Blame Food Babe If Your Picky Eaters Never Want To Eat Kraft Macaroni Again

ByAshley Austrew

kraft-macaroni-and-cheeseIf you have a hard time dealing with change, you might find yourself suffering from some blue box blues today: Kraft just announced they’re changing the formula for their iconic macaroni and cheese. The move is generally a good thing for parents concerned about food dyes and artificial preservatives, but may slightly alter the taste and look of the popular product.

According to The Washington Post, Kraft announced plans to phase out the use of preservatives and will stop using Yellow No. 5 and 6, the dyes responsible for it’s radioactive glow. Instead, the brand will use paprika, turmeric, and annatto to try to mimic the color and flavor of it’s original 80-year-old mac and cheese recipe, but let’s be honest: it won’t be the same.

The move comes on the heels of similar announcements by Nestle, Hershey, and Frito Lay, who all have plans in the works to begin phasing out dyes and/or preservatives in response to increased pressure from consumers. Though Kraft denies it, there’s heavy speculation that the changes to their mac and cheese are in response to a petition by Food Babe that amassed 35,000 signatures.

The Washington Post says Food Babe — an absurdly popular science denier with a huge blog following — began pressuring Kraft to remove artificial coloring from mac and cheese almost two years ago, telling people the dyes cause cancer, asthma, and other ‘long term health problems.’ Food Babe’s other campaigns include outrage that Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes don’t contain actual pumpkins and telling people that flying in airplanes shrinks their internal organs. The airplane post has since been deleted from her blog.

After Kraft’s announcement this week, Food Babe issued a response claiming ‘victory’ for herself and her minions.

”The thousands of letters I have received from parents whose children have benefited from the removal of artificial food dyes are ringing in my ear this morning,” she wrote on her blog. ”We finally did it.”

It’s unfortunate that Kraft’s move towards better ingredients lends credibility to scaremongers, but overall it’s hard to find fault with their decision to remove unnecessary dyes. Still, plenty of people on Twitter are having a great time expressing their sorrows about the change.

No word yet on how toddlers feel about the change, but given their general level of openness to trying new things, it’s probably best to never, ever tell them. Ever.

(Photo: Shutterstock)

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