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Nothing. My mother was busy and would give us the same thing over and over again for lunch. I got sick of ham sandwiches pretty quickly and ended up tossing them and getting french fries for lunch instead. So take heed, parent--kids like variety too.

Hopefully things have changed in the 15 years since I have been taking my lunch to elementary school, but my mom always packed things I liked to eat that other kids were horrified by. Bagels, mushrooms - very tame, normal stuff in my book - got rude stares and lots of questions. ("What is that?!" Are you really going to eat that?" etc.)

You might try and find out if food that is par for the course for *your* family will attract too much of the wrong kind of attention at school!

Of course, it was always a good opportunity for me to introduce others to new foods... but sometimes a kid just wants to enjoy his lunch in peace : ).

my parents made us pack our own lunches starting at a really early age (with their help). Which usually meant we packed what we wanted and would eat it; sandwich, leftovers, cereal to have with a school milk, some fruit, etc

I ate pretty much the same food for my entire school career. I liked the sameness. Sandwich, fruit, maybe chips or a cookies. But always a sandwich. I STILL like sandwiches for lunch and would probably eat one every day if I wasn't too lazy to make my own lunch (yes, I'm bad, I know).

Bento are super cute, like the one in the photo, but don't let the boxes sold in Japanese stores fool you. A lot of them don't seal. Very irritating.

I can't even see a "stay at home" Mom with one child having the time to go by these "suggestions". A simple, healthy lunch, made at home will suffice. Don't want it, don't eat it, move on.

Food is for nourishment, not entertainment. I wouldn't have expected my Mom to sculpt and/or build me an entertaining lunch. I always enjoyed what I got.

If she were only still here, this article would have given her such a hoot! "Play with texture" Pahleeese.

my mom made us make our own lunches, but she reviewed them before we took them. as long as we didn't just stuff the bag with cookies, she was okay with whatever we chose. that way we always ate what we brought.

This is ridiculous.

Er, when I was a kid the 'cool' stuff to have in your lunch was all pre-packaged - think lunchables, fruit roll ups, candy bars. If my father had sent me to school with anything looking like that picture, I would have died of embarassment.

I think part of the appeal of those pre-packaged items, though, was that they held up fairly well in a paper bag shoved in a backpack (because lunch boxes were also so, so uncool). As compared to the tuna salad sandwiches and bananas I got, which while enjoyable at home inevitably end up a smooshed, soggy, unappealing mess at school. Another important thing I'll always remember in packing for my future kids - no refrigeration means many things that are good in the morning will not be so good by lunchtime. Yogurt, for example, is disgusting at room temperature.

I KNEW my Mom never loved me - I never got panda rice balls with hotdog flowers!!

I think a lot of this needs to be taken with a grain of salt. A LOT of this has to do with the age of kid(s) you have. Obviously, a 12 year old is not going to be okay with panda rice balls. The four year old in my class, however? They'd be green with envy. I'm a single mother, and I've been making my son's lunches for daycare since he was eating solids (he'll be two this weekend). Yes, it takes a lot of planning, but it's something that matters to me. And you know, I don't always get it made. But to me, if three out of five of his school lunches are replaced by my cooking, that's three out of five lunches he's not eating mini corn dogs and spongy, processed turkey, canned gravy and minute rice.

As a single, working mom of a teenager, I'm here to tell you - we don't have time for that stuff. And those panda things *might* fly with 1st graders but not sophmores, lol. We eat healthy in our house, so a typical packed lunch normally consists of chicken salad on croissants, carrot sticks and low fat dip, and homemade oatmeal cookies. My daughter and I both agree that good ol' PB&J and an apple are far more appealing than the fare being dished up by the lunch ladies.

I still don't enjoy peanut butter because I ate it everyday at some point in my youth. Variety is nice!

My mom stopped making lunches for me at around grade 2. While I appreciate that this made me responsible for making my own lunch, I think with my own kids I'd like to make their lunches together for a while, the night before. I'd show them what foods should be included - fruits, veggies, etc. When I made my own lunches in the morning, I was always running late, so they'd be the most basic, boring sandwich (like salami between dry bread slices), a few cookies and a drink.

Buying unhealthy lunches was never a problem with me because I just didn't have money. We weren't poor... we were just not given money to carry around at school unless it was for a specific reason. We had to ask if we wanted money for a cafeteria lunch (till high school, when I had my own $).

Yeah, this is preposterous. I never had the "cool" lunch, and I'm a well-adjusted, productive, healthy adult. There's enough pressure on parents without making them feel like their kid's lunches aren't creative enough.

Ok, those are adorable, but I definitely don't have time for that every day--still, cute maybe for a birthday lunchbox surprise or something.

My daughter is only 1, but I've been packing her food for daycare while all the other kids eat hospital cafeteria food every day--I just can't see feeding that junk to a baby and teaching her tastebuds that that's what food is/should be. But I definitely agree with the last tip--I try to do that as much as possible. We get a 5 week menu that the daycare operates on, and go by that to "inspire" similar but healthier food choices each day. I started doing it after I took her into daycare one morning, and the whole place was filled with the smell of warm french toast (frozen, processed, and artificial, but it still smelled good), and all I had for her morning snack was grapes and dry cereal. She *likes* grapes and cereal, but it can't compete with french toast--I mean, I'D feel cheated if I were in her shoes.

