Dive Summary:
- "Natural" is in and food companies are taking note, working to make their food look less processed and more imperfect.
- Kraft Foods spent two years working on a process to give its Carving Board line of lunchmeat a thick, uneven leftover look instead of the typical oval shape, Domino's encourages workers not to make the rectangles perfect when stretching dough for "Artisan Pizzas" and McDonald's abandoned its round egg discs for the new Egg White Delight McMuffin.
- Though there's no way to tell how much food companies are investing in these natural or fresh looks, some of the companies are doing more than just tweaking food for a desired effect and actually stripping down or replacing ingredients.
From the article:
... "They can't change the fact that they're making processed products so they have to use these other tricks to pretend," said Michele Simon, a public health lawyer and author of "Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back."
A little dressing up can work. Bernell Dorrough, a 31-year-old web marketing coordinator in the Mobile, Ala., area, recently opted for the store brand lunchmeat at the local Publix supermarket in part because the slices came loosely packed in folds rather than in the traditional tight stacks where the meat is peeled off. ...