I received a couple of boxes of Breakfast BREAKS from ESE Foods (East Side Entrees) to review. Breakfast BREAKS are “breakfast kits” for on-the-go families. The convenient single-serve box contains a bowl of prepackaged General Mills cereal – either Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Honey Nut Cheerios, or and Lucky Charms, a 100% fruit juice box from Minute Maid, a Fruit & Grain snack bar, and a packet containing a spoon, napkin and a wet wipe. It’s sort of like the kid breakfast version of the boxed snacks you buy on the airplane.
Breakfast BREAKS are sold for around $2.49 and you can go to their website to see if you can find it in your area. Note: If your child wants milk on his or her cereal, you have to provide it. My daughter ate it dry and my son had the cereal with milk. Both kids thought the breakfasts were pretty cool.
Breakfast BREAKS were developed by East Side Entrees to get the millions of children across America who are eligible for a free or reduced-price breakfast through the national School Breakfast Program eating breakfast. (You can learn more about the marketing and origins of Breakfast BREAKS by reading the press release about teen pop group, the Jonas Brothers, and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, signing up as spokespeople for Breakfast BREAKS.)
My Review
Bottom line? I’m not impressed. Breakfast BREAKS has none of the positive nutritional and packaging qualities I saw in Yoplait Kids. Yes, you can recycle the cardboard and possibly the juice box, but the cereal bowl is #5 plastic.
Nutritionally, the bar contains high fructose corn syrup and the juice is made from concentrate. The whole meal is around 340-350 calories, with only 2 grams fiber and 44-45 grams of sugar – yeech! Well, it’s better than eating potato chips and Pixy Stix for breakfast, I guess.
Price wise as long as you buy in normal bulk quantities at the grocery store, you should be able to get more nutritional bang for your buck by creating your own breakfast kit with such items as a Froose juice box, some Yoplait Kids yogurt, fresh fruit, organic cereal bars, or reusable containers of organic trail mix or healthy cereal.
However, I can see the advantage to using Breakfast BREAKS in a daycare or school setting. They have a decent shelf life, and can be stored without refrigeration. Again, all you need to do is add milk. Still, for home use, they’re a waste of money and full of things you don’t want your kids to eat. This Mama says, “Don’t bother.”
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