To the parents...

[Truestar]

I'm sitting here looking for lunch, I'm going to have Chef Boyardee ravioli simply because, well...there's nothing else here. Not enough eggs for anything, and nothing to make subs with.

Have you ever really looked at the nutrition facts for this stuff? 950mg of sodium. On a 2,000 calorie diet that's 40%.

We've pretty much started cutting this stuff out of my sisters diet.

I'd much rather go to a restaurant and get some real ravioli.

[Patrick]

Hey Ryan,

A lot of it comes down to cost. Though there may be healthier choices in the same price range, there is also plenty of stuff that is worse. It's not affordable to go out to eat for lunch every day. For the price of one plate of ravioli at a good Italian restaurant, you can get, what, 10 cans of Chef Boyardee?

My family was/is upper middle class (I guess) and what I would eat would be things like leftovers from the previous night's dinner, a baloney sandwich, a cheese sandwich, maybe macaroni and cheese once in a while, etc. Subs were more of a special thing due to the cost of assembling them and the fact that the ingredients expire. (If we're talking about a true sub... bread, mayo, mustard, deli meat and cheese, tomatos, lettuce, onions, etc.).

If you'd like something different, price it out and make a suggestion to your parents. At the end of the day, you have to be thankful for being provided with that, though, and I'm sure you are. There's a lot of people who would be quite happy to have it.

Happy eating.

Patrick

[Truestar]

Bread and butter would be healthier.

Yeah I definitely understand that. Being in the working class cost has always been a hassle and time. One parent works until 5, the other until 3. But there's constantly work after that too. Dinner always seems to be a hassle but I totally understand why people buy it. We'll still buy it too, but dang. We were just shocked when we looked at the back of it.

[Tiger1962]

There are some healthy alternatives that don't cost much. Perhaps your parents are super busy to prepare meals ahead of time. When I was younger and in school, both my parents worked and I would come home from grade school to an empty apartment and start dinner so it would be almost done by the time my folks got home. My mom would get all the ingredients and leave them in the refrigerator for me. I think that's when I started to like cooking because I was able to be creative. No one got food poisoning in my family either! LOL

Next time your folks go shopping, ask them to pick up some pre-cooked chicken and you can always toss a couple potatoes in the oven. A deli chicken or rotisserie chicken is not fried so its relatively healthy. Add some frozen veggies that you boiled yourself and you have a quick and healthy meal that you can eat and probably have leftovers for lunch the next day.