Bento Boxes for Lunch?

A friend sent me a link to an article about a fun, creative and artistic way to make lunches - and get a healthy meal in the process!

The New York Times article begins with Sheri Chen, a mother of a finicky 2-year-old girl. In order to get her picky daughter to eat, she decided to prepare bento boxes, a Japanese way of preparing and packaging a lunch!

According to the article, "With cookie cutters Ms. Chen makes her daughter star-shaped vegetables; and with decorative skewers, a plastic top hat and pieces of nori (dried seaweed), cherry tomatoes become smiley faced, mustachioed creatures. Her ruse includes assembling each meal in her version of a bento box, a Japanese lunch box, decorated with cute cartoon characters."

Hmmm, I don't know if I'd go to THAT kind of effort to get my kids to eat what I want them to eat! But the article states that this isn't just popular with kids. Adults are getting into this, too!

"It might seem like silly kids’ stuff, but that sense of fun has helped make bento boxes — obentos as the Japanese call them — increasingly popular with grownups in the United States, too. For dieters, they are an eye-popping form of portion control. Artistic preparation of ingredients can act as a pleasant distraction for health-conscious parents. For others, bentos are a way to make lunch pretty or indulge their love of things Japanese."

Jordan Smith, 20, a junior at Yale University majoring in East Asian studies and political science says he began preparing bento boxes while he was still in high school. The article states that while he was on the football team, he was interested in eating balanced and healthy meals. "He would group protein, rice and vegetables. 'I would usually use snap peas, tomatoes, carrots; basically things that were relatively colorful and not too bland tasting.' He endured a bit of ridicule — 'like, look at that white person pretending to be Japanese' — but that didn’t stop him."
The article also cites blogger Deborah Hamilton, 40, author of lunchinabox.net. She "makes boxes for her husband and 4-year-old son of, for instance, tamales, broccoli florets, cherry tomatoes and a strawberry. 'You can make these as intricate or fancy as you like,' she said, 'or you can make them plain and simple. You don’t have to get all kinds of Martha with it. My regular bento takes 10 to 15 minutes, maximum.' ”

Click here to read the entire article - it just might inspire you to prepare your own bento boxes - and eat healthier in the process!