They’ve grown out of the cute little bento boxes…here’s our favorite school lunch gear for your tweens and teens!
All grown up!
Every time I re-share my original RGN School Lunch Gear Guide over the last few years, I have the thought, “I really need to update this to reflect my house full of teens now!” With the start of the new school year this week, I decided now is the time!
What kind of lunchboxes do teenagers use?
Two of my 3 girls are in high school now, and my youngest is a new middle schooler. You could say that we have grown out of the cute little bento Planetboxes in our house! My oldest started asking for something a little more grown up right around middle school, and my younger 2 were around 5th grade. We have tried a hand full of different boxes, and my crew has really settled on some favorites that I think a lot of teenagers will all love!
What does MOM want in a lunchbox?
While it absolutely matters what the design of the lunchbox looks like for the teens (we want them to actually want to use them!), it also matters that mom is happy with a few key features as well. Here are my check points!
- Glass and/or stainless steel, OR BPA/toxin free other materials. When you have a house full of hormonal teens, avoiding endocrine disruptors in plastic is vital. This goes for girls AND boys!
- Easy to clean! It is usually my goal for the girls to clean their own gear OR load into the dishwasher. BUT, inevitably, schedules fall apart sometimes, and mom is the one that will end up picking up all the pieces. I am a huge fan of NOT having to handwash things. I also don’t want to have to pick apart little separate components of the box to wash separately!
- Big enough lunchboxes so that extra little containers don’t need to be packed on the side. I don’t want my own kitchen containers to go missing! I found that as my girls got older, they needed more food packed, and I needed lunch gear that accommodated that!
Bentgo Glass Leakproof Lunchbox
The super simple lunchbox design of the Bentgo Glass Lunchbox is perfect for teenagers with a large capacity to hold food. It looks more like “leftovers” containers, which is what a lot of lunch packing teens use to bring food to school. I love the leakproof lid. We have packed applesauce or pasta salads in those compartments without any leaking. Both the lid and glass base wash up in the dishwasher super easy as well, which is one of my must-have features.
Lunch Examples using the Bentgo Glass Leakproof Lunchbox
We have treated these Bentgo Glass lunchboxes as a typical bento box cold lunch style meal. But, it also works well as a rice bowl! Swap out pasta or potatoes and you can have a great dinner leftovers rotation with a great carbohydrate base for any protein such as chicken, beef, or fish! This type of lunch has been a popular lunch for my high schoolers specifically. If you have athletes that practice after school, there is no better way to fuel them up before that practice than a meal that has substantial macros.
Bentgo Glass All-In-One Salad Container
More than just a salad bowl, this Bentgo Glass All-In-One salad style bento box can be used as a rice or pasta bowl as well. My kids love all the separate slots on the top part so they can pack more snacks on the side. This box will have more room than the glass box above, so when my kids have bigger appetites, this is the box we are reaching for. We have also found it works well for those days where they have both lunch and then an away track meet where they need more than just lunch. They will over pack their lunch and eat half at lunch and half on the bus on the way to the meet!
Lunch Examples using the Bentgo Glass All-In-One Salad Container
During cross country and track season, my active girls are not typically bringing salads to school. Even loaded salads just don’t cut it when they are that active. So typically they are using these Bentgo Glass Salad Style lunchboxes for dinner bowl leftovers, or even sandwich type lunches. It has a great capacity for food storage!
Thermoflask 20 Ounce Dinner Leftovers Thermos
When you have growing teenagers, little 8 ounce thermoses don’t really cut it for dinner leftovers anymore! These 20 ounce thermos containers are great for hot food lunches like leftover spaghetti from dinner. You can find all of our favorite thermos lunch ideas in this post, as well as tips for how to pack in a thermos to keep food hot.
Lunch Examples using the Thermoflask Dinner Leftovers Thermos
Lunchbots 8 Ounce Soup Thermos
Those smaller, 8 ounce thermoses we used when the girls were little aren’t a lost cause! When I make soups that are not full meals, these smaller thermoses are great for packing soup and then a small container (like this) on the side for the sandwich and sides. Some favorite soups to go with sandwiches for my crew are tomato soup, zucchini soup, butternut squash soup, and broccoli cheese soup (this one is in my cookbook, The Little Lunchbox Cookbook).
Lunch Examples using the Lunchbots 8 Ounce Soup Thermos
Lunch Bag Favorites for Teen Girls
My 16 and 14 year olds have used this bag for the last few years and really like it. It has a fantastic price point too. I even got one for myself because of the mom uber driver that I am! I need to eat too! Please use the comments section to tell us what your teen girls are approving of these days for lunchbags!
I didn’t forget the boys!
While we do have a house full of girls, I absolutely understand that the boys aren’t going to take those kind of bags to school for lunch. I did some looking around, and chatted with my sister to see what my teen nephews use and I thought their pick was really great! I listed it below, but I also encourage you to use the comments section to tell us what your teen boys are using at home that they approve of!
