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Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

nytimes.com

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Re: Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

#81

Post by aninhumer »

Latty wrote: post #62
mikeash wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "disclose that on the packaging," do you mean something more than just changing the list of ingredients printed on the package? Here, the packaging must describe the contents and that description must be accurate, so changes must be reflected there. But nothing requires them to say "hey, we changed this" beyond changing the nutritional information, which most people don't pay attention to.

And it's worth noting this is one of those places where the technicalities kill it. How major a change is needed to trigger a 'formula changed' warning? The reality is lots of products these days change on a batch-by-batch basis to reduce costs or use what is available. Legislation forcing companies to disclose that something has changed in a more noticable (less specific) way, would no doubt just result in those war…

I feel like a decent compromise would be requiring a date of last change along with the ingredients list on the back. That way people with particular concerns can just check that to know whether anything has changed without having to carefully check the whole list every time.

Re: Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

#82

Post by dunham »

symfoniq wrote: post #77

Having young children, there's almost always a box of macaroni and cheese in the house. My kids, who fancy themselves mac & cheese connoisseurs, started complaining about the taste of Kraft a couple of months ago. So now when Kraft advertises on TV that they changed their mac & cheese and nobody noticed, my eight- and six-year-old just roll their eyes. I suppose the upside is, they're already learning that you can't…

My wife and kid are pretty happy with Annie's. Might be worth trying if you're looking for another brand. (The only stuff I eat these days is homemade, typically gruyère-based, but we keep Annie's on hand in case we don't have leftovers for lunch.)

Re: Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

#83

Post by gambiting »

symfoniq wrote: post #77

Having young children, there's almost always a box of macaroni and cheese in the house. My kids, who fancy themselves mac & cheese connoisseurs, started complaining about the taste of Kraft a couple of months ago. So now when Kraft advertises on TV that they changed their mac & cheese and nobody noticed, my eight- and six-year-old just roll their eyes. I suppose the upside is, they're already learning that you can't…

I keep saying to myself that I need to go to one of those world food sections at my local supermarket and buy a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese to try it,but I always forget - is it really worth it?

Re: Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

#84

Post by gknoy »

oftenwrong wrote: post #57
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

This strategy is how I imagine the "least painful" transition from init to systemd in a distro would go: someone would make the change, tell everyone to update, and then ask if anyone noticed.

Linux users tend to be aware of update contents. They read the changelogs, review the list of packages that will be updated, etc. I've been using a mac at my new job, and a dialog box popped up today asking if I wanted to update. The options were something like "Not now" and "Update all". How am I supposed to know if I want to update if I don't even know what's going to be updated?

The App Store's "Updates" tab shows which apps are getting updated, and can even show build notes.

Re: Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

#85

Post by ksenzee »

gambiting wrote: post #83
symfoniq wrote: post #77

Having young children, there's almost always a box of macaroni and cheese in the house. My kids, who fancy themselves mac & cheese connoisseurs, started complaining about the taste of Kraft a couple of months ago. So now when Kraft advertises on TV that they changed their mac & cheese and nobody noticed, my eight- and six-year-old just roll their eyes. I suppose the upside is, they're already learning that you can't…

I keep saying to myself that I need to go to one of those world food sections at my local supermarket and buy a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese to try it,but I always forget - is it really worth it?

It's only worth it to see what people mean when they talk about it. It's not particularly yummy in and of itself.

Re: Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

#86

Post by bduerst »

reustle wrote: post #30
Godel_unicode wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like that kind of comparison is a good candidate for a side project. Take picture, OCR, compare to old list, turn red if it's different

Would be a cool app project. "Scan" each label as you put it in your cart, and see if it rejects it or not

You wouldn't even need to scan labels per se, you could just take a picture of the box and identify the food item that is the largest in the FOV.

If your ingredients data is getting stale, you could reward users with coupons for stale-data items, so some users will take pictures of the ingredients list (kind of a 'bounty' list). You could do this for new items too - e.g. a popup after the picture is taken saying you can get $0.50 off if you take a picture of the UPC and ingredients list. Do a visual diff on the ingredients photo to see if the they have changed, and if so, OCR it to the database.

Re: Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

#87

Post by douche »

parennoob wrote: post #80
JohnTHaller wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food Babe: "When your body is in the air, at a seriously high altitude, your body under goes some serious pressure. Just think about it – Airplanes thrive in places we don’t. You are traveling in a pressurized cabin, and when your body is pressurized, it gets really compressed!" That line from one of her articles sums up her thought process perfectly.

I agree that Food Babe makes a lot of rather silly arguments "That ingredient in Subway bread is also used in car tires!", etc. but she has drawn attention to some unnecessary additive choices (like 4-Mel in Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes), which I think is helpful. Even if the additive is not harmful, as a consumer, it's good to have more knowledge about what Starbucks puts in their drinks. Having watchdogs like the…

A broken watch is right twice a day.

Re: Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

#88

Post by wyager »

Latty wrote: post #58
jerf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I've discovered I've had celiac (the real deal) ~6 years ago, I've read a lot more ingredient labels than I used to, and I can vouch for the fact that food formulations change more than you'd expect without fanfare. For all that you might find "gluten free!" splattered all over a lot of things, I can tell you there have also been a lot of foods that have silently gone gluten-free over the years, along with tryi…

I have a diabetic friend who has problems with this - Tesco does a mixed beans in tomato sauce that I liked and recommended to him, and he checked it out and it was low enough in sugar for him. Later, it jumped, and he was upset about the change, and contacted Tesco - turns out they change the mix for each batch based on the price of certain beans - if the sweeter beans are more expensive, they put in more of the oth…

If they're keeping the taste consistent, shouldn't the total amount of sugar stay roughly the same? It seems like the only thing that would change is how much of the sugar comes from beans versus granulated sugar.

Re: Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

#89

Post by elros »

mikeash wrote: post #51
gberger wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't doing this illegal? Since it makes people think they're buying the same product they always have but it has actually changed. At least in Brazil, every time the formula of a product, or the quantity in the package, is changed, companies have to disclose that on the packaging.

When you say "disclose that on the packaging," do you mean something more than just changing the list of ingredients printed on the package? Here, the packaging must describe the contents and that description must be accurate, so changes must be reflected there. But nothing requires them to say "hey, we changed this" beyond changing the nutritional information, which most people don't pay attention to.

Yes, in Brazil AFAIK the law involve more than, let's say, listing it somewhere in the back in small print. You actually need to visually shout it out, think bold letters in white on a red background, occupying a sixth of the height of a can, for a canned good, for example.

If a reasonable person who's not paying attention doesn't notice it, it's not enough.

Re: Kraft Reveals Revamped Mac and Cheese, 50M Boxes Later

#90

Post by blakes »

gambiting wrote: post #83
symfoniq wrote: post #77

Having young children, there's almost always a box of macaroni and cheese in the house. My kids, who fancy themselves mac & cheese connoisseurs, started complaining about the taste of Kraft a couple of months ago. So now when Kraft advertises on TV that they changed their mac & cheese and nobody noticed, my eight- and six-year-old just roll their eyes. I suppose the upside is, they're already learning that you can't…

I keep saying to myself that I need to go to one of those world food sections at my local supermarket and buy a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese to try it,but I always forget - is it really worth it?

It's nothing special on it's own, but if you want to get crazy with it, throw a can of tuna in it as you mix in the cheese. And some onion. And a little bit of pepper. And if you love bacon, some bacon bits. It turns it into a very full inexpensive meal and it is super tasty.
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