According to The Washington Post, in April 2015, Kraft foods (a major U.S. food producer) announced it planned to change one of its most popular food items — macaroni and cheese (marketed as “Macaroni & Cheese Dinner.”) The company aimed to remove all artificial preservatives and artificial dyes. These chemical laden ingredients would be replaced with a trio of spices: paprika, annatto and turmeric.
When the plan was announced, campaign groups were generally seeking to have chemicals removed from foods, however, the company issued no timetable. Time moved on, and most people forgot. However, in December 2015, Kraft went ahead with the change and a new version of Macaroni & Cheese Dinner hit the supermarket shelves. There was no publicity, no redesign of the box. Only the most fastidious consumer would have read the small-print listing out the ingredients and seen the array of laboratory-created chemical compounds replaced with natural spices.
Now, in March 2016, Kraft has “come clean” and also used the fact to its marketing advantage. This is in the form of some new television commercials. Here the company states:
For the past three months, we’ve been quietly selling Kraft Macaroni & Cheese with no artificial flavors, preservatives, or dyes. And guess what? Moms didn’t notice. Kids didn’t notice. Dogs didn’t notice …
You can see a video of the advert here:
The company estimates it has sold 50 million boxes of the product since the change was made. It claims it did not receive a single customer response and nothing was posted in the news media. In a sense, other than leading to a clever commercial campaign, it shows that artificial ingredients are not really needed to ensure a good tasting food.
