Who writes this
Evan Shoemaker. Dad of two, figuring out lunch and building Five Lunches.
Hi. I'm Evan. I have two young kids, I pack a lot of lunches, and I am still figuring most of it out.
I build software for a living, so when the same small decision went badly every single morning I did the obvious thing and built something. That's Five Lunches: a place to keep the foods your kid actually eats, plan the week, and shop from a list that sorted itself. The blog is the part I couldn't put in an app. What to buy, what survives a backpack until noon, and why the box keeps coming home full.
I don't have the answers
Worth saying plainly and near the top: I'm not a dietitian, a nutritionist or a doctor, and I have no credentials in any of it. Plenty of sites in this corner of the internet imply otherwise, so I'd rather be boring about it.
What I do have is a few thousand packed lunches, two kids with firm opinions, and too much time spent reading labels under warehouse lighting. That's enough to write about the logistics: containers, timing, temperature, shopping, what gets eaten and what comes back. It isn't enough to write about your child's nutrition, so I don't.
What you'll find, and what you won't
- Here: what to pack, what to buy and where, how to plan a week without deciding at 7am, what lasts until lunchtime, and why a lunch comes home untouched.
- Not here: what your child should be eating, anything resembling a diagnosis, or a number for calories, macros or growth. Those belong to someone qualified.
- Allergens: I write about them as a shopping and label-reading problem, because in a supermarket that's what they are. The medical half belongs to your allergist. Nothing here ever calls a food safe. Same rule the app runs on: I can't read your package, and I don't know what a brand changed last quarter.
- Numbers: if a post quotes one, it's sourced at the bottom. If it isn't sourced, treat it as me eyeballing it.
When experience isn't enough
Some posts get read by someone actually qualified before they go up. Those carry a Checked by line under the byline, with a name and their credentials. A post without one has been checked by me and nobody else.
Tell me when I'm wrong
I'd genuinely rather know. Email me at evan@fivelunches.com and I'll fix it in the post, with an updated date on it so you can see it moved. Nothing gets quietly edited.
Say hello
Same address for anything else: evan@fivelunches.com. Ideas for posts, a snack that works, a thing the app should do, a thing the app does badly. I read all of it and I reply to most of it. If you're packing lunches too, you know something I don't.
1 post so far. All of them, or the feed.