save the lunch box

  • TARGET GROUP: 6th – 7th grade (+ electives 8th – 9th)
  • SUBJECT: Food science
  • COMPETENCE AREA: Meal and food culture
  • DURATION: 4 teaching sessions
  • LEARNING OBJECTIVES: Students understand the food package as a social marker and that they can create past, present and future food packages.

Teaching food science

Is the lunch box disappearing? In this teaching material, students will help save the packed lunch from disappearing from our history. They’ll explore the past, present and future of packed lunches.

The course can be organized over four lessons and alternate between the classroom and food science. Students will investigate the food packages of the past, make a real classic working-class food package, meet contemporary food packages and make the food packages of the future.

Find teacher’s guides, student materials, videos and recipes below – ready to use in your classroom.

Educational material

TEACHER'S GUIDE

Everything you need to know to run the Save the Lunchbox course

STUDENT BOOKLET

Print the booklet or work with it digitally. Here are all the tasks for students to work with.

THE STORY OF THE LUNCH BOX

Watch the 2 minute animated film. tells the cultural history of the lunch box.

FRK. JENSENS LIVER PATE

Download Miss Jensen's original recipe for liver pate from 1901. Print it in A3.

ALL RECIPES FOR TEACHING

Homemade liver patties, potato food and fat food. Print the recipes in A3.

INSPIRATION CATALOG

Find inspiration with hits from the history of packed lunches. Print in A3 and hang up in the food classroom.

The history of packed lunches

Historien om madpakken 🥕 🥔

4 out of 10 packed lunches contain liver pate and we pack 11 million lunches every week! But why and how did it get there?

With industrialization, workers moved from the countryside to the city. In the countryside, they went home and ate hot food on the farm in the middle of the day. The arrival of factories turned the daily routine upside down. This happened especially when the midday break was shortened as the working day shortened in the 1880s. Cold, buttered food made its appearance in earnest and packed lunches became a necessity for workers to make ends meet.

The movie takes you through the history of the packed lunch and how it became the most widely used lunch today.

Taking your lunch box on the road

How can you use the Red lunch box?

Save the Lunchbox is a didactized curriculum that you can freely use in your food science classroom. Use it as a whole or select individual parts. Find inspiration for your organization in the teacher’s guide.

Combine the course with a trip to the Labor Museum or your local cultural history museum.