It’s back to school season and it has all of us thinking about what we were excited for back in the day. Specifically: that coveted school lunchbox.
Things were different in the 90s. School lunches were of the less healthy, more plastic variety. While we won’t be giving our own kids some of the food we ate, it’s still fun to think back about the lunch items that got us excited.
The Hit List
Here are the most coveted playground snacks of the 90s that have us both feeling both nostalgic, and mortified:
#1. Pizza Lunchables: DIY pizza in a box. Every 90’s kid’s dream. If only the ingredients list contained more words that we could pronounce.
#2. Gushers: This was the sweet or sour syrup that made your lunch excitement complete. Now, if you look at gushers as an informed adult, you wonder how you weren’t bouncing off the walls.
#3. Dunkaroos: Every kid loves dippable food, and Dunkaroos turned the humble cookie into a dip and eat treat. Dunkaroos have since been discontinued in the US, which is both side and also the best thing for our health.
#4. Bagel bites: More pizza, but snack-sized. Because when you’re a kid pizza is everything. Let’s hope that we now know know that real pizza tastes, and is, much better!
#5. Fruit Roll-Ups: Before the era of organic fruit strips, Fruit Roll-Ups were obscenely colorful, and largely sans fruit. Thankfully we can now get our nostalgia fill through real fruit strips, without the long ingredient list of the Fruit Roll Up.
#6. Pudding Snack Packs: The closest thing to ice-cream for lunch. Sure, it was delicious at lunch when we were seven. Now, we look at it and wonder why.
#7. Goldfish: Ultra-cheesy, crunchy, and shaped like a fish. This snack that has stood the test of time and is still eaten by the handful today.
#8. Go-gurt: Go-gurt doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Another snack that has stood the test of time, and now has multiple better-for-you competitors.
#9. Ho-hos: Cake for lunch? The adult in me says that’s unreasonable, but the child in me is all over this. A quick glance at the ingredients list is enough to scare any adult away.
#10. Teddy Grahams: Some kids ate them limb-by-limb, other by the handful. Whatever your style, these tiny teddies were a lunchbox hit in the 90s and are still around today. Not the worst of the bunch, but certainly not a superfood.
Want a healthy alternative for your kid’s school lunch? Try Raised Real and ditch the worry.
