What's in your lunchbox?

My dad calls my attention to a recent Globe and Mail interview with the author of a book looking at the contents of lunch boxes around the world. The article is a little light on what kids are actually eating, but the book author's anxiety over making sure that her kids get enough healthy, delicious food, while at the same time not incurring the wrath of the nutrition police is certainly familiar to me:

I frankly dread making lunch everyday. Every time I think that we’ve found something they’ll eat and we’re happy with they decide, they don’t like it. Unpacking the lunch at the end of the day when half of the food hasn’t been eaten is so demoralizing.

I try to empty the lunch boxes as soon as the Gs get home, and finding untouched food elicits an awful feeling of rejection and failure; they didn't like what I so lovingly selected, and they were doubtless miserable and starving all day, unable to focus on the lesson, condemned to a place at their safety school, unhappy misanthropes who will never forgiver their father's failures.

Perhaps that's overreacting; there is a dangerous tendency for parents to assign far too much importance to the quotidian details of their children's lives. But that's how things seem to work in the kindergarchy of today.

For the most part, my concern is making sure that the Gs get enough calories, and it is only recently that I have come to get some gentle push back, both from the kids and the teachers. Funny how it's the complete opposite of my own experience, where I was hungrily envious of the kids who had Ho Hos or chips in their lunches; now they exhort me to skew healthier. What's up with that?

We're in a groove right now, though, thanks to the BG's discovery of tofurky and the OG's embracing of pickles and peanuts (as a "healthy" replacement of the peanut butter cup). Here's what they took today:

BG
spaghetti with homemade pesto
strawberries
yogurt bar
smoked tofurky, rolled and stuffed with cream cheese
Entemann's black and white cookie

OG
two slices pastrami
soft pretzel
strawberries
whole grain chocolate chip cookie (recipe)
baby dill pickle
peanuts

Can't wait for the results of another referendum on my performance.