At a time when I’m trying to increase our organic food consumption, I was selected to review organic products for Influenster’s Rock the Lunchbox campaign. Unfortunately, none of the brands in the campaign appeared to offer gluten free options, so I had to enlist the help from my husband to express his opinions of some of the products. I mean, I can see that my daughter has enjoyed her food, but to what extent? I couldn’t begin to assume. I received coupons for FREE products from the following organic brands
Annie’s Homegrown
I purchased a box of Pepperoni Pizza Poppers and a box of Chocolate Bunny Grahams with my FREE coupons. My daughter was able to eat the poppers for a few days since she doesn’t eat too much. I’d say we got 3 days out of the poppers.
The chocolate bunny grahams smelled fantastic! My daughter ate quite a few the first day we got them and she shared with her daddy who also seemed to enjoy them.
Chocolate Bunny Grahams were on sale for $3.00 per box at the time at Publix.
I misplaced my Target receipt (this was the only place I could find Annie’s Pizza Poppers), but I want to say they were $3.00 for the box of about 12.
Honest Kids
Kiddo chose Organic Super Fruit Punch (and then later made me buy grape). I like that these don’t have added sweeteners. These are organic, gluten free. I like knowing I’m not loading my kid up on toxins, and if I need to steal some juice in a moment of need, at least I’m safe too! My only concern is that they claim to be non-gmo, but I wasn’t able to verify that.
These cost $3.99 at Publix for 8 pouches, and I feel this is a reasonable price for organic juice in a pouch.
Applegate Halftime
These are similar to some other well-known pre-made box lunch brands. The Halftime lunch kits come with meat, cheese, crackers, yogurt, and some sort of extra snack. My daughter chose the turkey kit because the kit included fruit snacks.
It seems she really enjoyed the kit. We took it as an easy lunch option on a recent trip to the zoo. That, coupled with an Honest Kids juice pouch, we had a fairly rounded lunch. I simply added some grapes. I might suggest, especially for bigger kids, to include an extra side with lunch. I believe some sort of vegetable to round it out better, since I feel like yogurt and fruit snacks are two snacks.
I also purchased these at Target. Since I misplaced that receipt, I can’t remember it’s price either.
Rudi’s Organic Bakery
My kiddo rarely eats bread these days. I haven’t determined if she’s gluten sensitive or if she’s so accustomed to seeing me eat without bread, that she considers that the norm. I picked up Sourdough bread so that I could treat my husband. Turns out, my daughter enjoyed a half slice, buttered, along side of her pizza poppers for lunch one day. In fact, she scarfed down the bread before really working on the poppers. Hubby said that the texture and flavor of the bread was good, but that it didn’t taste at all like sourdough. I admit, I didn’t smell anything when I opened the bread. He said he liked the bread, but that he felt like it was just white bread.
Even though I couldn’t eat this, I loved knowing that I was feeding my family organic, non-gmo bread without soy and high fructose corn syrup. Again, I couldn’t verify that this was non-gmo, despite it being labeled as such.
The price for this bread was only $3.99. While it’s a smaller loaf than mainstream bread, I didn’t feel the price was outrageous for an organic variety. Given we rarely eat much bread in the house, I believe the price is worth it, knowing less would be wasted vs a larger loaf of regular bread which always gets wasted.
Overall, I’m really happy with the brands we got to test out. I didn’t feel like they were terribly overpriced and my little one really seemed to enjoy her new food.
I received these products complementary from Influenster for testing and review purposes.
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