"We knew the recipe still tasted just as good as you expect from Kraft, but whenever you say you've changed something, consumers will say it probably won’t taste as good.
"When we announced in April there was excitement but also concern, so we saw it as an opportunity," Guidotti says. The idea to do a surreptitious switcheroo with the new mac and cheese was born out of the skeptical consumer response to Kraft's initial announcement that it was changing the recipe. "We saw an opportunity in the marketplace to improve our ingredient line, but we didn't want make the change before we had the right recipe." While the company only announced its intentions to oust artificial ingredients from mac and cheese in April, Guidotti says they've in fact been working on the new recipe for more than three years. "We constantly talk to our consumers and get feedback from them, and we knew they wanted to feel better about the ingredients they serve their families," Greg Guidotti, vice president of meals at Kraft Heinz, tells Eater. What, exactly, is different about the "new" mac and cheese? Kraft nixed the artificial dyes (yellow 5 and 6) and replaced them with paprika, annatto, and turmeric to maintain the product's signature, eerily-bright orange color it has also removed artificial preservatives. (Only consumers who paid careful attention to the tiny print of the ingredients list on the back of the box might have seen the change.) Today, Kraft issued a self-laudatory press release revealing its little experiment - which it has deemed "the world's largest blind taste test" - and proclaiming that "fifty million boxes later. Kraft announced that the revamped product would hit store shelves in January - but unbeknownst to customers, it quietly began selling the artificial-ingredient-free mac and cheese in December. Big food companies from Nestle to Taco Bell were axing artificial ingredients from their products left and right as consumers demanded "natural" foods, but w ould the changes affect the taste of the iconic blue box, a product that many Americans have grown up on? When Kraft announced last year it would axe artificial ingredients from its mac and cheese, some consumers expressed concern.
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