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.

My DCs had lunch boxes with compartments in nearly 20 years ago. It kept the fruit from getting squished on the sandwiches and cake crumbs getting on everything else. I had no idea I was supposed to be carving radishes to go in them.

School dinners from the 60s were something else and we love to complain about it, but thinking back the only things that were really horrible were the lumpy mashed potatoes, the horrible furry tinned peas and the over cooked liver.

DS's rural primary school provided fantastic lunches, freshly cooked from local produce.

This.

I have to say Yumboxes have been brilliant. We have had two in a constant rotation nearly ten years now and they are still going strong and completely leak proof too. I like to use one for myself sometimes too.

Oooo I like the yumboxes! I don't like the price though 😉

Yes they're good!. But they're far too big for small children

They come in different sizes, honestly I'm not on commission or anything😅

I've been using them for ds's packed lunches for ages. He's neurdivergent and physically disabled and they are ideal. Nothing is in fancy shapes - just torn or cut into bite sized pieces to make it easy for him to manage.

We use bentoboxes sometimes. The most I ever did was Teddy or rocket shaped sandwiches (we had cutters) but only when the were little. But they're great for putting eg apricots in one it, strawberries on another, cubed cheese, sandwiches etc. I like the reduced plastic and foil.

That sounds sane. I’m glad some schools are banning the Kyara-Ben. I’ve definitely got the impression competitive Bento was a more of a thing from the ever reliable twin prongs of journalism and SM 😂 I’m happy to learn I was mistaken!

It’s been interesting to read all the messages. As other posters have kindly pointed out, it is performative Bento boxes I hope don’t catch on, not compartmentalised receptacles. Reading people reference their Sistemas I realise I used one for donkeys years but it wasn’t marketed as a Bento box back then. I used it to take leftovers to the office. By then my DD was past the packed lunch stage and on school dinners, praise be.

What people choose to do to show their love for their family is of course up to them, but what I’d hate to see is the rise of people posting children’s curated Bento boxes on SM. Also, if cutesy Bento reach a critical mass in a school, children will nag for them, they are so peer driven at that age and primary is peak craze time, - in my time it was stickers, fancy rubbers, playing jacks (!) and fancy things to stick on the end of your pencil. All those things were cheap, affordable (landfill) tat though and not time sponges for our parents.

They do not have to be plastic, they can be metal, wood, bamboo, wheat even

www.treehugger.com/plastic-free-lunch-boxes-bags-4858600

Good on her! I sort-of remember what I ate for lunch at that age and it wasn’t anything close to your daughter’s cuisine. And there were no bento boxes back in my 70s small town either.
I remember burritos made by the Mexican ladies in the cafeteria and (sad) hot lunches, which I never ate. They had a.number of different sandwiches and things like chicken nuggets weren’t invented yet. Oh - tostadas, too.
I loved - and still do - the Mexican food and it was relatively healthy and filling.
Had I been a good and capable cook like your girl I might’ve taken my lunch but, alas, that skill escaped me.
You must be really proud of her.
My mum hated cooking so she didn’t exactly inspire me.

I remember reading something (maybe on here) a few years ago written by a British ex pat in Japan and lunches were definitely competitive where she was. She was exhausted and getting up at stupid o’clock to make the elaborate lunch box food
before going to work. It sounded incredibly stressful and she kept doing it because she didn’t want her kids to stand out and be pitied if they didn’t have their food cut into
fancy shapes.

She probably sent her kids to one of the kindergartens that are mostly aimed at SAHMs. I know a couple like that. They want you to sew all the school thing like bags and placemats, volunteer regularly, and make bento daily. I only know a couple of women whose kids are at places like that, though, as most mums go back to work these days. I always advise mums to ask careful questions before choosing, because there is nothing worse than trying to work while using the type of kindergarten that assumes you are a housewife.

I’m in California.
They were allll inedible.
I don’t remember them serving liver, but I remember them serving unidentifiable food that may or may not have been liver.
I remember standing in line to get my little carton of milk and hearing the glop glop glop of whatever they were serving hit the trays from their serving spoons.
I truly do understand how difficult it must be to feed an entire school of children and the challenge that brings. I couldn’t do it.
One of my oldest friends is now the chief cook of a local high school - I should ask her if they use local produce, because that sounds delicious. We live in the Central Valley, the most fertile ground in America. We grow everything here. It would be a shame to let that go to waste.
PS - those peas were gross!

My mum never made me a packed lunch , only for a day trip with school when a packed lunch was specified .
I had to have school dinners which were decent enough some days and revolting on other days .
She was a SAHM until I was about 10 🤷🏻‍♀️ .
My own girls have been to different schools with different facilities and I mostly made them a packed lunch .
i think the compartments in a bento 🍱 style box help because you don’t use cling film etc or pre packaged snacks so much .
It got very boring trying to think what to put in that would keep till lunchtime.
I pre paid for a school lunch once per week on my busiest morning though .

Im now in my 15th year of making packed lunches and absolutely hate it. It’s jointly my most hated job along with cleaning the bathrooms