UNPACKING UNPACKING UNCRUSTABLES UNCRUSTABLES & all your childhood favorites BY ANUSHKA DASGUPTA, PHOTO BY EMILY YAO Looking back on the 2000s, I think of Disney stars, iPods and girl bands. Our childhoods were molded by the new internet generation, and while I fondly look back on High School Musical and Suite Life on Deck, equally as memorable is the food. Before people started sizing up the nutrition labels, snacks were often heavily processed and artificially dyed, which made for incredibly tasty, albeit unnatural, food. Although many of these remain on grocery store shelves, there’s an irreplaceable nostalgia in pulling a Twinkie from your lunchbox. [1] UNCRUSTABLES A seemingly perfect idea: PB&J, no crust. While you may have stopped consuming Uncrustables in elementary school, my district carried them into high school — often the only vegetarian lunch option! Looking past the childhood love, there’s peanut butter and grape jelly (yes, the strawberry version is better) sopping out of two fragile sheets of bread: not a good crust to filling ratio. Still, these sandwiches make for a quick, easy meal especially when you can’t be bothered to make anything. [2] GUSHERS & FRUIT-BY-THE-FOOT I remember the excitement in elementary school when someone would pull out a pack of these yellow-and-greenwrapped, artificially flavored gummy candy from their lunch box (“Let’s trade?”). They’re sweet, mildly fruity, but the reason they were so popular is because they’re simply so fun to eat. Gushers ‘gush’ with flavor each bite, and somehow always tasted better when thrown into your mouth. Fruit-by-the-foot took minutes to unravel, and leave color-stained tattoos in your mouth. [3] LUNCHABLES An entire lunch in a plastic carton, complete with dessert and a drink. Lunchables boast numerous flavors: the classic hamcheese-cracker combination, mini pizzas or chips with queso and salsa. The brand has been scrutinized for its high saturated fat and sodium content, especially after being marketed as a healthy children’s meal (but who gave their child a Lunchable thinking 14 penn appétit
it was healthy?). I was always jealous of others who had them — my mom never packed these — but like some others on this list, Lunchables are more revered for the fun, not the nutritional value. [4] ANY HOSTESS PRODUCT Hostess made headlines in 2012 when they announced they were filing for bankruptcy, but to the elation of many, they were bought out and have since continued to sell their famous baked goods. Twinkies take the prize for American classic: overly sweet like almost all Hostess goods and fabled to last a hundred years. During road trips, my brother and I would each pick out a Hostess dessert from the sweets aisle: my go-to were HoHos and he’d usually pick cupcakes (remember the white curly-cued piping?). Even as they got melted and sticky in our hands, we savored these gas-station treats. There’s something special about unwrapping your own, even if it is a Twinkie from the gas station. [5] DANIMALS The primitive, sugary version of your protein shake, Danimals were tart smoothie blends — usually strawberry banana — in a hard plastic bottle. Under the parent company Dannon, they’re equally unforgettable for the monkey on each bright red bottle, who was frequently in ads on Disney channel. These would easily be the “healthiest” food on this list. Unlike morning glasses of warm milk (I still revolt thinking about it), which my brother and I would frantically chug down, I’d save a bottle of Danimals for the end of lunch, a final, savoring treat. Most of these snacks aren’t as popular amongst kids today — they have their own favorites — and while I don’t plan on eating them regularly, I’m always happy to see them in the grocery store and will never turn down a pack of Gushers. While we move into an obsession with ‘healthy’ and unprocessed, it’s important to remember the foods we grew up on, as unhealthy as they might’ve been, it’s still something to enjoy. Food is often where we get most of our memories.
