Lunchables, Other Lunch Packs Reviewed

I love Lunchables. Introduced by Oscar Mayer in my middle-school years, they played a part in a defining moment of my 7th-grade ostracization when I unwittingly ate a stacked cracker topped with a lump of quivering mucus. I was told it was mustard and held fast to my innocence, but it didn’t prevent me from being labeled “the weird kid that ate a loogie.” Soon I was eating whole sheets of notebook paper for a dollar.

How delicious are they, though? (Lunchables, not loogies.) Coins of meat product floating in a soup of greasy water, rich slices of oily cheese, and cold, damp crackers; It’s a testament to the putrescence of late ’80s school cuisine that these were considered the pinnacle of mid-day eating every time it wasn’t “cubes of pepperoni pizza day.”

It seems Lunchables are really bad for you, though, filled with high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and enough sodium to turn your stomach into a lifeless Dead Sea. The new varieties lack the simplicity of a stacked cracker with mustard, offering up travesties like chicken chunks onto which a Pop Rocks-like powder is to be slathered. Bring back the mustard and the tiny chocolate after-dinner mint!

Are any premade lunches worth buying? [Slate via The Consumerist]