Lunch was always a source of contention when I was growing up.  When I was little, my mom always packed me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (which I hated!).  So, I didn’t eat.  When I got to middle school, I was responsible for packing my own lunch (which I wasn’t organized enough with my time to do!)  So, I didn’t eat.  It wasn’t until I was a sophomore in high school that my mother finally realized that I never ate lunch and finally decided to just give me money to buy something at school. I had a lot of french fries and chocolate chip cookie days but I did look forward to the wonderful days when they had shredded lettuce on the salad bar!  (For some reason, I ADORE finely shredded lettuce in a salad.)  Needless to say, my school lunch time was never anything to get excited about.

Times are changing and long gone are the days of mushy PB&J.  The web is crawling with fun and creative lunch ideas for kids.  Even I might eat a prepacked  sandwich if it looked like this:

These are sandwiches that were created by Funky Lunch, a site dedicated to encouraging kids to try something new and fun (and healthy!)

The other fun lunch option that is gaining wide-spread popularity are the amazing bento boxes.

“O-bento’ is what the Japanese call a packed meal, usually lunch. Bento boxes have internal dividers, and sometimes several stacked layers, so different kinds of food sit in their own little compartments. The whole thing is usually wrapped together with chopsticks in a cloth or special bag, and the goal is to make the whole package as attractive as possible – from considering the colour combinations of the food and presenting and garnishing it as neatly and artfully as you can, to co-ordinating the box, chopsticks and wrapper, and any other items like paper napkins, knife and fork or spoon, drink flask or thermos.”

Read more at Air and Angels

The Bento concept is spreading and moms are going out of their way to create the most amazing lunch boxes I have ever seen.  Everything from the containers, to the food choices, to the artistic arrangement of the items is carefully selected and put together in a way that is fun to look at and fun to eat.

Just look at all the images from a Flickr pool!

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Do you have any fun lunch ideas we should see?

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