March 26, 2004, 8:39 a.m.
Lunchbox Madness

There are two quietly desperate moments most days in the life of a mother of school-age children. These are, a) the packing of lunchboxes, and, b) the unpacking of lunchboxes.

This may sound trivial at a time when Iraqi policemen are being blown to bits, and of course, ultimately, it is, but I assure you that the exigencies of lunch-box packing are a kind of bamboo splinter driven daily under the fingernails of the bourgeoisie.

On any given Sunday night, across the country, millions of weary parents will kiss their children goodnight, turn off the lights, walk back into the kitchen, and smack their foreheads in dismay. "Aargh, lunchboxes," is roughly what will go through their minds. They will begin rooting around in the cupboards for something their unsupervised children will eat when surrounded by their peers, which adheres to school requirements — "healthy, no candy, and no nut products, please" — and which includes at least one brick from the FDA's Food Pyramid.

Before you snort in disgust and mutter, "Any idiot can pack a lunch box," let me first concede that you are right. Any idiot can pack a lunch box, and if he fills it with cheese puffs, chocolate brownies, and canned mandarin-orange sections, any child will eat it. It takes, however, a highly refined type of intelligence to devise a nutritious lunch that a child will actually eat every day, week after week, year upon year, and alas, only the Japanese possess such intelligence.

In Japan, aesthetics and cuisine reach a midday apex with the bento box, a small tray divided into compartments, each of which contains a morsel more delicious and health giving than the last. Why American children cannot tuck into marinated beef, soybeans, simmered turnip, and cold rice with black sesame seeds, I do not know. As a society I suppose we lack the refinement.

We have a simulacrum of the bento box, of course: the highly popular "Lunchables" series of deconstructed fast food. Inside thrilling, lurid packaging, lucky children whose parents are gullible or desperate enough to buy the things will find meat discs, grated processed-American-cheese food product, plastic-wrapped sauce, and a circular bit of biscuit which is meant to serve as the "crust" for a do-it-yourself "pizza." Hey kids, it's fun to eat and you'll be the envy of the class!

"Sophie gets a Lunchable every day," gripes our seven-year-old friend Benjamin.

"So does James." says Paris, "Well, sometimes."

"No. Not a chance. I'm not buying them. It's junk," Benjamin's mother says.

"But — "

"No, Benjamin."

"But Daddy bought us some!"

It is true. When the cat was away....

At any rate, in non-Lunchable households, parents rummage. Casting a longing look at the peanut butter — now a banned substance — they make some other sandwich; dig out a piece of fruit, maybe some cookies. Many hours later a child opens the lunch box, takes a few desultory bites of the apple, gouges out the soft underbelly of the sandwich, leaving the crusts, and closes the box again. Some hours further on, a parent will open the now-sticky box and pitch out the squashed, room temperature, salmonella-seething leftovers. Small violins will play in the back of the parent's mind as he thinks, "There goes the sweat of my brow."

To cut down on waste, fraud, and abuse, I periodically sit Molly and Paris down to learn how best to cater to their evolving palates. Notebook is at the ready, we begin. "Now, children, you both like applesauce, don't you?"

"Well, I like applesauce from the big jar," Molly says, "or homemade. Paris doesn't, but he likes the granny smith applesauce in those small containers, and I don't."

"Ah." I write this down.

"I like raisins," Paris offers.

"But I don't," says Molly. "We both like mango. And please may I not have juice boxes? Unless they're the raspberry kind. I'd rather have water."

"I like water and juice boxes," says Paris, "except apple flavor. Bleah."

"And we both love pound cake," Molly adds, nodding at her brother for confirmation. He nods back.

I wave my hands faintly. "Yes, yes, pound cake — "

Still, it is easier to pack a lunch box in the United States than it is in, for example, Canada, where environmentalism is the established church and recycling its principal ritual. When we lived in Toronto, our school banned the use of any containers that could not be washed and reused. This was a sliver of bamboo all in itself. Denied biodegradable juice boxes and milk cartons, parents had to (and still must) pour drinks into those plastic screw-top boxes with built-in straws. These things are mold factories. So after boiling them — waste of resources! — or running them repeatedly through the dishwasher — waste of resources! — you would eventually throw them out — yay! — and buy new ones. Baggies were also banned, necessitating more mold-friendly plastic boxes with snap-on lids. And forget individually packed yoghurts: Slip one of those to your poppet and you'd get a crisply worded note from the teacher warning against apostasy. While we lived in Canada, the dishwasher was forever filled with half-dried plastic containers; the air was eternally blue with strong language.

" — But how about sandwiches?"

"Ham!" Paris shouts. "And salami with Nutella!"

"Gross."

"No Nutella," I say, "because of no nuts."

"Tunafish?" Molly ventures, "But not all the time." This is her delicate way of referring to the time when I bought a case of tuna and gave it to her every day for a solid month. "Cheddar cheese is nice, too," she adds.

"Oh no!" Paris throws up his hands as one warding off an attacker, "Not cheese!"

"But you like cheddar cheese — "

"Only melted," he cries, suddenly scarlet with emotion.

"Wow, okay, no cheese for you." More notation.

Molly's face brightens: "Could I have soup some days? With crackers?"

"Soup? Why sure — "

"I hate soup," Paris interjects. "Do I have to have soup?"

And, think, this is only 50 percent of the children. Come September 2005, our little family will require four lunch boxes. At that point I think I will standardize, and just give each child a bottle of water, a fistful of vitamins, and a slice of pound cake.

— Meghan Cox Gurdon is an NRO columnist.
Gurdon lives in Washington, D.C. and writes as much as her young family
will permit. Her NRO column, "The Fever Swamp" appears weekly.

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