Kraft Macaroni & Cheese chemical additives targeted by food bloggers
Kraft defends
using chemical dye additives in the US product while selling it the UK and
elsewhere with natural flavours
Paul Harris in New York
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Vani Hari and Lisa Leake are campaigning
against the additives Kraft uses in its mac'n'cheese dinners in the US.
Photograph: Courtesy of Vani Hari..
Two food bloggers from
North Carolina have gathered more than 200,000 signatures in an effort to
persuade food giant Kraft to remove two chemical
food dye additives from the mac'n'cheese packaged meals
that it sells in America.
The two campaigners, Vani
Hari of Foodbabe.com and Lisa Leake of 100daysofrealfood.com, have also
recorded a video of themselves conducting a taste test between the Kraft
Macaroni and Cheese sold in Britain without the additives and the product sold
in the United States that contains them.
In the shoot the two bloggers say that the products taste and look exactly the
same and point out the risks alleged to be carried by Yellow #5 and Yellow
#6.
Since being launched a week
ago their petition has now attracted some 220,000 signatures on
the online activist website Change.org. The swell of signatures has resulted
in a flood of media stories on the Kraft petition, including
a segment on Good Morning America.
Kraft Macaroni and Cheese
certainly fits that bill. The famous blue box – and the bright yellow cheesy pasta dish that it
contains – have been a staple of American and Canadian meal times for decades.
But Hari and Leake's petition points out the targeted ingredients in the
American version have been banned in countries such as Norway and Austria amid
claims that they can cause cancer or hyperactivity in children. A report by the
Center for Science in the Public Interest has previously recommended removing
Yellow #6 from the domestic market.
A Kraft spokeswoman said that the company was committed to obeying all the
rules set by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States. "The safety
and quality of our products is our highest priority and we take consumer
concerns very seriously. We carefully follow the laws and regulations in the
countries where our products are sold. So in the US, we only use colors that are
approved and deemed safe for food use by the FDA," the spokeswoman said.However, Leake said that the blogging pair would continue their campaign until Kraft stopped using the additives and replaced them with the ingredients that it already deployed in its products overseas and some brands already sold in the US. "They don't have to reformulate and re-invent the wheel. They just have to use the same formula that they do in the UK," she said.
Other campaigners have
previously used petitions on similar subjects. Last year a Mississippi high
school student used Change.org to
lobby Gatorade to stop using a specific chemical added to its energy drinks
that had been linked to possible neurological disorders. The company later said
it would phase the substance out, though insisted its decision was not due to
the petition – which had also attracted more than 200,000 backers.
The development also shows
the potential peril and power of social media in the modern age. Last year ABC
news ran stories on a beef product that was dubbed "pink
slime" and saw its coverage go viral on the internet. The result was a
massive collapse in sales by the firm that made the substance and a rash of
lawsuits.
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