Where have you been all my life?

Some people may know this about me: I like food.

It doesn’t have to be fancy or special. I prefer eating out whenever possible, but I’m also into cooking. If you took a look at my Quicken, it would tell you my food expenditures rival almost everything else.

That said, I’m horrible with leftovers, and I’m not someone who naturally thinks, “You know what sounds good tonight? The chicken I made three days ago.”

Especially when fast food is right around the corner.

But politics and arguments about inflation aside, eating out—fast food or otherwise—has gotten expensive. I ignored it and stuck with my routine far longer than most probably should. Food was one of the things I was raised to spend extra money on. It’s not just fuel. I enjoy it.

So if I’m going to start taking my lunch to work, I’m not packing deli-meat sandwiches every day, and frozen TV dinners bring back memories of my twenties that I’d rather not relive.

That leaves meal prep.

Fortunately, meal prep has gotten considerably easier. Instagram has become an endless stream of recipes, and there are now apps that will take one of those videos and turn it into an actual digital recipe card. My favorite so far is ReciMe.

The problem became: How do I make that food at work feel like a meal instead of leftovers?

How do I make something taste closer to the first time it was made and less like something reheated from yesterday—or, worse, last week?

And if I can do that without stopping work, walking to the breakroom, waiting for the microwave, stirring it, heating it again and carrying it back to my desk, even better.

Enter the cordless heated lunch box.

My Gateway Drug: Vabaso

I started with—and still use—the Vabaso heated lunch box, which I paid around $80 for.

And I love this thing.

It’s battery powered, programmable and controllable from my phone. It can heat up to 248°F, although I rarely need anything close to that.

Through some experimentation, I’ve found that somewhere around 210°F for 45 minutes handles most meals pretty well. If something needs more time, more heat, or I actually want liquid getting close to a boil, I have that option.

The important part is that I don’t have to think much about it.

Put lunch in it. Tell it when and how to heat. Keep working.

Then eat.

That is exactly the level of culinary effort I’m looking for at noon on a workday.

Then You Start Looking at the Expensive Ones

Once you realize heated lunch boxes are a thing, naturally you start looking at what else exists.

LunchEAZE is probably the established premium choice. Depending on the model, you’re moving into roughly the $120–$240 range, with automatic scheduled heating, different capacities and more polished hardware.

I’m sure I’ll eventually convince myself I need one.

But honestly, the Vabaso was a great way to find out whether this was something I’d actually use before spending $200+ on a lunch box.

And apparently I will.

Frequently.

Now Heat and Cool My Food

After a few months, though, I’ve figured out what’s missing.

I want lunch and a snack.

Maybe fruit. Vegetables. Yogurt. Something I want to keep cold while the other half of my lunch is eventually getting hot.

That’s why LunchOn caught my attention.

It’s a modular lunch system currently being developed through Kickstarter that combines heating and active cooling with different-sized food containers.

Now we’re talking.

Main meal gets hot. Fruit stays cold. One battery-powered system handles both.

It looks extremely cool.

It also falls squarely into the category of “I’ve backed enough technology Kickstarters to know better.”

They have a working product and seem serious about bringing it to market, so I’m watching. But I’ll let somebody else be the early adopter this time and see what actually ships.

Which probably demonstrates how far I’ve fallen down this particular rabbit hole.

A year ago, I wouldn’t have believed I could have strong opinions about heated lunch boxes.

Yet here we are.

Oh, heated lunch boxes. Where have you been all my life?