Hi there, you are listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here

to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.

Today is a bonus episode packing school lunches. I did not anticipate recording this episode

but after this week's office hours episode where I answered your questions, I realized

that this particular question needed a, it's whole own mini little episode. It was the

most frequently asked question in the Instagram post and that makes sense. It's early to mid-August

and schools about to start, if not, started already for you. School lunches are totally a thing.

Now like I said, there were a lot of comments but I chose this one from Kristen Boyand as our

example today. Kristen writes this, packing school lunch, finding something that will be balanced

ish in terms of food groups, cost effective and flexible enough to meet the ever shifting goals,

ever shifting goalposts of a second graders preferences while also not consuming a lot of

my bandwidth. Okay, I have a few thoughts here. Now this is not a system, it's just a series of

considerations for you depending on your particular lunch box stresses. But before we get into those,

I want to quickly comment on school lunches provided by the actual school. Cafeteria lunches,

they get a bad rap. I think that there is often like an implicit bias against our kids eating school

lunches and I don't want this episode to perpetuate that bias. Some schools don't provide lunch.

Some kids like mine prefer homemade lunches and I have made the choice to say yes to that.

There's nothing wrong with making your kids lunches for school but I do think it's vital to

acknowledge that cafeteria lunches are not bad or need to be off the table. For a lot of kids,

even kids at my own kids elementary school, it's a title one school so there are a lot of food

into cure children. The cafeteria breakfasts and lunches are the only meals those kids get.

Some parents don't have the funds to make lunch for their kids every day so the free lunch provided

...