Lunch
We also sat down with the kids while they ate lunch on Monday…
Our kids are picky eaters, it is sometimes hard to get them to eat anything, let alone anything even vaguely healthful. Neither one of them seemed particularly interested in their food; Gunilla had to do her standard “one more bite” routine to get Lynessa to finish the hot dog she’d gotten with her “Lunchable”, and Lynnaea barely touched her “pizza” Lunchable as far as I could tell (or her school chocolate milk).
Ever look at the nutrition data on a Lunchable? Yikes. The things are loaded with fat and salt, have no fruit or vegetables, and consist entirely of highly processed foods… nutrition experts call them “empty calories”.
Take a look at what this person had to say on her “The 10 Commandments … for Foods You Should Never Eat!” page:
Oscar Mayer Lunchables. It would be hard to invent a worse food than these combos of heavily processed meat, artery-clogging cheese, and mostly-white-flour crackers. The regular line averages 4 teaspoons of fat and 1,790 mg of sodium. And the Lean Turkey Breast and Cheddar cheese on 8 half-dollar-sized “wheat” crackers has as much saturated fat as a couple of pork chops. The Fun Packs and Pizza and Taco Bell kits are almost as bad. As for Oscar Mayer’s Low Fat and Reduced Fat Lunchables, they may have about half the fat of regular Lunchables, but they’re still a junk food. Instead, try 8 Reduced Fat Triscuits (they’re whole wheat) and 2 slices of any Healthy Choice Cold Cuts.
That about sums it up. Bleah. Even the school lunches, much as the read like a fast food menu, are vastly better (legal requirements for some form of balanced nutrition help).
Lunchables may be munchable — but study warns of salt
March 16, 1997
Web posted at: 10:55 p.m. EST (0355 GMT)
From Correspondent Al Hinman
ANAHEIM, California (CNN) — Medical researchers are issuing a dietary warning about Lunchables, a convenience food marketed as a complete meal that’s popular with children.
The problem, in a word, is salt, according to a study being released at the American College of Cardiologists annual conference.
