Healthy Lunches
Posted by anastasia on 04-05-2007
I found this USA Today piece on entrepreneurs taking advantage of the junk food backlash by launching companies offering healthy lunches. I have to rant a little bit about the premium pricing of these lunches. Just like organic foods, it seems like we have to pay more to eat healthier in this country. And when it comes to kids and school lunches, I don't think it's fair that these lunches are so expensive.
"At $4.50 to $7.40, they also cost up to three times the price of the typical school lunch."
I know, it's just business, and that these lunches cost more to produce (and especially to package), but I think the government should subsidize these types of healthy lunches so they are available to all kids, not just kids who can afford to pay.
April 5th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Great… let's just raise all of our taxes again.
I do agree that healthy food should be more affordable, but there has got to be a better way than to put it in the hands of the government with subsidies.
That would only encourage the manufacturers of these food items to keep doing what they are doing and not try to find better and cheaper ways of producing healthier and cheaper foods.
April 5th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Hi Chris. I hear you — I'm fine with better, cheaper ways of producing healthier foods, but while that's happening, it's just not fair that poor kids have to eat crap while other kids get to eat healthier.
April 5th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
If they'd just stop subsidizing the stuff that goes into the unhealthy food, the prices would be at least somewhat more comparable. The U.S. government subsidizes corn (and therefore high-fructose corn syrup and cornstarch-based thickeners and binding agents) by billions and billions of dollars every year. Cut that out, and junk would be a lot less attractive.
April 6th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
As a member of the youth marketing community, I thought this concept was really cool when I first heard about it, then I happened to read Ruth Reichl's editorial in March issue of Gourmet when she took Kid Fresh to task (along with much of our food business) for teaching kids that they shouldn't like food that grown-ups like, instead of eating a meal together and sharing the joy of food, we're segmenting kids from adults. While I do agree with Ruth, the kid size supermarket concept still sounds cool.