Kraft isn’t the first purveyor of junk food to see the light. Last fall McDonald’s switched to vegetable oil to reduce the amount of artery-clogging trans fats in its french fries. PepsiCo is eliminating trans fats in Doritos and Tostitos. Health activists say that, faced with a growing number of obesity-related lawsuits, Big Food blinked. Kelly Brownell, director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, says Kraft is bowing to public-health advocates and litigators who want companies that profit from junk food to share some of the health costs of bad eating habits. “Whatever their motivation, we think It’s great,” says Brownell.
Others see Kraft’s announcement as an opening salvo in a PR offensive aimed more at preserving the company’s lucrative snack-food business than revamping it. While the $450 billion packaged-food industry is growing at a scant 1 percent, snack foods, which account for $55 billion in sales, have been growing at a comparatively heady 4 percent. While the anti-obesity measures aren’t expected to hurt sales, Prudential analyst John McMillin says they “enhance Kraft’s image as a responsible corporate citizen.” And Kraft’s parent, the Altria Group (formerly known as Phillip Morris), knows what bad PR can do.
Kraft may be facing a more formidable force: Wal-Mart. The retailer has begun pushing snack-food makers to introduce low-cal, low-fat versions. “You know when Wal-Mart picks up the cry for healthier foods, fat has become a solidly Middle American issue,” says Romitha Mally of Goldman Sachs.
Kraft says it’s also putting an end to in-school marketing efforts, like posters, scoreboards and book jackets, and pulling ads from Channel One. Kraft says it wants to help kids eat better. Now if it could just do something about the color of that fluorescent Macaroni & Cheese.
