Let's craft lunch

Despite Jamie Oliver's best intentions, the obstacles to making healthy homemade school lunches are still daunting: busy working parents, limited food budgets, picky kids, the temptations of processed foods at every turn.

Yet the solution, for some lunch-packing parents, might be as simple as finding the right container: trading in the American brown bag for the Japanese bento box.

With a long history in Japan and variations in Korea, India, and the Philippines, the multi-compartment bento box is not new, but in recent years it has gained popularity as a lunch box among health-conscious parents.

"More people are talking about bento" for lunch boxes, "and more families are seeking them out," says dietitian Emma Fogt, based in Ardmore. And as someone who works with kids on improving nutrition, she heartily approves.

"For one thing, you get the eye appeal with the box, as opposed to having a sandwich or banana smashed at the bottom of a bag," she says. "Kids really seem to love having their food in separate containers."

From a nutritional perspective, the compartments in a bento box encourage the inclusion of a variety of foods while offering a visual guide to portion control. With a general rule of thumb of three parts carbohydrates, one part protein, and two parts fruits and vegetables, most bento box lunches top out at 600 calories and hew to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's My Plate model for healthy eating.

And there are other benefits to the bento box, too, including thrift. The reusable boxes and the creative use of leftovers to fill them can save money.

"Many families are drawn to the eco-friendly containers - you can use them again and again without the environmental waste of packaging," Fogt says, adding that the compartments encourage parents to portion out snacks themselves, instead of buying the more expensive individual packages.

Catherine McCord, founder of Weelicious.com, a site that provides meal ideas for parents, has been tweeting photographs of her son's bento-box lunches hoping to inspire her readers. (Other ideas can be found on laptoplunches.com, which has an archive of healthy recipes, including Fresh Vegetable Roll-ups and Nutty Cashew Dates.)