“Kraft Mac & Cheese is a delivery vehicle for salt and artificial colors and flavors,” Nestle wrote in an email. Nutritionist Marion Nestle isn’t a fan of the stuff in the blue-and-yellow box, either. Otherwise, the two meals are pretty nutritionally equivalent.” Indeed, agreed Jesse Jones-Smith, a nutritionist at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, “Kraft actually has a few extra additives, even compared to Cheez-its.” She added, “If you gave a kid two servings of Cheez-its and a glass of milk, you would actually have more sodium in Kraft Mac & Cheese. Yes, you read that right: Cheez-Its uses natural coloring, while Kraft Macaroni & Cheese uses artificial.

To me, the list looked pretty similar-except for one thing: Instead of yellows 5 and 6, Cheez-Its uses annato extract and paprika for color. Now compare that to the ingredients list for Kellog’s Reduced Fat Cheez-Its:Įnriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, roboflavin, folic acid) soybean and palm oil with TBHQ for freshness, skim milk cheese (skim milk, whey protein, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes, annatto extract for color), salt, containst two percent or less of paprika, yeast, paprika oleoresin for color, soy lecithin Well, let’s consider the ingredients list for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese:Įnriched Macaroni product (wheat flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid) cheese sauce mix (whey, milkfat, milk protein concentrate, salt, sodium tripolyphosphate, contains less than 2% of citric acid, lactic acid, sodium phosphate, calcium phosphate, yellow 5, yellow 6, enzymes, cheese culture) So just for fun, let’s pretend that the petitioners succeed, and Kraft replaces its artificial dyes with natural coloring-or (gasp!) no coloring at all. (I subsisted on a strict diet of it and Eggo waffles until about age 10.) That isn’t surprising, since Kraft’s cheesy, gooey dish is a childhood staple. The petition has already racked up more than 250,000 signatures. A couple of food bloggers have petitioned the food giant to ditch the artificial colors, calling them “unnecessary” and “potentially harmful.” Perhaps you’ve heard about the recent outcry over the use of yellow dyes 5 and 6 in Kraft’s popular Macaroni & Cheese. Watch the video to see how they stacked up. We taste-tested Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Annie’s Homegrown Macaroni & Cheese, Cheez-Its, and a simple, homemade pasta-and-cheese dish.

Why is kraft mac and cheese bad