Lunch from home? Insulated bags help keep cold foods cold

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Modern lunch 'boxes' make it easier to keep cold foods cold -- and hot foods hot.

Lunch from home? Insulated bags help keep cold foods cold

K-State food scientist shares tips on keeping home-packed foods safe

Aug. 8,

By Pat Melgares, K-State Research and Extension news service

MANHATTAN, Kan. &#; Modern technology has brought home-packed school lunches along for the ride.

Today&#;s lunch bags &#;are made with a high tech material that kids can use to keep their food cold,&#; said Kansas State University food scientist Karen Blakeslee.

&#;Back in the old days, a lunch box truly was a metal box,&#; she said. &#;Now, these insulated bags can keep your food cold so that kids can have a safe lunch when they&#;re ready to eat it.&#;

Listen to an interview by Jeff Wichman with Karen Blakeslee on the weekly radio program, Sound Living

The insulated versions will keep food cool for about four hours depending on the bag, Blakeslee said, though packing the bag with ice packs or frozen foods is important in determining how cold the food will be.

&#;It&#;s best to have at least two frozen packs in the bag,&#; Blakeslee said. &#;Ice packs come in many different sizes so they easily fit the lunch bag you use. Or you can freeze juice boxes beforehand, place them in the bag, and they&#;ll be mostly thawed out when you&#;re ready to use them.&#;

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Blakeslee urges parents to place the frozen pack or juice box directly next to the item that needs to be kept cold &#; such as a meat sandwich with cheese. Chips and most whole fruit don&#;t require refrigeration; some vegetables may need to be kept cool. Blakeslee suggests asking the school if they have a refrigerator for lunch bags to help keep food cold.

&#;On the other hand, if you have some kind of hot food, it needs to be kept hot,&#; Blakeslee said. &#;Purchase an insulated container designed for hot food; there are many options in the market. Like the ice packs, they don&#;t last all day long, but many can keep food hot about four hours.&#;

Blakeslee urges parents to plan their children&#;s menu when shopping each week, and prepare as much of the lunch the night before. Get kids involved with choosing foods, which she says will make them &#;more likely to eat it.&#; Rinse fresh fruit and vegetables with water, and prepare any fruits and vegetables so they are ready to eat, she said.

Some healthy choices for lunch include a meat and cheese sandwich with whole grain bread; fresh fruit and vegetables; and a carton of milk they can purchase at school.

To encourage food safety, put a note in their lunch bag to remind children to wash their hands before eating &#; 20 seconds with warm, soapy water -- and pack disposable wipes in the lunch bag as an extra food safety step.

&#;In the food world, washing your hands does help to prevent a lot of safety issues,&#; Blakeslee said. &#;I often see foodborne illness outbreaks that come over the newswire indicating poor personal hygiene as the source of the outbreak. Essentially what that means is that somebody didn&#;t wash their hands.&#;

Blakeslee, who is also coordinator of K-State&#;s Rapid Response Center for food safety, publishes a monthly newsletter called You Asked It! that provides numerous tips on being safe and healthy. More information is also available from local extension offices in Kansas.

A couple of weeks ago an circulated around our office, the contents of which focused on lunch bags in the refrigerator. The message: don't put them in the fridge. My prognosis... best idea ever!

There are actually a couple of really good reasons why you don't want to put these lunch bags in the fridge if you can avoid it. Our office was doing it because we were running out of space, but allow me to delve into the green side of this issue.

1. They actually do take up too much space
   I remember when I was a kid my lunch bag was nothing more than a brown paper bag that could basically only last 1 week before it was shredded into oblivion. Nowadays, lunch bags are huge, space sucking behemoths. I kid you not, there are some people in my office who use their lunch bags as backpacks and purses.
   
   So what's the environmental impact? Well bigger lunch bags mean less space for everyone else. Think of it as the inefficient packing of the refrigerator space. If my lunch bag takes up the room of 2 paper bags, then only half the number of people can use the fridge.
   
   
2. They make the refrigerator less efficient
   Yeah, I am not lying, big bags equal big inefficiency. Refrigerators work on the premise that they circulate cold air around everything. If things are packed up too tightly, the air can't flow as smoothly and the refrigerator become less efficient. So cold air gets blocked up and no every item in the fridge is cooled evenly.
   
   
3. The bags insulate against the cold too
   It actually doesn't make sense put an insulated bag into a refrigerator because the bag will insulate itself against the cold anyways. It is like wrapping your individual food items up in a parka and putting them in the fridge. The same principle that keeps your food cold in a warm space means that the contents of the bag won't actually benefit from being in the refrigerator anyways.
   
   
4. What's the point? Aren't you going to microwave most of your food anyways?
   Of course I understand that you don't want to have your food spoil before you eat it. But do you actually know how much time it takes for something to go bad? Mayonnaise, for example, can be left at room temperature for hours before it starts to become a problem. If you have it in a state-of-the-art lunch bag (sarcastic), you should be able to leave it for a whole day before thinking twice.
   
   Also, the odds are you are just going to microwave your lunch anyways. I know that you might have yogourt or something that you ant to keep cold but if you are just going to throw your cold left overs into a cold fridge and then microwave it.... well you are just going to have to microwave it for longer before it heats up. This consumes more energy on behalf of the microwave. Also.... the microwave will also be doing some bacteria killing for you.

So the solution? Either take your contents out of the bag and put them in the fridge or don't put your lunch in the fridge at all. Of course this requires a bit of common sense on your behalf. Don't prop your lunch up against a heater and then try to eat it the next day, that would be silly. But do realize that if your lunch bag can't keep your lunch warm for a couple of hours between you leaving to come to the campus and eating your lunch... why are you using a giant space age super duper lunch bag anyways? Maybe it is time to go back to the paper bag.


photo credit - jonathan rausseo

A couple of weeks ago an circulated around our office, the contents of which focused on lunch bags in the refrigerator. The message: don't put them in the fridge. My prognosis... best idea ever!There are actually a couple of really good reasons why you don't want to put these lunch bags in the fridge if you can avoid it. Our office was doing it because we were running out of space, but allow me to delve into the green side of this issue.So the solution? Either take your contents out of the bag and put them in the fridge or don't put your lunch in the fridge at all. Of course this requires a bit of common sense on your behalf. Don't prop your lunch up against a heater and then try to eat it the next day, that would be silly. But do realize that if your lunch bag can't keep your lunch warm for a couple of hours between you leaving to come to the campus and eating your lunch... why are you using a giant space age super duper lunch bag anyways? Maybe it is time to go back to the paper bag. ~jON - campus sustainability managerphoto credit - jonathan rausseo

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