Today I had a lovely chat with a gentlemen on the phone asking about the best products to insulate a left over casserole for work. Initially he wanted to use a normal container and an insulated bag, but I explained that the heat insulation in cooler bags isn't ideal for keeping food hot for long periods of time, and if you did attempt it, you would need a heat pack in the bag. Even then, keeping food hot is a lot more difficult than keeping it cool, so I came up with an alternative.

When most people think of insulating food and drink, they think of Thermos. While it's a brand name, it's also a generic term thrown around to mean insulation. Thermos do make a Food & Drink Series, and they come in 800ml, 1.2 litre and 1.8 litre. Capacity wise, they're the clear winner for carrying larger volumes around, but they have their drawbacks for this particular customer.

1) they're tall and narrow and it's difficult to get a spoon down in to the bottom
2) they have a plastic inner lid and this customer wanted an all stainless steel interior

If you look at the picture above, you will see products from 2 brands, Klean Kanteen and Lunchbots. All the products in the photo have a fully stainless steel interior, including the inside of the lid, so there's no plastic touching your food. If you take a curry to work one day and chicken soup the next, the plastic lid may retain flavour from earlier meals, so the fully stainless steel interior really does come in handy.

The Lunchbots Thermal in the front of the picture ended up being the winner because of the shape. It's a bowl. It's wide and short, not easily tipped over and it's really easy to get a spoon or a fork in.It's just under 500ml in capacity at 473ml, which is half a litre. By comparison, the coloured flasks (which are actually multi-tasking stainless steel water bottles) are 355ml in capacity (purple), 473ml (red) and 592ml (black). The Lunchbots is half the height and twice the diameter as you can see in the photograph.

The two plain silver products in the photo are dedicated insulated food jars from Klean Kanteen and are 237ml in capacity (top) and 473ml (bottom) so you can see it is wider than the coloured stainless steel water bottles, but not as wide as the Lunchbots.

The benefit of the plain silver Klean Kanteen food flasks is they actually have no plastic anywhere and can be put in the dishwasher to clean. The others can't.

Find all our insulated food jars and other lunch solutions in the lunch boxes category which is then split in to sub-categories for stainless steel, bpa free plastic, glass, bentos, lunch bags, reusable pockets, cutlery and more.