- Citing lack of demand, Kraft Heinz opts to pull Lunchables from the National School Lunch Program.
- Lunchables are unhealthy and should have never been offered to students, say consumer advocacy groups.
- At least two of Utah's' largest school districts — Jordan and Canyons — reported never offering Lunchables.
Those nostalgically stackable Lunchables are tumbling off the lunch menu — at least in U.S. schools utilizing the National School Lunch Program .
Kraft Heinz — the manufacturers of Lunchables — decided this week to pull the packaged lunch meals from NSLP-participating schools, calling it a business decision.
But nutritionists and consumer advocacy groups insist that’s a call Kraft Heinz should have made from the beginning, citing the product’s reportedly questionable nutritional content.
“While many school administrators were excited to have these options, the demand did not meet our targets,” Kraft Heinz told Reuters in a statement. “This happens occasionally across our broad portfolio, especially as we explore new sales channels.
“Lunchables products are not available in schools this year and we hope to revisit at a future date.”
Kraft Heinz introduced two specially designed packaged meals for the National School Lunch Program — one featuring pizza and the other a turkey/cheddar cheese/cracker plate — at the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year.
At the time, Kraft Heinz said the offerings were protein-enriched and contained reduced levels of saturated fat and sodium to meet the requirements of the national free and reduced-price school lunch program, The Associated Press reported.
But consumer advocacy groups were uneasy seeing Lunchables — a popular, convenient snack choice for many kids and their millennial parents — ever included in a government-sponsored nutrition program.
Earlier this year, Consumer Reports’ tests found that various Lunchables kits available at supermarkets contained potentially concerning levels of lead, phthalates (chemicals found in plastic), and very high sodium levels.
While Consumer Reports’ didn’t test the school lunch versions of the Lunchables kits, an analysis of their nutritional information showed they had even more sodium than the versions sold in stores, according to a Consumer Reports’ report. The nonprofit consumer organization petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture, asking the agency to set stricter standards so that highly processed, sodium-heavy kits such as Lunchables would not be offered as part of the NSLP programs.
“When you consider the high sodium content and our testing that showed the presence of heavy metals such as lead, it’s clear that products like these don’t belong in the school meal program,” Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, told the AP.
“In fact, they should not have been eligible in the first place. Our country’s food policies should maintain stricter standards for the school lunch program to ensure millions of kids have access to the healthier options they deserve.”
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, meanwhile, said having Lunchables in school cafeterias might confuse families into thinking the versions sold at supermarkets were a healthy option.
It’s uncertain if any of the NSLP-designed Lunchables were provided in any Utah schools, but representatives from two of the state’s largest school districts — Canyons and Jordan — told the Deseret News that their respective organizations had never offered Lunchables as part of their program.
Kraft Heinz’s decision to pull Lunchables from the federally funded school lunch program was not influenced by the Consumer Reports tests, the company told Reuters.
But in an earnings call last month, Kraft Heinz CEO Carlos Abrams-Rivera did note, when asked about decreasing Lunchables sales, that “the negative publicity that we receive from that misleading interest group appears to be lingering longer,” according to Consumer Reports.
The company added the business impact was “negligible,” saying sales of the school-designed meals “were far less than 1% of overall Lunchables sales” during the last academic year.
Established in 1946 under the National School Lunch Act, the school lunch program operates in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions and is charged with providing nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to children each school day.
The national program is utilized in Utah. Sponsors enter into agreements with the Utah State Board Education Child Nutrition Programs to participate. The state office also distributes funds collected from liquor taxes to public schools for lunches.