USA Today reports that Kraft Foods “is the latest large food manufacturer to try hiding additional veggies in packaged foods, an effort to ride a renewed interest in healthy eating to fatter profits ... In June, Wal-Mart and Target stores started stocking Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner Veggie Pasta across the country, alongside boxes of the traditional recipe and other alternative versions, including organic and whole grain. Every neon-orange cup serving of the new recipe packs a half-serving of cauliflower.
“Kraft joins brands such as ConAgra Foods' Chef Boyardee, which includes enough tomato in some of its canned pasta to claim half a cup of vegetables per serving, and Unilever's Ragu pasta sauces, which says it has two servings of veggies for every half cup of sauce. In the Kraft product, the company freeze-dries cauliflower and pulverizes it into a powder, then uses that powder to replace some of the flour in the pasta.”
Marion Nestle, a professor at New York University’s department of nutrition, food studies and public health, tells the paper that this trend is “a silly idea,” and says that “nutrients are lost when vegetables are freeze-dried, Nestle says, and people are also losing the benefit of greater volume of less calorie-dense food in a meal.
However, USA Today also says that there is a cadre of food experts who disagree with that perspective, dismissing it as elitist and saying that people need to get their vegetables - and that anything manufacturers do to help them is a positive.
“Kraft joins brands such as ConAgra Foods' Chef Boyardee, which includes enough tomato in some of its canned pasta to claim half a cup of vegetables per serving, and Unilever's Ragu pasta sauces, which says it has two servings of veggies for every half cup of sauce. In the Kraft product, the company freeze-dries cauliflower and pulverizes it into a powder, then uses that powder to replace some of the flour in the pasta.”
Marion Nestle, a professor at New York University’s department of nutrition, food studies and public health, tells the paper that this trend is “a silly idea,” and says that “nutrients are lost when vegetables are freeze-dried, Nestle says, and people are also losing the benefit of greater volume of less calorie-dense food in a meal.
However, USA Today also says that there is a cadre of food experts who disagree with that perspective, dismissing it as elitist and saying that people need to get their vegetables - and that anything manufacturers do to help them is a positive.
- KC's View:
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The problem with the elitism argument is that it perpetuates the belief that actual fruits and vegetables are too expensive for average people to buy and consume, and that the only way they can get them into their diets is via freeze-drying and obfuscation.
I’m not sure that’s true. Or fair.
