This HuffPost Canada page is maintained as part of an online archive.

Unpacking My Obsession With Lunchables

Why was I jonesing so hard for "white-people lunch" when I was young?

Only in America could cold boxes filled with bologna coins, processed cheese slices, crackers and a sugary treat boom into a billion-dollar empire.

This is the legacy of Lunchables, the fast-food product that sent cold-cut giant Oscar Mayer into a panic in the 1980s because it couldn't keep up with consumer demand. It was the lunch every kid wanted.

And that was especially true for me as a third-grader, walking towards my elementary school's cafeteria, holding my non-Lunchables lunch in hand.

If you grew up in an Asian household in Canada, chances are you suffered that same, dreadful cafeteria rite. It was lampooned on the ABC sitcom "Fresh Off The Boat," when the main character, a young Eddie Huang, is mortified after the mere sight of his container of thick noodles sets off a wave of repulsion in the lunchroom.

"Get it out of here. Ying Ming is eating worms!" heckles a white kid after throwing an arm over his face to cover his nose.

Eddie later begs his mom at dinner:

"I need white-people lunch. That gets me a seat at the table," he tells his mom, played by actress Constance Wu. "And then you get to change the rules. Represent. Like Nas did."

I wanted to represent, too. But not as "Zi-Ann: the weird-name kid with the funk lunches." When my parents emigrated from China, I doubt they expected their home-cooked leftovers would make their future kids wince with dread, let alone spur a ripple of disgust among other schoolchildren. Kids can be dicks, we know that as adults. But see enough of those scrunched-up faces and a sense of shame can develop — and stick.

My mother didn't get the appeal of Lunchables. But I wanted Lunchables because as a non-white kid growing up in a predominantly white Toronto east-end neighbourhood, school lunches were when I first became uncomfortably aware that my Chineseness wasn't a social asset — it could be a liability.

There were nearly 700 kids at Jackman Avenue Junior Public School, and only a handful were Chinese. A yearning to be white naturally developed in me. And somewhere along the way, an Oscar Mayer product was folded into the fantasy.