Lunchables Aren't Garbage

A lesson in food policy and individual action

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Yes, I have read recent articles about Lunchables containing concerning levels of lead.

A lot of this hysteria comes from Consumer Reports and their article, but it has a shaky premise overall. Consumer reports just stated that certain Lunchable products have high amounts of lead because they meet a certain percentage of California’s maximum allowable dose level (MADL).

Yet none of the tested products go beyond this threshold, so what is the big deal?

Consumer Reports stated this:

The risks of heavy metals are cumulative and come from regular exposure over time. The less you consume, the better. 

But there is no direct evidence provided that shows this cumulative risk nor do they provide evidence eating Lunchables provides a deadly dose of lead. The dose makes the poison after all.

What Consumer Reports does provide is a scenario for potential risk.

For example, the kits provide only about 15 percent of the 1,600 daily calories that a typical 8-year-old requires, but that small amount of food puts them fairly close to the daily maximum limit for lead. Even if one meal kit doesn’t push a child over the limit, it puts them in the danger zone because there will likely be exposure from other sources. So if a child gets more than half of the daily limit for lead from so few calories, there’s little room for potential exposure from other foods, drinking water, or the environment. 

Providing a potential scenario of risk isn’t the same thing as showing actual risk of exposure or toxicity. Swimming in the ocean puts you at a potential risk of getting attacked by a shark, but swimming in a shark tank puts you at greater risk.

What we need to ask instead is what is a dangerous dosage of lead and in what context (exposure) is it dangerous concerning food?

Unfortunately, the FDA has no data on lead exposure and safety. This is why Consumer Reports utilized the Californian guidelines yet these products fell within the guidelines.

Without human clear outcome data (this means direct evidence in humans) we cannot tell if the cumulative exposure of eating Lunchables leads to lead poisoning and related health issues. At this point, it is all mere speculation.

This is food fear-mongering 101=

State X food contains Y ingredient, Y ingredient is associated with Z outcome, therefore X causes Z outcome.

This is related to a logical fallacy called the fallacy of the undistributed middle.

We cannot assume X food causes Z outcome because of Y ingredient without strong evidence of a relationship between X food and Z outcome.

This isn’t me stating to only eat Lunchables or eat as many as your heart desires, this is me calling out food fear-mongering and misleading headlines.

Our concern when it comes to nutrition shouldn’t be individual ingredients, but the overall dietary pattern. What are kids eating in addition to Lunchables throughout the day, week, month, year, etc. matters more than eating one food with one ingredient at one time.

This isn’t to say food corporations like Kraft Heinz (the parent company of Lunchables) are off the hook from criticism, but it should be the right form of criticism.

We should criticize Kraft Heinz for having an insane market share over condiments and other foods.

We should criticize big food corporations for controlling the vast majority of products we consume daily.

We should criticize big-store grocery chains for price gouging because of inflation and the pandemic.

By focusing on weak arguments, like individual food ingredients without clear evidence of danger, we neglect wider more systemic problems with our food supply.

Food corporations, especially fast food chains, regularly target the impoverished in our society. There tend to be more fast-food restaurants in lower-income neighborhoods, targeted advertisements to marginalized communities, and greater food deserts in low-income communities.

This is what we need to focus on, the systemic inequalities related to food and food consumption, not debates over Lunchables.