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doctor-reacts-to-the-lunchly-controversy

Doctor Reacts To The Lunchly Controversy

KSI Mr Beast and Logan Paul have announced they were teaming up and launching a new food product called lunch Le to compete with the Uber popular kids brand Lunchables and the reception has been less than Stellar many creators took to social media to criticize the product and the creators themselves Logan and Jimmy were quick to push back on the critics with their own posts and in the process created newsworthy headlines like YouTube stars are coming for your kids lunch it's a move that has Mr Beast Lo at Paul and KSI teaming up to take take on lunch and I usually don't make videos discussing creators products but when terms like healthier or better for you get tossed around I feel it's important to set the record straight so in the spirit of avoiding personal attacks let's take a look at the science of lunch Le including a true issue with their kits I don't think anyone has correctly pointed out yet for those who may not know Lunchables are basically these uh prepackaged do-it-yourself meal kits they've usually got things like crackers deli meats cheeses treats and come with a little drink and since their Inception they've been super popular with kids however it's been known especially by experts that while these kits are fun and tasty their nutritional value is just not good they're often too high in sodium saturated fat and added sugars and don't use healthy whole food ingredients and because they fall into the category of ultra processed foods they aren't healthy to consume often period studies actually show that those consuming high amounts of upfsi and some specific upfsi so many of my pediatric patients are overc consuming upfsi the problems with Lunchables and why they shouldn't be consumed regularly due to health risks my own take on Lunchables I don't recommend parents pack them for their kids on a daily basis a lowquality food with poor nutritional value but now what about lunch Le starting with the first claim in the press release announcing the product Logan Paul was quoted as saying Lunch Le is a healthier alternative and that it's a better for you lunch option compared to Lunchables in fact throughout the lunch Le website and the social media promo post you'll see countless comparisons being made to Lunchables to be honest some of the comparisons are kind of cringe and don't make much sense to me but maybe that's because I'm not the target demo flavorful combos vers standard picks the meal kit combos are nearly identical to Lunchables big gestures vers mid moments I certainly don't remember that lesson in my nutrition classes I was more concerned with the nutritional comparisons being made anyway so if someone was to make a healthy meal kit for kids I would find that incredibly valuable and in Looking In the comparison I'd be most interested in calories which they have protein which they have sugar which they have saturated fat which is missing and sodium which is not only missing but replaced by electrolytes and unlike all the other macros is only labeled pottassium and only in the prime bottle in the kit comparing it to the Capri Sun in the Lunchables this a pretty weird marketing choice to label electrolytes and food products it's such a strange choice that it even stunned fellow Dr Brian suder who tweeted sodium getting rebranded as electrolytes will be taught in marketing textbooks one day and then sadly was ashamed to Logan attack instead of starting a meaningful dialogue with the doctor given that 400 Mig is not the amount of electrolytes in Prime at least in the image that Logan shared 400 Mig of potassium plus 5 Mig of sodium equals 45 migs of electrolytes it's not about nitpicking it's just about being reasonable and honest to help further the conversation look if I want to decide if a food is right for me I like to be able to compare the entire electrolyte profile which would have to include sodium it's like having a PB&amp;amp;J sandwich label that says what's in the sandwich you know protein fats calories but then the sugar line only tells you what's in the peanut butter as opposed to the jelly in the entire sandwich I wanted to go further and do the comparisons myself using the nutrition facts from the Lunchables and lunch Le websites and it's honestly really hard to draw perfectly clear conclusions for several reasons one I don't have nutrition facts for each part of the kits for example how many calories come from Feasta bles versus the food component second some of the portion sizes aren't the same the turkey cracker kit from Lunchables is 82 G while lunch leaves is 72 G three there are so many varieties of Lunchables that just swapping out the flavor of Capri Sun cause significant differences in sugar and calorie content what I was able to conclude is that lunch Le has less sugar and therefore less calories than Lunchables in comparable kits that's probably due to the drink component of the kit as Capri Sun uses sugar and Prime is artificially sweetened lunch Le has significantly more potassium than Lunchables because of the Prime drink which I guess is good but not something I'd regularly use in deciding if a food is an ideal lunch for a kid lunch Le has slightly less sodium and saturated fat than comparable Lunchables that's definitely moving in the right direction however both differences were fairly small lunch Le does use real cheese as opposed to cheese product signaling that at least one ingredient is less processed than in Lunchables but the entirety of the kit is still considered an ultra process best meal lunch Le has higher amounts of A and B vitamins which can be good but also can be problematic as Vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin and kids can easily over consume it leading to toxicity being that it's fat soluble means that you can't just urinate excess out this has actually been raised as an issue by experts with Prime in general despite these legitimate upgrades social media posts are slamming lunch Le for not being perfect but lunch Le does not need to be perfect to be valuable for kids it just just needs to be significantly healthier in order to reduce risk as a doctor I use risk reduction all the time essentially taking something harmful and replacing it with something less harmful but still imperfect as an example um I would never recommend starting vaping but getting someone to replace smoking cigarettes with vaping is generally a good step down in terms of health risk knowing all that is it fair to say that lunch Le is healthier I guess one can say yes but honestly probably more so as a marketing tactic the reason why well let's look at the recently passed nutrition standards set forth by the USDA for school lunches and see how lunch Le Compares going line by line here less than 10% of calories should come from saturated fat lunch Le turkey 23% of calories come from saturated fat less than 10% of calories should come from added sugars lunch Le turkey 10.4 comes from added sugars but this is where things get really interesting and for some reason no one has pointed this out you see us da caloric guidelines say that a lunch meal for kids K through 8 should contain around 625 calories kids need energy to function and calories give them that energy lunch Le turkey contains only 230 calories which would mean a kid would need to eat about 2.7 portions to consume enough calories and if they did that they'd get nearly 1300 mg of sodium which is also significantly over the USDA standards so they'd be either undereating calories or overeating sodium finally the grain guidelines state that 80% of lunch meals must be whole grain and lunch Le turkey does not list any whole grain ingredients it's clear lunch just like Lunchables misses the mark too many times to be considered meaningfully healthier at least in my opinion that being said I do think many criticisms pointed at Logan KSI and Jimmy are unfair attacking them for trying to create a successful influencer product isn't inherently problematic I just think if a company was truly interested in creating a health lunch kit for kids the USDA standard should be the minimum starting requirements otherwise we're simply propagating the problem even further one of my hopes is that in navigating the future feedback on this company the guys hire a health professional to guide them in making messaging more accurate I just saw someone ask about heavy metal contamination and Logan responded with a video of an x-ray machine checking for foreign materials that checks for stray objects accidentally getting into the meals not heavy metal contaminations like we discussed earlier with Lunchables and lead and saying a food has more electrolytes therefore it must be better or healthier just not true foods with an incredibly high sodium content and electrolyte are not considered particularly healthy in fact many are considered unhealthy for that reason I can expect non-medical people to get this perfect but if you're going to stand by a children's food product being healthy you need to hold your messaging to a higher standard eating a diet full of upfsi here to see the harsh reality of Life at 800 100 lb and as always stay happy and healthy

Dr.

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