> EXPLAINER: MAKING CEREAL REAL
DREW HARWELL
THE WASHINGTON POST
Breakfast behemoth General Mills, maker of Trix, Reese’s Puffs and Lucky Charms, announced it plans to remove artificial colours and flavours from its cereals by 2017, becoming the latest food giant to swap out the additives in response to changing American tastes.
Instead of dyes such as Red No. 40 and Yellow No. 6, Trix’s crunchy rainbow corn balls will be coloured by turmeric, a yellow spice in curries and mustard, and juice concentrates of blueberries, radishes and strawberries. Artificial vanilla will be replaced by the real stuff in the peanut-butter-loaded Reese’s Puffs.
“People eat with their eyes, and so . . . the trick is, how can we maintain an appealing look, just not using the artificial colours?” said Jim Murphy, the president of General Mills’ cereal division. “People don’t want colours with numbers in their food anymore.”
The flavours won’t change, General Mills’ senior manager Lauren Pradhan said, and there will be “minimal to no changes in nutrition.” Still, some breakfast bowls will undergo a bit of a makeover. The new Trix, for instance, will kill off its fluorescent blue and green puffs, which chemists found hard to colour without artificial dyes.
The move puts General Mills in the same food-conglomerate camp as Taco Bell, McDonald’s and Kraft, which over the last year have loudly removed mostly harmless additives in hopes of making their foods look fresher or more natural.
But food experts said General Mills’ changes are merely a marketing ploy intended to make their cereals appear to be healthier.
“These companies are desperate to keep parents buying these really unhealthy foods . . . and now they can trumpet ‘No artificial dyes’ as if that makes it a health food,” said Michele Simon, a publichealth attorney and president of Eat
MICHELE SIMON
PUBLIC HEALTH ATTORNEY
Drink Politics, a food-industry consulting firm.
“These kid-oriented cereals are still extremely processed, have virtually no nutritional value and are fortified with vitamins because the real nutrients have been stripped in processing,” Simon added. “If they really wanted to be healthier, they should stop bombarding children with messages to eat candy in a box.”
About 60 per cent of General Mills’ cereals — such as Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cheerios, Kix and Total — are already free of artificial colours, but the rest of the company’s cereal aisle will drop the fake stuff by 2017. Prices won’t change, the company said, when the new Trix and Reese’s Puffs hit shelves this winter.
The most herculean change, the company says, will come from removing fake colours and flavours from marshmallow-loaded cereals such as Count Chocula, because the spongy sugar balls are harder to reflavour than flakes of grain.
The Minneapolis-based General Mills is one of the world’s biggest food giants, selling about $18 billion (U.S.) worth of Betty Crocker, Fiber One, Haagen-Dazs, Pillsbury, Old El Paso and other brands worldwide in 2014.
“We want to make sure cereal is relevant for our families today . . . so we’ll be on breakfast tables for the next hundred years,” Pradhan said.
“If these ingredients are stopping them from enjoying cereal in the morning, we want to remove them.”
“These kid-oriented cereals are still extremely processed, have virtually no nutritional value and are fortified with vitamins because the real nutrients have been stripped in processing.”