There has to be a middle ground.

Waste-free lunches are a great way to be green, but what if you don’t have the time or kitchen skills to put together a completely waste-free, homemade lunch for your kids?  Or what if your kids are picky eaters, or are just begging for additions to their lunch that are more like what their friends are eating.

As someone who brought some pretty weird natural foods to school in her lunch box, and was ridiculed for them (In second grade, a kid in my class told the teacher I was eating puke at snack time.  It was hummus.), I can certainly appreciate that a little conventional looking pre-packaged food can go a long way in boosting a kid’s ego at lunch.  But it doesn’t have to be make-you-own or just cave in and send your kids to school with snack cakes full of partially hydrogenated oils and “fruit” snacks in neon colors.  There’s a good middle ground.

I got some sample organic fruit snacks from Fruitabu (warning: the website has sound) recently, and the little kid in me LOVED them.

The Fruit Flats are pretty standard natural food store fruit leather, I remember eating something similar as a kid — super good, but nothing I could trade with anyone at the lunch table.  I highly recommend them, and will probably stock up for our next backpacking trip, but if you’re looking for something that will mimic junk food without being junk food, these won’t fit the bill 100%.

Fruitabu Twirls, however, look, taste, and are textured more like conventional “fruit snacks.”  The Twirls are long strips of thin, smooth fruit leather coiled up on a long strip of paper.  I would have killed for these as a kid.  Nothing about them screams, “weirdo tofu eater!”  No teacher will be informed by a worried classmate that your child is eating this for snack.

There’s no added sugar or colorings.  And they are so full of flavor!  The grape is by far my favorite, but all the flavors are really good. The Twirls have soy lecithin in them and organic palm fruit oil, probably necessary to maintain the texture.  But the Flats are just plain fruit.  Not a refined sugar, partially hydrogenated oil or FD&C food coloring in sight in either.

On my last trip to the grocery store, I noticed these Honest Kids juice pouches.  The juices are organic and low sugar, and Honest has partnered with Terracycle to recycle the pouches into bags and school supplies.  Still not as eco-friendly as a reusable bottle filled with water or iced herbal tea, but better than a certain other brand of pouch drinks.  And, if your kid cannot be trusted to bring home his or her reusable lunch supplies, this may be a good way to go.