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Mum makes bento box art to encourage her kids to eat
In order to improve her kids’ eating habits, Filipino mum Nikki Garcia decided to play with their food, albeit in an artsy way with the Japanese tradition of bento lunch boxes.
Garcia had been having trouble getting her three children to eat healthy when she came across the concept of bento boxes on social media. Using her passion for arts and crafts, she was able to make culinary art (quite literally) out of her kids’ meals. And they loved it!
‘Like many other mums, I barely have time for myself. Bento-making allows me to exercise my creative ‘me’ time. [But] best of all, my kids benefit from my healthy food-art creations’, she told BuzzFeed.
Her bento boxes – or ‘imbento boxes’, a play on the Filipino word ‘imbento’, which means ‘invent’ – feature characters her kids love, like Super Mario, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Spongebob Squarepants.
‘We all share ideas for new designs and themes for tomorrow’s bento. The kids are excited to open their lunch, while I get excited when [I can] sneak in their veggies’, she adds. ‘Every morning, I allow myself time to ‘invent’ and put together fun and healthy meals for my kids to enjoy’.
‘Like a painter’s blank canvas, the possibilities are endless with bento making’.
