Time Efficient Packed Lunches


November 7, 2025 by Michael Kirk - Efficiency Is Everything

When my daughter came home with uneaten Red Pepper slices, something Mrs. Efficiency had spent labor to cut up, I decided this had to be studied.

Bonus points if your kid packs their own lunch. Although given pre-school chaos, this might be more ideal than real. Could pack lunches at night.

Specifications/Requirements

A packed lunch had a requirement Not to be something heated. No leftovers would meet this criteria. The grey area here is that some typically warm foods like Pizza are enjoyed cold. This can be cultural, and more power to anyone who can eat leftovers cold.

Food must have some caloric content to give energy for the rest of the day. A bunch of celery sticks isn’t enough, even if by volume they could satiate and fill a stomach. Let us set a goal for ~500 calories.

Foods must have some desired nutritional content. Protein and vitamins are deemed universally acceptable in this case.

Known winners

Ready to eat Fruit and Vegetables

The best:

  • Bananas immediately come to mind. They are among the most perfect of foods that satisfy the Requirements. ~100 calories, have vitamins, and take almost no time to put into a lunchbox.
  • Small, easy peal, Oranges, they arent as many calories, but I suppose you could get larger oranges or pack multiple.
  • Dried fruit, these are semi-heavy in calories, depending on the fruit they have varying amounts of nutrition. Dried blueberries are higher in nutrition than rasins, but more generally these are great options
  • Baby Carrots, low in calories but high in nutrition

Lesser options that come to mind, but they have some downsides:

  • Blueberries also need to be washed, but have significant enough vitamins and enough of them do hit caloric goals.
  • Strawberries need to be washed and are relatively low calorie, but they do have significant vitamins.
  • Apples, they need to be washed and do not have the vitamin content found in Bananas or Oranges.
  • Grapes, these also need to be washed and similar to apples do not have the vitamin content found in Bananas or Oranges.
  • Celery Sticks, these don’t to be washed, but they are low calorie and low vitamin, these are somewhat a waste of time, but could be filling by volume.

As you can see, spending time washing fruit is an unwanted time-sink. To save time, you could get all your fruit out, wash it at the start of the week and package it.

Protein

Smoked/preserved meats come to mind as ‘The Best’ when it comes to fast. I am aware that these are costly and potentially have carcinogenic properties, but I believe it would be wrong to not include them for their Efficiency:

  • Beef Jerky: Expensive but tasty
  • Meat Sticks: Heavier in fats could be useful if trying to hit caloric goals

  • Lunchmeat: Turkey, Ham, that sliced stuff. This is only Efficient if you don’t make a sandwhich, however if you were going to add something simple like bread, cheese, or mayo to supplement calories(see later section), this could be acceptable. Just don’t spend time adding something calorie-free mustard.

Lesser:

  • Hardboiled eggs: Easy enough to toss a carton of eggs in water, let it boil, and use them all week. Eggs have lots of nutrition and for a caloric goal, fat.
  • Nuts: High in calories and often banned at schools, at least it has some protein.

Calories

These are almost too easy.

  • Crackers
  • Bread
  • Cheese sticks
  • Cereal
  • Yogurt
  • Granola Bars
  • Trail Mix

Covering everything in oil. As long as it takes almost 0 time to prepare, I consider these meeting requirements.

Completed pre-packed lunches

We all know about Lunchables and similar foods. They follow this

Things to avoid

As mentioned earlier, avoid:

  • Washing
  • Cutting/Chopping
  • Complexity: Keep the number of items limited so you aren’t making many trips to cabinets, pantry, and refrigerator.

What combinations can you vision?

Considering everything said, could you further optimize by getting items from the same location? Hypothetically, if you were making a lunch with Beef Jerky, a banana, and crackers, you could put everything in the same spot on the counter, and pack everything without taking any extra steps. Alternatively and a bit more strange, if you were making a lunch of meat sticks, dried fruit, and crackers, could you put everything in the refrigerator?