The children have been back in school for a week in Ottawa’s French school board and recent scares about processed meats and plastic containers have sure made lunch-making a bit of a challenge. Lunch-making is the bane of my existence. I am certain that Hell is paved with lunch-making. Please don’t write that risks related to plastics and processed meats have been exaggerated by the press. When a spokesman from the cosmetic industry tells me that levels of lead in my lipsticks are “acceptable,” I beg to wonder “acceptable for who?” I’m of the prudent kind who believes that if lead is bad for you, none is better than a little. Same goes for hormone-mimicking chemicals in plastics or chances of catching a deadly illness from tainted meat. Sure, my sons run a greater risk of dying in a fiery crash from being driven around than growing a uterus from drinking bisphenol-A-laden water. Still, I think that if risks related to meat processing agents, plastics, lead and other hair coloring ingredients are low, there is such a thing as a cumulative effect. Think of cigarettes and lung cancer: one smoke might not kill you but a lifetime of smoking on the other hand…

So out with the sandwiches. Oh. My. Goodness. Now what?? What I don’t understand is how children who have been eating salami sandwiches day-in day-out for several years get sick of tuna sandwiches within a week. What do they put in their salami? Crystal meth? If anything, this makes me even more dubious of processed meats than before. But it also makes me think about a different pace, a different lifestyle, when children came home for lunch. When I was a kid, most children went home for lunch and school lunches were exceptional, a special treat. In any case, there was nobody at school to look after children during lunch break. My children never came home for lunch: even when I was at home, we lived too far from the school for them to walk and picking them up every day was difficult. But friends whose children have consistently come home for lunch talk about it like a privileged moment where the children get to unload their morning before taking on the afternoon.

As I am throwing plastic containers and lunch meats out the window, I can’t help but think that the long gone days where someone – usually mom – held the fort even after the children had started school were not only slower, they were also healthier. And we keep finding out in how many ways by the day it seems.