallows out of radishes and creating beautiful and imaginative Bento boxes every day for the delight of their children and the envy of their friends just makes me feel depressed.

It was bad enough in the days of cutting sandwiches and bunging a satsuma, a Mini Babybel and a Penguin in. I’m still surprised at how long it takes to make rounds of decent sandwiches. I loathed doing packed lunches on top of everything else you’ve got to do with young children and full time work. Obviously there is nothing wrong with the Bento box as a receptacle, it’s the Insta-culture expectation as to the contents that make me feel sympathetic dread. Sometimes it seems that as fast as we develop labour saving gadgets and devices; social media and influencers devise tortuous new ways of parting women from any prospect of a moment to theirselves.

I think the OP means this type of meal, not just a sarnie and fruit shoved into the compartments.

Oops sorry I didn't mean to quote that post.

@SusannaSpider Thank you. "I'm not entertaining any of that squashing an egg into the shape of Hello Kitty shite" This could be a philosophy for living. You've made my day! 👏

I feel you 😂👏

why on earth does wanting a satsuma and tomatoes in different compartments of a box mean you have ADHD?

The insta posts make me laugh because it’s usually processed shit cut out onto fancy shapes and sent as lunch. Balance rarely exists in the meals.

We have used bentos ever since DC started school because they make my life easier. My kids hate sandwiches and have smaller appetites. Filling the compartments with the leftovers and other food already in the house is much easier for me mentally. I pre-prepare the ‘snack’ parts and freeze portions so they just need to be defrosted the night before.
I have never cut any food item into a specific ‘shape’

Here you go........

DS had school dinners. Faffing around with lunchboxes every day, no thanks!

I love our bento style box. It's not about shaping or carving, it's about:

• not buying loads of expensive, environmentally awful, individual wrapped tiny things because you can pop in a chunk of something off a bigger one (Cheese, pork pie) or some mini ones (sausages, chicken sticks) out of a big pack.
• Not having to fiddle wrapping everything in foil if it's from a bigger pack
• protection for breakable stuff from a big pack (e.g. crisps or rice cakes)
• being easily able to do something like cous-cous which otherwise would need it's own container
• being able to do wet and dry
• not having to use loads of tiny containers which the child struggles to open, loses and are a pain to wash!

Best post on the thread and the answer to much of the apparent angst among people these days.

The kind of lunches DD likes will transfer well into a bento style box for school, when she's there. But I won't be making the food look "cute". It's for eating.

Sorry @RedHotChilliPreppers I inadvertently quoted you and can't edit.

Yes, as a lot of us have said, not going on social media removes all feelings of inadequacy and envy.

I think people are missing the point, I don't think op is referring to people who fling random stuff into compartments (I've been doing that for years for my daughter as she doesn't like sandwiches and can't have school dinners as they are useless with allergies).

Ops means the ridiculously elaborate bento boxes being shown off on social media.

Exactly. I don't know why people are getting all huffy and thinking op is referring to them sticking some grapes and a babybel in different compartments

If OP had posted that Bento Boxes were wonderful, all the answers would be “oh so mums have to carve stupid shapes out of rice now, no thanks!”

So much contrary lately.

Here's some more examples.

I mean I kind of assume noone actually does this except for silly "influencers" but who knows!

My teen daughter had a bento for pre school until she was about 7.

I've used a biscuit cutter to make star shaped cheese and cucumber. It took me maybe an extra 2 minutes overall. I didn't mind, it was my choice.

Nobody is making heart shaped sandwiches mandatory for you, don't panic.

Social media can be amazing too though. I use it to connect with people with the same rare condition as me. Without the internet I would never have been able to connect with people as it is too rare.

Same. Though we have put interesting things in for lunches this week (ds insisted on a trip to chinatown) but very much of the grab and go prepacked snacks and slices of dragon fruit. I sent him in with Chinese dumplings one day that were quick to cook and stayed hot in a thermos.

Just because I am at a loss, why did you add 'grilled' to fish, yet just write 'chicken' with no hint as to how that was cooked?
😊Is it because you wanted to reassure that you weren't feeding your child battered stuff?!

As a child, there is no way I could have made myself eat a cute bear for lunch so I would have starved.

I think she means the ones where people make it all look pretty and post it on Instagram - not the receptacle itself 😂

I like lunch boxes with separate compartments, just personal preference. But I don't think food needs to be pretty or have entertainment value. It is fuel to get them through the day. I'm not carving up anything and throwing away the perfectly edible edges. Food is expensive.

I would read it as grilled fish or grilled chicken - you just don’t need to write ‘grilled’ twice because it’s implied…

Yanbu. Plus those pretty arrangements would get shaken up and trashed pretty quickly.

One observation - Japan has really low rates of women working after having kids!