Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is considered to be among the best macaroni and cheese that you can get from a box. The only thing that could make it better would be if it were healthier.
Fine. We aren’t going to see healthy macaroni and cheese anytime in the near future, but it could be a bit less unhealthy and two mom bloggers have decided it’s time to make that happen.
Kraft Macaroni and Cheese has a couple of added chemicals that do absolutely nothing for the taste of the food and exist only as a marketing technique to be more visually appealing. Two yellow dyes that are included in the macaroni and cheese only add color, and may cause some serious health problems. These mom bloggers have created a petition to have the dyes removed from Kraft Mac and Cheese. After over 50,000 signatures were gathered and change.org got involved, a spokesperson for Kraft responded by stating that they company simply follows the laws of the countries they sell the product in.
Awesome. What that really means is that as long as there is no penalty to the company, never mind the health consequences in small children. Until the parents of those children make the profits go down through a boycott, those kids may as well not even exist.
The good news is that by making that very statement, Kraft has just solidified the concept that was presented as Proposition 37 in California back in November. The proposition didn’t make it to law, but there was significant progress.
Basically, in an effort to make people more aware of what they were eating, the proposition called for proper labeling. It would mean that things like organic foods couldn’t be called “organic” unless every part of them actually was. Genetically modified foods would have to be labeled as genetically modified, something that could kill the GMO industry if consumers thought about what they were buying.
Just in case you think this isn’t a big deal, let me assure you that in the end, you could lose your child over this situation. I know, because I dealt with it. Back in 2007 my young son was missing a lot of school because of migraines. Though no one ever told me what was wrong with him, they did try to put him on anti-depressants because they were “preventative”. When I asked if we could try changing his diet first, the doctor simply nodded his head.
I waited in silence for a hint as to what foods might be causing this or what foods might prevent it. The clock kept ticking. Eventually, after what felt like a marathon tooth pulling session, I was told about aged foods and specific dyes that were known to cause migraines, specifically in children not because the chemicals target children, but because they were popular kid’s foods. Hot dogs and macaroni and cheese were at the top of the list.
Fast forward a month later when my son went from multiple migraines a month to just one after I removed these items from his diet. The doctor still wanted to put him on a pill, and explained that it would be just in case the migraines came back. When I refused and noted the obvious progress my son had already made, I was reported for medical neglect by the school. I was lucky enough to get a caseworker with some common sense who encouraged me to continue what I was doing, which was a healthy diet and new curriculum in the form of homeschooling. Will you be so lucky?
Image courtesy of
| This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. | |
| Attribution: Jerem43 |