Lunchables: health food or junk food?

I never let my boys purchase Lunchables, or any other packaged meal aimed at kids. My reasons were three-fold: low nutritional value, too much packaging which is bad for the environment, and high cost.

Now I find out that Lunchables is trying to make their foods healthier with a Sensible Solutions option. These foods have an upper caloric limit range of 250-600 calories, no more than 30% of calories from fat, and no more than 10% of calories from saturated fat plus trans fat; and no more than 480-960 mg sodium. The threshold for sodium criteria in Sensible Solution varieties of Lunchables will continue to decline by more than 10 percent over the next two years. For more info, check out their website at www.lunchablesmom.com

Does this make them healthy? It's definitely moving in the right direction, but we still have the problems of lots of packaging which is bad for the environment and high cost. I much prefer that kids - and grown ups as well - eat more foods that are less packaged. Packaging means processing, and processing means decreased amounts of nutrients and more sodium.

I won't call these products health foods, but if you're going to buy packaged foods for your kids, they're better than many other choices. But why not set some rules and limits and ban these packaged foods completely? As one of my very wise colleagues likes to say: You don't let your kids play in the street, right? So why let them eat food that we know is bad for them? It's just as risky.