What the hell is cheesy pasta?Remember pink slime? Remember screwy additives in Gatorade? I always get a kick out of small efforts by consumers and advocates whose issues with large companies gain momentum and lead to changes in our food system.
See also: - Former Pink Slime Beef Processors are Dropping Ammonia and Picking Up Their Knives
Pink slime has been abandoned by many restaurants and grocery stores, sufficient to cause the company that manufactures the lean finely textured beef to shut down several plants. Sarah Kavanagh, a high school student in Mississippi, started a petition to get PepsiCo to stop using brominated vegetable oil, a stabilizer. The company since removed the ingredient from its sports beverage.
Now two mom-bloggers are aiming their sites at Kraft, charging the company's use of artificial food dyes is putting American children at risk.
Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 have been linked to a whole host of maladies sufficient to cause some European companies to ban the chemicals and others to require warnings on the packages. In response, Kraft has replaced the dye in European products with natural beta carotene and paprika, which yield about the same color in the finished product. They also label the boxes cheesy pasta instead of macaroni and cheese, which I point out for no rational reason other than I find it humorous.
If you're inclined, Lisa Leake and Vani Hari have started a petition on change.org to try to get Kraft's attention. They're only 20,000 signatures away from reaching their goal.