Pandora’s lunchbox: The pressure to create the perfect school lunch

Pandora’s lunchbox. That’s how I’d describe the process of organising, preparing and packing school lunches. It is notoriously challenging, a bane of so many parents’ existence and a lot more difficult than it should be.

Even as my eldest enters her final year of primary school, the very thought of lunchboxes makes me want to crawl into a hole. If only a crew of lunch fairies magically appeared each night, and with a wave of a five-star health-rated wand, put together an Insta-worthy school lunch.

Forget fancy: experts recommend taking it back to basics when it comes to your child’s school lunch. Credit: iStock

Most experts say that lunchboxes don’t have to be like this.

Anna Broughton, an accredited practising dietitian from Nutrition Australia, said a nutritious lunchbox was crucial but it was equally important to ensure it included foods that your kids would enjoy and were simple to prepare and consume.

Unlike the processed, wrapper-heavy snacks of the ’90s (hello, Roll-ups, Dunkaroos and LeSnacks), there is an array of external input about what should make up your child’s diet in 2024. Government-supplied healthy school lunch guides and strongly worded “allowable foods” policies from schools are just a few.

Guidelines include stipulations solely around nuts or high-allergy food types as a form of health and safety and specifications around which food groups should be represented in your child’s lunchbox and whether they can have wrappers or must be “nude”.

While this advice predominantly comes from a good place, some of it can cause unwanted and unneeded pressure, adding further tasks to a parent’s extensive to-do list.

Then there’s the question of which type of lunchbox to purchase. Because of course, you want to ensure your child is on the right side of lunchbox style. An insulated bag? Bento box? A combination? A specific brand? Not even my trend-obsessed, in-the-know daughter can give me a direct answer, so what hope do I have?

Worse than this is the fear of getting the lunchbox “wrong” and – gasp – allowing an unapproved lunchbox item onto school grounds.

Lunch-shaming letters from teachers due to an unapproved item have become a regular talking point as disgruntled parents’ increasingly share their “crime” to social media. In every instance, for these parents who are doing the best they can, this doesn’t sit well. Nor should it.

While no one wants one of those letters, it’s not just pressure from school policies that contributes to lunchbox stress. It’s also from the unrealistic benchmark set by some parents.

You know the ones – those whose children’s lunchboxes are filled with artisanal animal-shaped contents made with organic, homemade foods from each approved food group. The same snacks you’d see pinned to a vibrant Pinterest board or a popular food blogger’s Instagram Highlights.

These parents, while they are kicking goals in a game many parents – me included – cannot play, are through no fault of their own generating a feeling of inadequacy among the rest of us.

So what gives? Raising Children network director Derek McCormack suggests trying not to overcomplicate things.

Get children involved in choosing, preparing and packing their own lunchboxes, he says, including options from the five food groups (vegetables, fruit, grain foods, reduced-fat dairy and protein), ensuring they meet the allowable foods policy at your childcare centre, preschool or school.

As for which lunchbox to purchase for your child, Broughton points to food safety as your guiding light. “Choose an insulated lunchbox and include an ice brick or freezer pack to ensure items such as dairy are kept cool.”

That simple, eh?

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