Family News
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By OC Family Magazine staff
September 1, 2003
With Care
Home-packed school lunches hit the target with hungry children
School lunches cost less, tend to be more healthful and are more environmentally friendly when they are packed at home. For most moms, however, deciding how to fill the lunch box day after day can be a real chore.
Two mothers who faced the same daily dilemma set out to solve the problem. Amy Hemmert and Tammy Pelstring of Santa Cruz developed the Laptop Lunch, a brightly colored, compartmentalized lunch container that comes with a book of creative lunch-making ideas.
With parents struggling to do it all and children involved in so many after-school activities, it's hard for families to find the time and energy to pack fun, wholesome lunches. But according to Pelstring, the quality of lunch isn't the only problem, "When my kids started school, I became aware of how much packaging and food waste American kids generate at lunchtime. I started to think about who was paying to have all this stuff hauled off to the landfill. It comes out of the school budget, of course. We're paying for it, and so are our kids."
As Hemmert points out, "Packing a waste-free lunch not only reduces landfill waste, but it costs less too." A child taking a prepackaged lunch to school spends an average of $4.02 a day or $723.60 per school year, compared to $2.65 a day ($477 per school year) for a child who packs a waste-free lunch - a difference of $246.60 per person per year. "We want to show parents that they can spend their hard-earned money on quality food instead of spending it on packaging and food additives."
Laptop Lunch guide tips
• Buy foods in larger quantities and recycle the packaging at home. Purchase lunch items from bulk bins and reuse plastic bags.
• Use stainless steel forks and spoons in place of disposable utensils.
• Replace paper napkins with cloth napkins. (Children can help pick these out and can even personalize them with machine-washable fabric paint.)
• Cut up fruits and vegetables and pack them in reusable containers. It's hard to save a partially eaten apple when packed whole. With a reusable container, children can eat a wedge or two and save the rest for later.
• Avoid buying drinks in packaging that cannot be resealed. Many children will take just a few sips from a juice box and discard the rest.
The Laptop Lunch is available at Whole Foods Markets in Orange County.