Japanese Lunch Boxes, Bento

In Japan, a packed meal is called obento. Bento boxes (Japanese lunch boxes) have internal dividers and stacked layers. The food that is packed into the bento box is healthy and tasty, but also of great importance is that it be packed attractively. Japan has always placed great emphasis on food presentation, and packing lunches is no exception.

The approach to bento box preparation is artistic. Bento boxes are intended to be aesthetically pleasing and to make the food enticing. Sometimes the presentation is intentionally fun, or adheres to the Japanese culinary rule that all meals should contain five colors, or is kyaraben (character based).

Pizza is a Vegetable

It's an important victory.
~Corey Henry, spokesman for the American Frozen Food Institute

Pizza is now counted as a vegetable in school lunches.The House of Representatives passed a bill that allows 2 tablespoons of tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable. It is kind of reminiscent of when ketchup (ketchup ingredients:tomato concentrate, distilled vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, salt) was declared a vegetable. Most school lunches no matter what is on they tray now include a couple of packs of ketchup. Meets the requirement for vegetable, right?

The reason the "pizza is a vegetable" is worse however, is because it is not only dubbing 2 tablespoons of watered down tomato paste and high fructose corn syrup a vegetable, it is wrapping it in processed, bleached flour (pesticide laden and low in nutritional content) and processed cheese food (high in calories and fat, low in nutritional value),  and more high fructose corn syrup.

Notice, there are no veggies on this:

Mmmm...remember these? Looks nutritious, doesn't it? I don't know why school lunch pizzas always have to be rectangular. Both of my kids started off their school lunch days excited about pizza Fridays until about 2nd grade, when they realized it really didn't taste good at all. From 3rd grade on, based on the urgent pleas of my kids, I began packing their lunches.

Note: I like packing lunch for my kids, that way I know what they are eating (and not eating).

Something else I learned: In 1910, bleach white flour was declared unfit as human food by the Federal Western District Court of Missouri.