Aussie mum shamed by a teacher in Japan for giving her son a Vegemite sandwich for lunch instead of a homemade box of bento.

ABC journalist Catherine Taylor said her son had just started pre-school in Toyko when she was reprimanded by a male teacher.

According to Ms Taylor, the man took a picture of her son’s lunch on his phone before telling her ‘sandwiches’ were not ‘appropriate’ food because they were ‘unhealthy’.

The teacher then showed her pictures of bento depicting popular Japanese cartoons such as Hello Kitty and the Pokemon Pikachu, indicating that she should follow those standards.

Ms Taylor said she had originally packed her son a lunch of Vegemite sandwiches, a banana, muffin and capsicum slices and admitted that it looked ‘very yellow’.

“I told him this was a pretty typical lunch for a young child where I came from — so what should I do differently?”

The teacher promptly produced more photographs on his phone saying, “These are some of the lunchboxes that other children brought with them today.”

The mum shared on ABC, “I thought the teacher was joking: it could not be possible that any parent would produce such a thing for a pre-schooler’s lunch. I waited for him to burst out laughing — gotcha! The teacher’s face was stern.”

Is there anything wrong with the good old vegemite sandwich?

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