The hugely popular Lunchables are perhaps the best-known example of the modern lab lunch.
They are truly an example of the industrialized food system gone horribly awry and a populace completely out of touch with how to nourish its children.
Highly processed, enticingly packaged creations targeted to young children, nutrient-poor Lunchables are offered in numerous combinations to suit any young, impressionable palate. The Lunchables brand boasts 26 different varieties of meal combos. Examples include crackers, pizzas, small hot dogs, small burgers, nachos, subs, and pseudo healthy wraps.
The meats are frequently cut, filled, and/or extended with hormone-disrupting soy protein. Further, this GMO frankenfood is disguised under a variety of aliases.
Lunchables also can include an assortment of drinks and desserts. The drink is commonly a GMO high fructose corn syrup laden Capri Sun or Tropical Punch flavored Kool-Aid mix with bottled water. Desserts would be jello or pudding or a candy alternative, like Reese’s cups or Butterfingers.
I’ve often wondered how corporate executives who come up with these products live with themselves.
Now, thanks to author Michael Moss, author of Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, now we know. They are in complete denial.
These individuals truly believe they are doing the public a favor by providing cheap, convenience foods “fortified” with synthetic vitamins.
Lunchables Inventor’s Children Don’t Eat What Daddy Created
Bob Drane, Lunchables inventor, whose own upper-middle-class children don’t eat what Daddy created for “other” children, had this to say:
“I wish that the nutritional profile of the thing could have been better, but I don’t view the entire project as anything but a positive contribution to people’s lives.”
Drane’s own daughter confessed: “We eat healthy (sic).”
Industry executives disgusted with this elitist, hypocritical approach to business are, unfortunately, not as common as those with their heads in the sand.
The lone example provided by Moss in his book is Jeffrey Dunn, a rapidly rising executive for Coca-Cola who rose almost to the top of the ladder. While working for Coke, he said he achieved peace of mind by simply not allowing himself to think about what he actually sold.
He changed his mind abruptly on a business trip to Brazil in 2001. Dunn’s marching orders from Coca-Cola were simple: find the best way to push Coke on poor Brazilian kids living in the ghettos.
After that eye-opening trip, Dunn tried for 4 years to change Coke from the inside. Unsuccessful, he left the company, unable to stand the relentless marketing to the poor and Coke addicted a moment longer.
As consumers, we really should not be surprised by the behavior of the majority of Big Food executives.
After all, the job of marketing is to sell “lots of stuff and make lots of money” according to Sergio Zyman, marketing head of Coca-Cola during the 1990s.
It is up to us as parents to choose not to pack lab lunches for our children and to say no with our food dollars. A growing number of consumers buying their food consciously will, over time, force companies to consider the moral consequences of their products – else they won’t win our business.
For some easy ideas to wean off Lunchables, here are some ideas on how to pack a healthy school lunch.
References
Our Broken Food System, Sally Fallon Morell
Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, Michael Moss
Thanks for misleading information. Bob Drane never said that he never fed that to his children. His daughter said “she and her kids eat healthy and that they know grandpa invented it. but to the best of her knowledge she doesnt think her kids ever ate one..
Thank you for taking the time to point this out! This is a fantastic book and very enlightening. This article highlights some great points, but I really think this is a book everyone needs to read, even if your time is limited. I listened to it on audio borrowed from the library whilst cooking, doing housework, etc.
You’re right; Lunchables are a disgusting excuse for a meal, and, while I do understand the rush to get the kids out the door, etc. and picky eaters, these things should be taken off the market. You also cite Dunn, a rare shining example of someone living up to their own morals. Thank you!
I would love for someone (hint, hint) to go after Crustables.
I can’t prove it but I bet over half of the corn sugar is purchased with Tax dollars. Public schools, and prisons do a lot to support big ag. The tax dollars that go into social programs like SS, and welfare pay the cable, bill so these people can be programed to buy junk food with the balance of the tax dollars given to them. Then you have the grain subsidies for corn soybeans, wheat, cotton seed, and rice. Even if you have never consumed a single soybean you pay taxes to support their production.
I’m not sure the wise food choices made by the thinking minority will exceed those poor food choices made with their tax dollars.
When my kids were young, we weren’t eating according to WAP standards yet but I still cooked most every meal and (almost) never bought the Lunchables. I knew they were a pure convenience food and honestly, the contents were tasteless. However, my kids wanted to have the Lunchables really bad so our compromise was something I read in a parenting magazine back then: Momables. What I did was buy 1 Lunchable of their choice and they ate it with instructions to save the plastic container it came in. Then, when they wanted a “Lunchable” for lunch, I used that plastic container and filled it with our own crackers, deli meats, etc., and slipped it into a quart-size Ziploc: The Momable. They saved the plastic container and that Ziploc, I washed them when they got home, and stashed them away for the next time. Honestly for my kids, it was more the packaging that they wanted, not necessarily the food. It was a good compromise for our family.
I completely agree it is up to us as consumers to refuse to buy these products and opt for real food! More and more people are buying from their local farmers and refusing processed food!
This actually reminds me of a story that Sarah has in the archives about a preschooler whose homemade lunch was taken away at school because it was not nutritious enough. The homemade lunch that included a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice was exchanged for a chicken nugget lunch that was supposedly more nutritious. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/big-brother-is-checking-your-childs-lunchbox/
Why was a teacher taking away a nutritious homemade lunch (aside from maybe the potato chips) while these processed, genetically modified and chemical laden boxes pass for lunch in the very same school cafeterias?
drk has it exactly right: our tax dollars are basically helping to create these products by subsidizing the GMO-laden raw materials, which are then further degraded into stomach Launchables. Maybe in the future they could offer purchase premiums like diabetic testing supplies and insulin? Let’s stop subsidizing sickness, let consumers decide what is produced and redouble our efforts to educate through sites like this (and books by Moss and Fallon — both of which authors my friend and I had mentioned in our recent correspondence)!
Be sure to read Fallon’s review of Moss’s book, linked at the end of the article above.
So sad that big companies care less about the well being of consumers at the expense of making huge profits. Thanks for sharing this insightful post.
I’ll tell you what’s even scarier to me? I fed these to my children twenty years or so ago…they were brand new on the market, and quite frankly, this passed as somewhat healthy fare back then. At least that’s where my awareness was. 🙁 I recently bought Moss’s book, but haven’t yet read it. Now I’m eager to delve in. I’m shaking my head.
You might want to read Sally Fallon’s review of this book first, linked with the article above.