Are there prepared lunches comparable to Oscar Mayer Lunchables” that are healthier and more environmentally friendly?
— Carla Bahun, Marietta, Ga. Oscar Mayer’s Lunchables are a hit with youngsters because of their bright packaging and fun-to-eat snacks. However, like much of the junk food marketed to children today, behind those colorful boxes and tasty treats lies a spectrum of potential health disasters. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) offers 10 tips in creating a nutritional lunch, and one of them is ‘Don’t send Lunchables,” because the snacks derive ‘two-thirds of their calories from fat and sugar.” CSPI also includes Lunchables among their list of the ‘Top 10 Foods to Avoid” because, ‘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 (non-lowfat) line averages 5 1/2 teaspoons of fat (that’s 60 percent of calories) and 1,734 milligrams of sodium.” Moreover, Lunchables’ form of attractive packaging is environmentally unfriendly. It consists of a plastic tray cut into various
