I remember when these things first came out and I was super excited to try them and also the disappointment when I finally got to try them and they were just god awful.
But they're certainly not the worst lunchables. The nachos and chicken nuggets are even worse. The nachos you'd think would be fine. Just corn chips and cheese sauce. But the chips are stale and weird tasting and the cheese sauce is also not what you expect from nacho cheese. It's almost like they are trying to make kids hate junk food by making their junk food taste horrible.
The best ones are still the OGs that just have lunch meat, cheese and crackers. Not quite a fancy charcuterie board, but they also only cost about a dollar or two.
Eh, my kids love them all. But we're mean parents and hand-pack them healthy lunches for school, so they only get them occasionally as treats. My kids just started school, and today they got freshly cut fruit, rice, and some marinated beef (cooked this morning).
But they'll inevitably complain when they get home today that their friends got lunchables or the ghetto school lunch or whatever.
Yup, and if you drink tap water, you also consume lead. The important thing is how much lead is there, and it's fine provided you don't eat them regularly.
We give them lunchables like 2-3x/year, I really don't think it's a problem. There's probably more lead in the water they drink at the school than the lunchables we give them (we soften and filter ours at home).
The lead contamination were only (or at least predominantly) from Lunchables made specifically for schools, not ones that you buy from the grocery store. These are also the ones that have the increased sodium levels (on average by 300mg iirc).