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How Kraft Heinz lost its lock on mac and cheese and American shoppers
- nkurz 9mo agohttps://archive.is/Hq0cO https://archive.is/Hq0cO
- alsetmusic 9mo agoI know it's garbage (from a health perspective), but I still eat a box of Kraft Mac n Cheese periodically. It's absolutely gone down hill. I couldn't articulate how without spending more time than it's worth thinking about it. I miss how much I enjoyed it fifteen years ago. It was a delicious treat.
- schiffern 9mo agoIf you're in the US, oddly enough the Aldi brand tends to be pretty close to the pre-cheapified name brand recipes. Occasionally they do silly 'heath' things like omitting the necessary MSG from their cheetos, but this is easily remedied.
- bigstrat2003 8mo agoIt's garbage from a taste perspective too. Kraft mac and cheese is truly disgusting stuff; any real mac and cheese recipe will get you 10x the flavor for only 2x the effort.
- badc0ffee 8mo agoA real mac and cheese recipe where you make a bechamel sauce and mix in grated cheese is way more than 2x the effort, time and cleanup of the boxed stuff.
- euroderf 9mo agoThe comments are a good read.
- nhhvhy 9mo agoThis read like an ad to me. I don’t think anyone’s buying mac n cheese for the health benefits, and if anything Kraft is selling less because it doesn’t taste as good anymore. A return to the original recipe would win me back, and I’m willing to bet I’m not alone.
- wormius 8mo agoNuclear Orange Dust (and not the Cheetoh dust, the og mac dust) and bigger fatter noodles (that late 90s skinnier noodles trash is what ruined it for me, texture ruined, etc...) But Annies wins the flavor contest (at least with the cheese sauce pouch, not the Kraft dust kind)...
- The_President 8mo agoWhole lotta foods in that snack food group seem to use the same hot dog water flavored spice. Kraft Mac n Cheese, let’s just say the same cemented consistency it turns into after an hour sitting in the dirty dishes is not far off from the physical state it reaches inside the digestive tract.
- NuclearPM 8mo agoHow do you know that?
- polski-g 8mo agoWarning: of all the powdered Mac and cheese brands, Annie's had the highest micro plastic content.
- IAmBroom 8mo agoI eat a fair bit of mac&cheese, and I'll bet it's still not 1% of my micro plastic intake. From what I can see, they're still not even twice the content of Kraft.
- IAmBroom 8mo ago
- squigz 8mo agoKraft Dinner will never die up in Canada
- nubinetwork 8mo agoI haven't eaten KD in like 15 years. /shrug
- IAmBroom 8mo agoDo you go around bragging that you don't watch TV, too?
- badc0ffee 8mo agoIt sucks in Canada too. When my family wants a KD fix, we get the Annie's blue box. It tastes better and doesn't have the off-putting colour. It's basically like KD used to be.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Our_Benefactors 8mo agoThis is one of those foods in my world which just kind of “exists” without consideration that it’s actually eaten by some people as a preference. Other candidates include: Campbells tomato soup, pork rinds, and ranch dip.
- Niksko 8mo agoTwo of these things are not like the others. Pork rinds and ranch both vary in quality from mass produced crap that I would actively avoid to delicious products that I would seek out. In particular a really tangy buttermilk ranch (or even a really lemony ranch) with lots of black pepper and freshly minced herbs is supremely tasty.
- ssl-3 8mo ago> Kraft mac and cheese, first sold in 1937 for 19 cents a box, was the creation of Chicago cheese monger James L. Kraft, who got his start selling cheese from a horse-drawn wagon. Marketed as a meal for four [...] That's $4.37 per box in November of 2025 dollars, according to the US BLS Inflation Calculator, for a box that was said to serve 4 -- or ~$1.09 modern dollars per serving. A modern box of Kraft Mac and Cheese contains 7.25oz, and serves 3.5 [WTF?] people, and costs ~$1.24, or ~$0.35 modern dollars per serving. Maybe if they weren't seeking the bottom dollar at every possible expense, they'd have held onto their sales.
- jinushaun 8mo agoKraft? It’s Annie’s all the way.
- antonhand 8mo agoPasta Roni White Cheddar Shells are still the best in this category, esp. if made with sour cream instead of milk.
- paHaHasta 8mo agoPersonally I just learned how to make butter and cheese water: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/eieSNW5pK8w https://m.youtube.com/shorts/eieSNW5pK8w