Photo: iStock | Canva
Should School Cafeterias Welcome Lunchables?
Kraft Heinz’s move to get its ready-to-eat packaged Lunchables into school cafeterias starting this fall has drawn pushback from parent groups and nutrition advocates due to concerns over adding processed, branded foods to school menus.
Kraft’s two SKUs entering the program — “Lunchables Turkey and Cheddar Cracker Stackers” and “Lunchables Extra Cheesy Pizza” — have been reformulated to comply with federal nutrition guidelines under the National School Lunch Program. The versions aren’t being sold at grocers.
The Lunchables will be available in cafeterias for purchase and as part of the free school lunch program. Under the NSLP program, schools receive cash subsidies for each eligible meal they serve. Studies have shown that American kids get their healthiest meals at school, thanks to federal requirements.
For schools, the program promises labor and cost savings, including not requiring freezing, and that they’re “great for field trips, summer school, dinner programs,” according to Kraft marketing material. Finicky young tastebuds may also be won over with Kraft claiming Lunchables are “among the most loved U.S. brands by kids” with 93% awareness.
For Kraft, the initiative, first disclosed in February, helps tap the educational foodservice channel that’s seen as an untapped $25 billion market. The Kraft brand also gets in front of a new generation of consumers.
“The kids have it and then they go to retail and they see it,” Carlos Abrams-Rivera, Kraft’s head of North America who will take over as CEO in 2024, recently told the Wall Street Journal. “[It’s] a penetration machine.”
Introduced in 1988, Lunchables has become a billion-dollar business with its appeal to both kids and busy parents, but it has also faced critics.
“Lunchables was really kind of the first item in the grocery store that brought the fast-food industry into the supermarket,” Michael Moss, the investigative journalist and author of “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us,” told FreightWaves. “You really didn’t have stuff in the supermarket that you could just rip open, walk out of the supermarket and eat walking down the street if you wanted to.”
Kraft has committed in recent years to reducing sugar, sodium, saturated fat, and calories across its products. In August, Kraft announced Lunchables would be sold in produce aisles for the first time in a partnership with Fresh Del Monte to add fresh fruit to meals.
The Wall Street Journal notes that since the Lunchables school initiative was first proposed in February, more than 100 people have submitted letters to the U.S. Department of Agriculture expressing concerns.
“The Lunchables on the cafeteria line are different from what’s in the grocery store,” Sam Hahn, a policy coordinator for school foods at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told Ad Age. “But kids don’t know that, and it could lead them to associate this with what’s in the grocery store.”
However, reports indicate that many schools are struggling to source sufficient options that meet government-imposed nutrition standards with stricter standards being proposed.
“As much as everyone would love to be doing entirely scratch cooking in school cafeterias, that is not gonna be a reality for most schools across the nation for a very long time,” Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokesperson for the nonprofit School Nutrition Association, told Business Insider. “There’s just not the equipment, the labor, the facilities to accommodate that level of scratch cooking.”
Discussion Questions
Should parents be concerned about nutrition-upgraded variations of Kraft Lunchables arriving at school cafeterias? What are the pros and cons of having brands become more involved with school meal programs for brands, schools, and kids?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Gary Sankary
Retail Industry Strategy, Esri
Georganne Bender
Principal, KIZER & BENDER Speaking
Schools face a lot of challenges in providing meals to students, not least because, like everyone else, they have been impacted by inflation. Serving Lunchables seems like a good solution that is cost-effective and efficient; and, as an occasional snack I see nothing wrong with it. However, as a regular lunch option I don’t think Lunchables are healthy or balanced – even with the reformulated ingredients there is still way too much sodium, and the product is over-processed. We can do better here.
Parents shouldn’t be highly concerned. They should be over-the-top concerned. The American diet is 73% ultra-processed foods, among the highest in the world. American children rank among the highest in diet-related health issues. Diabetes in children is considered an epidemic. So what do we do? We give the kids more factory food.
But it is OK. Lunchables are reformulated to meet federal standards. The same standards that qualifies ketchup as a vegetable.
If food manufacturers would take their responsibility seriously, the nation’s and world’s health might improve. The Heinz mission statement seems to forget health and nutrition. “We’re committed to making life delicious for our people, our consumers, and our communities worldwide. Being one of the world’s leading food and beverage companies is a privilege and a huge responsibility.” The company is surely following thier mission statement.
Is it possible to enjoy delicious and nutritious food without factory-processed ingredients? I enjoy it every day.
Amen!!!!
This would be a huge concern for me if my kids were still in school.
The American diet is crammed with highly processed, high-calorie, low-nutrition foods. This move would reinforce bad eating habits for kids when they’re still learning about how to eat healthily.
This. No go for me for the same reason. We want hot meals or meals with nutritional value in them for our children.
Lunchables isn;t it.
So, there is an acknowledged obesity crisis in this country and something like 77% of age eligible men are not fit enough to be in any armed services branch.
So, yes, absolutely, let’s start feeding our children more processed food! Why? Because it is profitable for Kraft and lowers costs for schools, and that is all that should matter!
It should also be pointed out that schools are (I assume the schools referenced are public) already (in many states) the supposed beneficiaries of various state lottery revenue schemes (which act as a regressive tax on lower income citizens since they are the overwhelming “Players” of these games). But-nevermind that-how can schools possibly be expected to afford to cook fresh food?
Horrible idea for schools. Horrible for students. I have to acknowledge from a purely economic standpoint it is a great idea by Kraft, however, and that seems to be winning the day here.
My suggestion: stop providing meals altogether. Avoiding lunch altogether would be better for kids than feeding them these packaged meals. Mischief managed!
YOUR POINT IS PERFECTLY MADE…”Avoiding lunch altogether would be better for kids than feeding them these packaged meals.”
Should school
Cafeterias welcome Lunchables? That’s a big no from me.
The article did say that the Lunchables served in schools are different from the Lunchables found grocery stores, but I couldn’t find what the difference was because the linked article talking about it is behind a pay wall.
That being said, school lunch is so important. For some kids it’s the main meal of the day, and that meal should not be prepackaged cold pizza. Schools have cut back on too many things already. Schools lunches should not be one of them.
There are so many things about this article that … well, frankly … confuse me. To start with, how is it that one charges for items in a “free” lunch program. If you pay for it, as they say, there’s no free lunch. Also what sense does it make for a brand to reformulate? That’s an explicit admission that the publicly distributed formulation of the product is in fact not as healthy as it should be or as advertised. Finally, convenience aside, what message does selling prepackaged, highly processed send to kids? So yes, parents should be concerned. In fact they should be up in arms about this program and so should all those consumers of “less healthy” versions of Lunchables, parents or not. Somebody clearly didn’t think this one through too well.
I’m not a fan of packaged, processed food, especially for children who are developing eating habits.
“[It’s] a penetration machine” Mr Carlos-Rivera may come to regret his candor, but we should thank him for it: I see absolutely no “pros” in this idea. That we’re even discussing it is embarrassing.
The fastest answer to does this make sense or not is whether or not the entire product line has been reformulated to meet federal nutrition guidelines for school lunch. The answer is no. This does not make sense.
Kids and busy parents will not easily discern the difference between the products served in schools and the products sold in stores. Ultimately, this is a fine line of ethics in advertising that requires closer examination.
Many brands have good cause to petition national school lunch programs. This is clearly monetization of white space for Kraft Heinz and thereby brand teams would not be doing their jobs if they didn’t explore it.
However that slippery space of product ingredients in between stores and schools is a problem. If the product meets school lunch nutritional guidelines in one place but not the other, this should sound the alarms for all involved, Kraft Heinz, schools and parents, full stop.