ATTENTION all Parents… do you really know what is in those lunchables?

I ran a summer camp this past year at a large school and I was SHOCKED at what the kids were bringing to lunch everyday. LUNCHABLES!!!!! I realized at that moment how powerful marketing really is.

So parents a little health education for you. When you read the ingredients in a label, the fewer there are the better. Also the more ingredients you recognize even greater. I challenge you to read a lunchable the next time you go to put one in your cart. You have to be a scientist in a lab that makes them to be able to recognize any of those ingredients. Worse than that you need glasses to read them because the print is so small to fit all the ingredients in and you might as well sit down because it will take you a while to read the box. In a CNN health article, Dr. Clarence Grim stated, “The packages should carry a warning label.” There, that should give you a clue how horrible these fun, cute, easy to do lunches are that we are giving our beautiful, nutrient deficient kids.

Marketing and advertising wins kids over all the time. They see how cool they look, and all their friends have them so now they have to too. What they don’t tell you is really hurting our children. So when your kid wines and cries and throws a temper tantrum because they have to have one of these cool lunches think twice about what is more important… your child’s health or how cool they think the lunchables are?

My suggestion is take them to the grocery store with you and teach them about label reading. The more organic the better and remember to look at the ingredients on a label first. Fat, calories, and sugar content is second to ingredients. When something says low fat in big letters on the front of it, it is the marketing ploy to get you to buy it. What they are not telling you is that they have replaced the fat with chemicals that will be stored in the body as fat because they won’t be digested.

Food truly can be fun, easy, affordable, tasty and healthy. It is just a matter of the proper education and your attitude. Try making your own lunchable by buying a reusable lunch box with compartments just like the lunchables and add things like organic chicken nuggets, carrots and celery with organic peanut butter, vitamin water that tastes great, and two organic small cookies. Real ingredients. Real good.