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Great news for those of you trying to feed your kids more "real" food and fewer artificial additives. Kraft Singles won't have artificial preservatives anymore. The company will no longer add sorbic acid to individually wrapped, full-fat "American" and "White American" slices. Instead, they'll use natural mold inhibitor natamycin. Grilled cheese fans, rejoice!
Kraft is marking the artificial preservative-free cheese slices with a red circle, so you can see which are the new slices when you're shopping at the supermarket -- smart idea. Eventually they'll get rid of sorbic acid in all their slices, but they're starting with the most popular lines.
Sorbic acid may fly under the radar for many of us. But it's a possible irritant that's highly regulated in other countries, and it's hard to find in health food stores. The FDA considers it safe at low levels. But more and more, parents are demanding higher standards for food safety.
Natamycin, on the other hand, is a natural antifungal the European Food Safety Authority has deemed safe. They tend to have higher standards for food safety than the U.S. does, so that's saying a lot.
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This change is a long time coming -- and I don't just mean people have been asking for it for a long time. It took Kraft five years to come up with a new recipe that would last on store shelves just as long.
It's just one ingredient, one food. But little by little, these changes are adding up. There are parents who feel caught -- their kids are picky eaters who only want to eat hot dogs or cheese slices. If that's all those kids are eating, that's a high dose of whatever chemicals are in that food! So companies are smart to listen to parents' pleas to ditch the artificial ingredients. Who knows, maybe years from now, artificial ingredients will be a thing of the past.
How do you feel about artificial ingredients in your kids' favorite foods?
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