I was mortified by my school lunches: dinner leftovers (some sort of stir-fry) with rice in a Thermos and a tetra-pak of vitasoy (with the words "an edible oil product" on the side). I wanted a baloney sandwich and a fruit roll-up, just to be like everyone else.

I packed my daughter's daycare lunches every day until she DEMANDED to be allowed to eat the chicken nuggets and pizza bagels like the other kids. A couple of weeks later she asked me send "home lunch" on chicken nugget and pizza days because "they say chicken nuggets are good, but they're not" and the pizza bagels have "bad cheese." So if you give them decent food, they'll come back to it.

She does get onigiri (rice balls) but the nori is just straight up, not panda-shaped--that would send me witless.

As a work at home mamma with three little ones, two of whom are in school and take their lunches regularly: it doesn't hurt to occasionally do something special for your little ones' lunches... it doesn't really take that much extra time, and making your child feel loved and special in the harsh reality of school is invaluable.

I agree that giving your "PB&J every-day" child something unfamiliar just out of the blue is probably not a good idea unless it's been road tested at home and approved.

To the negative commenters: "Playing with texture" and "using color" are just part of good meal planning and shouldn't be an issue.

To Sarahrae: playing the cafeteria's game is a great idea if you have children who are sensitive to being "different" from the rest of their classmates.

I would like to make an additional suggestion however; the judicious use of creative sandwich cutting is always a winner in my house. We use both cookie cutters and those sandwich bread sized sandwich cutters (that look like monsters, or dinosaurs, or hearts - the kids get to pick that day) to make fun shapes of their daily sandwiches, and it only takes 10 more seconds to do.

Fortunately, my children aren't as affected by public opinion and eat, wear, and play what they want, regardless of what their classmates say.

When I was a kid, we took peanut butter-and-jelly to school...in the snow...up hill, both ways....

My mom used to pack us turkey sandwiches, with chips or pretzels, fruit and 50 cents to buy a "peanut butter blob" from the cafeteria. Once and awhile she would give us those "make your own pizza" packs, I forgot the name of them..hmm i wonder if those are still around..

I HATED sandwiches- so I went through phases of salad, with a whole tomato to eat like an apple, breadsticks, tiny french crunchy toast with tiny cheese so I could make tiny cheese sandwiches (much better than real sandwiches). I still don't enjoy a sandwich.

If you're kid is young enough to get a kick out of cutesy bentos, he is also probably too young to really appreciate the time going into crafting it. It's a lot of time and effort for very little result. Other kids might be impressed for about 10 seconds, then be glad that they're not eating rice and nori in order to have such a bento.

While I appreciate these sorts of things as objects of creativity, I think they're essentially a waste of time for your children. I think that adults get more out of them than kids do, particularly once the novelty has worn off.

I think the key to making sack lunches successful is to listen to your kids. A friend of one of my kids thought my kids' lunch was really cool because mine always had fresh fruits and veggies and his mom would never pack them.

Mine realized pretty early on that the school lunches were junkier than home lunches and but once a week they liked choosing a favorite (like pizza) from the school menu.

They'd tell stories of the "cool" lunches kids would pack themselves that were low on anything nutritious and heavy on sugar, salt, and fat. But the ones they would appreciate the most usually were along the lines of homemade dinner rolls, chicken salad, peaches from my freezer, and a homemade treat. It was also the type of special lunch that was do-able for me because it made use of leftovers. Even though I'm an at-home mom, I don't have time for fussing with lunches. Making a hot breakfast and sitting down to eat with the kids (which was important to me), packing three lunches, and then getting three of them out the door within 50 minutes was tough enough without adding in an extra fuss.

Sometimes when I was running really behind I'd just meet them at the school with a hot home lunch packed in their lunch tote and they really liked those.

My dad used to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but instead of just cutting off the crust, he would cut them into shapes using cookie cutters! That was pretty exciting.

I really don't remember what my mom used to pack for lunch. Usually fruit, a sandwich, juicebox; something pretty basic like that. I was really picky though if my sandwiches got crushed, I wouldn't eat them. But my favorite part was that she always packed me a napkin with a little note or drawing on it.
I decided that the notes were embarrassing though when I got older and packed my own lunch, pretty much the same as my mom would pack, but less variety.

I enjoyed this article and I like the idea for kid's lunch box a lot.

I think that a lunch box can be not only for nourishment but also entertainment. In fact, using a lot of colors (it means that you have different kinds of vegetables, fruits, meats etc.) in one dish means that you can have different kinds of nourishment and a good balance of nourishment at the same time. Of course it could entertain you, too (I believe).

This kind of lunch box is popular in Japan right now and Japanese mothers and kids enjoy making or having it. I don't say that all kid's lunch box there look like this but they still have a variety of foods in them at once.

I don't know if you believe this or not but they don't take a lot of time to make it because they are also a working mom and as busy as you to take care of not only a kid but also more with working. When I was a kid, my mom woke up earlier than me and made a lunch box every day and it had a variety of menu. She had two kids and she worked from an early morning to midnight every day.

This article is just one idea for your kid's lunch box and you don't have to do it if you think that it's not for you or your kids. I simply enjoy that idea and it looks so cute! If you think that you would like to try to make it, I think that you would enjoy making it with using your creativity. :)