HEALTH - Consumer Driven Menu Makeovers

"How consumer worries are driving menu makeovers" PBS NewsHour 5/5/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  For years, Americans have heard warnings and expressed worries about what’s in their food, from artificial ingredients to antibiotics.  Increasingly, the food industry is taking notice and making changes.  What do consumers need to keep in mind about a flurry of recent announcements?  Gwen Ifill talks to Michael Moss, author of "Sugar Salt Fat," and Allison Aubrey of NPR.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  For years, consumers have heard warnings and worries over what’s in their food.  Increasingly, the industry is taking notice, too.

The Panera chain was the latest to make a move.  It announced plans to remove 150 or more artificial ingredients, sweeteners, and colors by the end of next year.  Last week, Chipotle said it plans to remove many genetically modified ingredients.  Kraft has also said it will eliminate synthetic colors and artificial preservatives from its famous orange-colored macaroni and cheese.  And Tyson’s chicken has pledged to phase out the use of antibiotics in the production of chickens by 2017.

Some of these changes have been praised.  Some have been met with skepticism.

We look at what’s happening, and what consumers should keep in mind, with Allison Aubrey, who covers food and nutrition for NPR, and Michael Moss, the author of “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.”

Welcome to you both.

Allison Aubrey, why are these companies making these moves now?  How dangerous is the problem they’re trying to fix?

ALLISON AUBREY, NPR:  I think, in a word, the reason why these companies are making these changes now is that they’re talking to their customers, and consumer sentiment has really changed.  People want things that are natural.  People have — seem to have developed an allergy to something that seems artificial.

So, Panera, for instance, today, I talked to its lead chef.  And what he told me is that, starting a couple of years ago, they started looking into all of the additives in their food.  They came up with hundreds of things in the food supply.  And they started asking two questions:  What is this stuff and why is it there?  When they found things that they didn’t know why it was there, or there was a cosmetic reason for it being, they decided, hey, let’s look for a work-around.

And probably the best example of this is mozzarella.  People had become accustomed to very, very white mozzarella.  It’s often treated with titanium dioxide to make it — sort of bleach it.  And so Panera looked at that and said, well, you know, if our mozzarella isn’t the whitest shade of white, then let’s take it out.  So they did.