Pack Your Lunch Day 2025 is on Monday, March 10, 2025: Why are parents packing lunches now a days?

Monday, March 10, 2025 is Pack Your Lunch Day 2025. National Pack Your Lunch Day, March 10 - Food. National Pack Your Lunch Day

A lot of us buy lunch everyday at school or work, instead of taking ten minutes each morning or even the evening before to create our very own. Pack Your Lunch Day remembers the standard homemade lunch, whether it’s a sandwich, leftovers, sushi or something like that altogether different.The benefits of packing your personal lunch are apparent: to nibble on anything you like without having to be restricted by what’s available for sale guess what happens is within the food and with time, you’ll save lots of money in comparison to purchasing lunch!The roots of Pack Your Lunch Day are unknown – possibly it had been just introduced by a large fan of sandwiches! Many people decide to celebrate your day by giving the cash they'd have allocated to lunch to charitable organisation. An alternative choice is to buy along with co-workers and all sorts of bring another food, then possess a have a picnic lunch. Scrumptious!

I work at an elementary school. Hot lunches are available to me in the school cafeteria daily. I always take my own lunch anyway. It ultimately comes down to personal preference, really, which makes me wonder why you're so upset about this in the first place. If you don't want to pack lunches, then don't. But still.

1) Cost: This is a moot point. You CAN pack decent lunches for cheaper than a school hot lunch. But cost is rarely a motivating factor.

2) Picky kids. This is a big one I see in students. Many parents seem to pack their students lunches for them purely because the kid is picky and doesn't like much on the school menu. Personally, not a reason that would motivate me, but it is a big reason out there. A lot of the parents who have picky kids tend to pack horrible "lunches" consisting of high-sugar juice boxes, cookies, and chips. I also disagree with the parents who do this. But still, just letting you know that for some kids, packing a PBJ is the easiest way to take care of the lunch argument.

3) Health. Sorry, but my school cafeteria does NOT serve food that agrees with my concept of healthful eating. They serve carb, carb, carb, more carb, and a tiny sliver of some kind of protein (usually covered with a breaded coating). I'm not anti-carb, I'm just saying they're way out of balance, and they don't serve whole-grain ever. They add heaps of brown sugar and butter to oatmeal in the morning. They stir Jello mix into applesauce just for more flavor and sugar (they call it "rosy" applesauce). And other such sugary doctorings of food. Most foods are highly processed, prepackaged, and sodium-packed. A lot of parents serve fresh, unprocessed foods at home and refuse to let their children eat different at school. Personally, this is my biggest reason why I myself bring my own lunch to school. I know that the food I bring myself started with fresh ingredients that I myself chopped and cooked healthfully. The food cooked at school comes premade and frozen with less and less effort put in on the part of cafeteria workers. It's often very comparable to fast food in processing and origins.

(Note: This is true for the vast majority of school cafeterias these days. However, there are a few notable exceptions scattered here and there where school cafeterias have stepped up and found ways to cook fresh foods for their students instead of prepackaged rubbish. Interestingly, in all of these schools, grades improve and misbehavior issues decline dramatically.)

4) Disagreement with laws. Some parents simply get annoyed at a lot of the rules in school cafeterias. The lunch ladies are bound by goofy laws where everyone has to get a "balanced" meal (or their sad approximation of one, anyway) and have to require students to get an entree, and a certain array of side items. Many kids, as I've mentioned before, are picky eaters. They don't want all the stuff they're forced to accept on their trays, and they throw most of it away uneaten. They aren't allowed to get extra servings of the things they do like to take the place of the things they didn't eat. Students who bring their own lunches often end up actually eating all their food, meaning they're more well-fed than the school-lunch kids often enough. Parents who have figured out the wastefulness of their child throwing away tons of uneaten food or who have figured out that their child eats more heartily when favorite choices are packed-- these parents are another category who start packing lunch for their kids.

5) Food intolerances, allergies, and other reasons for special diets. Nuff said.

Still, though, it's ultimately a personal preference.

Help!? Ideas for a packed lunch?

Packing a lunch for school and/or work can be a challenge. Often times you don’t have access to a microwave or refrigeration. Eating the same thing every day can get old after a short time as well. My suggestions for lunch are listed below. Consider taking an insulated lunch bag to keep some of these things cold until it’s time to eat. You could also freeze your beverage (water, juice, etc) and use it as an ice pack if you don’t have a lunch box.

Wraps, salads, and sandwiches are good for the “entrée course” of your lunch. Use different deli meats and cheeses every week so you don’t tire of the same flavors. It’s good to make homemade dressings or switch up the condiments on these items as well. Use as many fresh ingredients as possible to increase the nutritional value as well. Another idea would be to cook chicken breasts, fish, and pork tenderloins in large amounts over the weekend and keep the cooked meat in the fridge or freezer as an addition to your sandwiches, wraps, or salads. It’s a nice change to deli meat. My family also enjoys chicken, tuna, or ham salad sandwiches every so often. And you can never go wrong with peanut butter and jelly!

As the “side dishes” for your lunch, I would suggest any of the items listed below.

fruit, yogurt, pudding, or jello cups

fresh vegetables with ranch dressing

granola bars

popcorn

trail mix

chips (take salsa or a cheese dip for tortilla chips)

pretzels

100 calorie snack packs (cookies, brownie bites, etc)

special K cracker chips

dry cereal

fresh fruit (like apples/bananas with peanut butter, orange slices, grapes, etc)

tasty cakes (Little Debbie brand)

bologna and cheese cubes

broccoli, macaroni, pasta, or potato salad

crackers (goldfish, animal crackers, cheese or peanut butter filled sandwich crackers)

dried fruit (raisins, craisins, banana/apricot/apple chips)

deviled or pickled eggs

cheese curls or cheese balls

fun sized candy bars

mixed nuts

gummy candy

marshmallows

Should i pack a lunch for my first day at a new job?

Pack a lunch, but be sure you pack something that stores well overnight so you can eat it the next day. Just in case your new boss or new coworkers want to take you to lunch on your first day.