» "Annie's Homegrown Macaroni & Cheese is the pantry staple of harried, organo-hipster parents everywhere. But is it any healthier than the day-glo noodles of our white-bread childhoods?"
rebecca's pocket
.: January 2007 --> The Trouble with Annie's
The Trouble with Annie's
[ 01.30.07 ]
Oh Pleeeease! Annie is a smart woman and that is a problem?????
Your article says it all NEAR THE END when it lists the ingredients... 20 vs. 9.
Get a life and go after something that deserves it, like Exxon , Mobil, Bush, Cheney, WAR, Halliburton, DeLay (STILL IN CONGRESS!!!!!), rotten schools, rotten health care, fundamentalism....et al.
Before even clicking through to read the article, let me just say - I knew it! I've got two smallish boys (now 7 and 5) and I have always resisted buying any packaged mac'n'cheese. So many moms of my peer group buy Annie's, but I just don't see the point. My kids eat pasta with parmesan, olive oil, salt and pepper; sometimes I add plain yogurt to make it saucy, or if there's lentil soup I might use a spoonful of that. Since the kids have never eaten either Annie's or the day-glo stuff at home, they don't know what they're missing.
Only one of my kids eats pasta anyway. The other one won't, usually, just to differentiate himself from his older sibling. *He* eats rice-and-beans, which pasta boy no longer touches.
Thank you for the link. Funny, as I was a staunch vegetarian for many years. I also worked in a healthfood store for several years. The purple boxed bunny is burned into my retinas...
(and thank you for your great book!)
I actually agree with the first commenter, although not so emphatically. The article's tone made it sound like Annie is evil for making money in the food business and using mainline marketing and advertising tools. So what? I don't buy her stuff and I'm not fooled by the marketing, so I guess I don't begrudge her for coming up with a product and making a business out of it.
Still, I'd never bother with buying Annie's pasta.
Why are you defending a food manufacturer?
The point is that the Annie's food is basically no different than the Kraft food, but due to marketing skill, the Annie's product finds a niche.
Adding a simple word like 'organic' or 'natural' can change a purchasng decision, when in fact, the terms often denote no real difference in the products.
And to Jane who somehow ties the article about food to an anti-conservative rant, I suggest that they make a lot of good decaf coffees these days.
Actually Cruftbox, "organic" does denote a difference in a product. It means the ingredients were all grown in compliance with the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990. "Natural" has no legal meaning in the United States, and as such can be applied to a package without any goverment oversight or regulation.
And if you compare the ingredients in the two products, Annie's has fewer ingredients, the ingredients have undergone less processing, and there are less additives than Kraft's.
Speaking of mac 'n cheese...There's nothing REAL about Kraft cheese.
Kraft claims their cheese is "real", yet do not list any trace of naturally-sourced cheese on their ingredient statements. We all know that Kraft cheese is NOT real cheese; It's a bunch of chemicals combined in some laboratory dyed orange to look like cheese.
What I want to know is, how are they able to make the "real cheese" claim? Does this make anyone else furious that a company as large as Kraft has poisoned our food supply with such "convenient meals" for so many decades?
see: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=23741