Baloney Is Not On The List: Back-to-School Lunch Edition

by les jumeaux de legume

School food programs play an important role in supporting child nutrition, especially for children who rely on the programming for several of their daily meals.

The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act, which includes all Federal child nutrition programs, including the School Breakfast and the National School Lunch Programs, will expire on September 30, 2009. Advocates for healthier school foods have rallied around the 2009 act, recognizing a rich opportunity in new legislation for the next five years. [Hannah Wallace recently wrote about Slow Food's Time For Lunch "Eat-in" campaign].

Although they receive less attention, the school meals that families prepare are also important. Outside of allergen-related restrictions, few districts have regulations pertaining to lunches brought from home. As anyone who has stepped into a cafeteria can attest, some home-packed lunches more closely resemble concession stands than they do meals.

Wal-Mart, Epicurious, and Whole Foods all feature healthy back-to-school lunch tips. Teaming up with “Renegade Lunch Lady Ann Cooper“, Whole Foods has launched a School Lunch Revolution campaign, complete with videos highlighting lunch options, including the price per meal. Earlier this week, The New York Times ran an article highlighting the segregation of leftovers in whimsical bento boxes. [And yes, whimsical is a civilized dig]. Wal-Mart focuses on the affordability of packing a lunch and offers “Little Johnny” going hungry or binging on junk food as grim alternatives to bringing food from home. The site also offers sage advice for packing foods.

As an unmarried, childless, quasi-adult, I have few responsibilities beyond getting myself to work, paying the bills, and trying not to disappoint the people who like me. On the days when I show up to work with coffee dripping down my shirt and a bruised banana stuffed with peanut butter for my next meal, I am humbled to know that Elizabeth Nahar has already sent her four kids to school, lunch boxes in tow.

Liz and her husband, Avi, pack more than 60 lunches each month, even with their children eating school lunch once a week. As the Program Director of Children in Balance, a childhood obesity prevention initiative at Tufts University, Liz has a vested interest in nutrition. As a mother, and a practical one at that, Liz has no interest in wasting time or food.

With the first week of school drawing to a close, I thought I’d ask Liz about her family’s lunch strategies and get her thoughts on some of the ‘back-to-school’ lunch tips that I’ve seen promoted.

Shopping List

Liz and Avi follow a basic template of always packing a fruit, a cookie, a small savory snack (e.g. pretzels, cheese crackers) and a variable main dish. Liz does not believe in offering food purely for nutritional value if its chance of being eaten is slim and is blunt in her assessment of cafeteria dining: “They often eat only half of what’s in there.”

This means that everything counts. This is also why vegetables, which historically returned untouched, won’t be sent for lunch (with the exception of baby carrots and grape tomatoes) but will be served in abundance at dinner instead.

Whole Foods offers a School Lunch Revolution shopping list as a download from its website and as a tear-away flier in its stores. Organized by food group, the list encourages including one item from each category in a lunch.

“I think it’s a good list. My kids wouldn’t eat half of the items on there for lunch, but other kids’ preferences differ, and I think it gives a lot of ideas and encourages variety,” says Liz.

I ask about which items she’d avoid.

“My kids won’t eat tuna or eggs–they smell. Nuts aren’t allowed in many of the classrooms. ”

With the exception of five lunches a week, Liz’s children eat virtually all of their other meals at home, leaving her with clear insight and input into what they are consuming. For this reason, she doesn’t question throwing in a snack she knows they’ll eat.

” You really have to know your child’s eating habits, and plan accordingly,” Liz explains. If her children started eating more meals away from home, at after-school programs or with traveling sports teams, her lunch choices would likely change.

Food Safety

Ann Cooper emphasizes children’s love of finger foods. The fruits that Liz prefers for lunches are also bite-sized. ” Strawberries, blueberries, and grapes are awesome for lunches. In the winter we do a lot of clementines: the size is right and they are easy to peel.” Even a sandwich is fundamentally a finger food.

But most kids don’t wash their hands before eating at school. With roughly 20 minutes to eat, less if you have to wait in the lunch line, going dirty is a great time saver. As someone who’s picked up a touch of salmonella, I think washing hands before handling food is a respectable goal.

Few cafeterias have handwashing stations. This emerges as a common obstacle to having recess before lunch, which introduces an urgent need for washing hands. It’s surprising how rarely the need for hand-washing stations comes up in other conversations about school lunch.

I was surprised to see melon in so many of the bento boxes and lunch tip sheets. Fresh-cut melons have been linked to numerous food poisoning cases, although not specifically from school children’s packed lunches. Porous skin, relatively high pH (6 compared to many fruit with pH ~4), and growth near the ground, make melons prone to pathogen incidence and survival.

Be sure to wash melons before cutting (to keep bacteria on the skin from getting on the flesh), and to store cut melon in refrigeration before serving. An “Ed & Bella” lunchbox may be cool, but it’s not going to keep that cold.

Liz offers another reason to be wary of melon: “It gets mushy”.

Hot and Cold

In the Nahar household, foods that are favorites at home become unpackable. Olives are too smelly. Edamame gets too hard. Tofu is gross at room temperature. Soup, once warm, is only lukewarm by lunchtime and not always appealing.

These are not rules. These are just four children’s personal preferences. Still, most kids have their own food hierarchies and whims. They need not be catered to, but they should be considered to avoid hungry children and wasted food.

What this underscores is the importance of knowing what your kids will eat, what they are eating, and what they need to be eating. Packing healthy school lunches may become boring, but it’s not impossible. And if you nurture an intense love of craft arts, last night’s dinner can be recontextualized and exalted to new aesthetic heights in compartmentalized containers.

Bento Box

“Artistry is what differentiates a bento box from a plastic container of leftovers” -The New York Times

From NY Times, image and bento box by Deborah Hamilton

“My kids would LOVE getting lunch like this, but this makes me laugh. I don’t have the time to do that.” Liz points to this slide and demonstrates; “See my kids would eat this (apple), this (cheese) and this (berries). They wouldn’t touch the rest. It’s cold.”

The bento box group on Flickr is 3,434 members strong and some of the creations are inspired, but I’m not yet ready to make lunch my primary creative outlet.

Menudo Lunchbox

While the bento box is a great way to separate items using just one container, it obscures one of the great pleasures of brining lunch from home: choosing your own lunch box.

Regardless of what you pack your lunch into, I’m curious to hear about what you cobble together for lunch–for your kids or for yourself. Any memorable or traumatic lunches?