Four days a week, the boys bring lunches to school. On Fridays, they order pizza for lunch. We got into that habit years ago, because Ian's school doesn't have a proper cafeteria. The PTA moms order fast food for the kids instead. Jonah's old school had a terrible lunch program with lunch entrees that consisted entirely of carbs and cheese — mozzarella sticks or chips and cheese. 

So four nights a week, Steve makes sandwiches for himself and the boys. And he's pretty damn good at it. On Sundays, we shop for the ingredients: sliced turkey or roast beef or Virgina ham from the deli counter, a local bakery's loaf of panella with only four ingredients, lettuce, and other goodies. Later, he toasts the bread and piles the sandwiches high with lettuce, meat, cheese, peppers and whatever is in the fridge. 

Steve's sandwiches are so good that Jonah's classmates "call dibs on the lefties." Or sometimes they will steal it entirely, if he walks away for a moment. 

Over dinner, we will sometimes fantasize about operating a sandwich truck outside the local schools. We'll make a million selling Steve's Awesome Sandwiches! No. Not really. But it is fun to plan things out. 

The New York Times Magazine article on addictive junk food is a MUST read. Loved it. Loved reading about how quants revolutionized the junk food industry. And loved learning about those damn Lunchables. 

Yes, we do make homemade, nutritious meals for our kids, but we're not Nazis about it. We do let them have some junk, too. I always drag the kids to the supermarket with me and as one of their rewards for good behavior, they're allowed to pick out something special. What do they always go for? Those damn Lunchables. 

Lunchables are little chunks of highly processed bologna (not even the good stuff), cheese "food" (not real cheese), sugary drinks, and candy arranged in sweet packaging. It's pretty wretched stuff, but I do admit the packaging is awesome. I would have loved it, I know it. 

The article talks about how this idea for pre-packaged lunches came out of focus groups with working moms, who were strapped for time. Later, they tapped into the kids' desire to have control over their meals. By swallowing up other companies and working with products that were too chemical ridden to spoil, they created a billion dollar product. 

I think that kids would eat something that had much less fat, salt, and chemicals. A healthy version of a ham and cheese sandwich. It doesn't have to be kale and beans. Steve does it every night. But I don't think it would have a long shelf life. Steve's natural bread only lasts for four days before penicillin starts to form on the outside. 

Perhaps local supermarkets could package up lunch kits for parents. Instead of hunting through the whole store for bread, fruit, juice boxes and cookies, it could be all in one place. Rather than waiting for 30 minutes on the deli line, the good cold cuts could be all ready in the same area. Not the packaged Oscar Mayer crap, but good fresh stuff that was sliced that day. They could sell lunch boxes and ice packs in the same area. Maybe carrot sticks, too. Maybe grapes and apples could be washed and in baggies. 

I still think that there's a way to make nutritious foods more profitable and faster. The quants need to get on it.