A few weeks ago, KSI, Logan Paul and Mr Beast released a new product called Lunchly. Their advertisements claim it is better than the notorious Lunchables, but it seems it is almost a copy of the latter. Lunchly offers three kits, the first being "The Pizza", which consists of 3 small pizza crusts, cheese and pepperoni. The second is a "turkey stack 'ems, containing 3 small crackers, turkey slices and cheese. Their third kit is the "fiesta nachos" which contains small nacho crisps, cheese sauce and a salsa dip. All 3 also come with a mini Feastables bar and a 355ml bottle of Prime.
It must be said that these kits are not lunch, though they're advertised to be, they are more like a snack food as they do not contain enough food or nutrition to be considered a good lunch for growing children.
These kits are marketed as having fewer calories than Lunchables and are stated as a healthy alternative because they have less sugar, fats and more electrolytes. Electrolytes also seem to be a big part of their campaign, I will get into the deeper facts on electrolytes later. Although Lunchly is a better alternative, it's only marginally better than its competitor.
They compare their kits with Lunchables, making it known that they offer 12fl oz (355ml) whereas Lunchables only offers 6fl oz (roughly 177ml). Prime contains "more A and B vitamins and more electrolytes". They offer a Feastables bar and Lunchables offers a crunch bar, but the two are hardly any different at all, the main difference being that Feastables is a product made by Mr Beast. Feastables is stated as being "better for you" but the sugar content is relatively the same as other chocolate bars such as Cadbury's or Hershey's. Half a Feastables bar is 30g and contains 15g of sugar.
"The Pizza" uses real cheese (which is heavily emphasised), but this shouldn't be seen as such a big deal as it really should be the basic standard in food production. The calories of these kits are compared with Lunchables in the promotional video, their pizza kit contains 360Kcals, whereas the Lunchables version contains 390, 15g of fat versus 18g of fat and 12g of sugar versus 20g of sugar. The turkey kit contains 230Kcals, versus 310kcals and has 7g of sugar versus 21g of sugar.
Logan Paul also called out the fact that Lunchables has had reports of lead contamination, however, Twitter cited his tweet by saying that the Ice Pop flavour of Prime had reports of lead contamination from the ERC. I also had a parent tell me that their children, aged around 11-12 tried the Glowberry flavour of Prime and it had made them violently ill, which raises the question of whether Prime should be consumed by children.
In the promotional video, when trying the Lunchables turkey kit, Logan spits out the product before it enters his mouth and states "That's trash". It is known that Lunchables is not a great product whatsoever, but it doesn't warrant that reaction, making it seem over the top. When trying their own version, Logan says "We're not biased at all but ours is way better". The nacho product for both companies does not look great, but I will hand it to Lunchly that their cheese sauce does look better and looks less plasticky, however, the salsa sauces look the exact same. On the Lunchly website, they advertise that their kits have "flavourful combos" versus Lunchables having "standard picks", but the kits that are offered by Lunchly are nearly identical, so how much more flavourful and fantastic is Lunchly?
Recently there has been some controversy surrounding DanTDM, a very famous Youtuber, who tweeted out the following "What happened to Youtubers man... i can't not say anything anymore. This is selling stuff for the sake of making money, simple. How does this benefit fans? This is selling crap to kids who don't know better than to trust the people who are selling it to them. do better."
All 3 of the creators responded, though they could've ignored it and left it alone. KSI posted a screenshot of Dan's toys and says "looks like crap to me", which really isn't relevant to Dan's point whatsoever.
I agree with what Dan is saying, Lunchly does seem like a simple cash grab, almost taking advantage of the influence that the 3 creators have over their younger audience. It doesn't really benefit their fans much and they know that they will make a lot of money from this because of their high influence and popularity among young people. Plenty of creators do things just to make money, but they also care about their fans and how their products will affect them.
Dr Brian Sutterer posted a video talking about electrolyte drinks and had plenty of interesting takes on the situation. He talks about how electrolytes are crucial to us as our bodies need them for most functions, but consuming too many and too little can cause problems. He also says that we don't need electrolytes as part of daily life and in our daily diets as our bodies can sustain the levels naturally and do not need supplementation. Sutterer compares Prime and Gatorade, both highly popular electrolyte drinks. Prime has no sugar but also lacks sodium. Gatorade has sugar in it, but sugar is necessary when trying to rehydrate after exercise. Gatorade is seen as a bad product because of its sugar content, however, sugar and electrolytes are necessary to replenish salt loss from sweat and hydration in exercise. Electrolyte drinks were originally created as sports drinks, to replenish the loss of electrolytes from exercise, not to be consumed as part of a daily diet.
Doctor Mike stated in a YouTube video about Lunchly that it was hard to draw clear conclusions from comparing the products. Lunchly is missing nutritional facts for each part of their kits. The portion sizes are not the same, for example, the Lunchables turkey stack 'ems is 82 grams, whereas the Lunchly version is 72 grams. Lunchly has less sugar and therefore less calories. The Capri-sun offered in a Lunchable contains sugar and the Prime has artificial sweeteners.
Prime also has more A and B vitamins, Dr Mike states that A vitamins are fat soluble and overconsumption can lead to toxicity. The A vitamins in Prime were raised as an issue, as per 500ml bottle it has 900µg but the daily recommended amount is 600µg. You get A vitamins from eggs, dairy and red and orange coloured vegetables, so when Prime is consumed with a daily diet, that is a huge overconsumption of A vitamins.
The USDA caloric guidelines state that a lunch meal for children aged Kindergarten through 8 should be 600-700 calories, as children need the energy to function. A Lunchly turkey kit has 230 calories, which would mean kids would need 2.7 portions to consume enough calories, however, this would mean consuming 1300mg of Sodium which is over the USDA standards. The USDA also states that at least 80% of grains consumed weekly must be whole grain rich, but there are no whole grains in Lunchly.
So is Lunchly really as healthy as claimed, and should it be consumed as part of the daily diet for children. The answer is no. It's incredibly important that parents are aware that this is not a product they should be buying for their children as it has been proven by medical professionals that this is not a healthy product.
