2 Popular Fast Food Chains Follow Panera’s Lead by Removing Artificial Ingredients
When one takes a giant step, others may feel the pressure and follow suit as well. Following Panera’s surprising new food policy reveal recently, two more fast food giants have made similar declarations. Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, both owned by Yum! Brands Inc, have announced plans to remove artificial coloring and flavoring from most of their food. This appears to be the newest trend among food companies, and reflects a shift in consumer tastes to wholesome and natural ingredients.
Yum’s newest Chief Executive, Greg Creed, addressed the issues in a recent interview, saying, We have to clean up our menu labels. What people want are things on labels that they can pronounce. He then laid out the plans to remove preservatives and other similar ingredients.
What does this mean for Taco Bell? For starters, they will start using real black pepper in their seasoned meat instead of “black pepper flavor”. By the end of 2015, you will see several of the ingredients replaced with wholesome alternatives. Several suspect ingredients will be gone soon, including high fructose corn syrup and unsustainable palm oil. The chain also intends to remove all other additives like trans fats and artificial preservatives by the end of 2017. What is eye opening is that these changes are going to affect more than 95% of their core menu items, excluding beverages.
Pizza Hut, on the other hand, has already started the process by removing trans fats and monosodium glutamate (MSG) from its food. Artificial coloring and flavoring will also disappear from their nationally available pizzas by the end of July this year.
This follows several other recent leaders in the consumer food industry such as Panera Bread, McDonalds and Chipotle Mexican Grill, all of whom have recently announced and begun shifts toward more healthful foods, cutting out things such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and other artificial ingredients. While some critics say this is an overreaction to unfounded fears over ingredients that the FDA has labelled safe, it is clear that consumers still rule and you can vote with your dollar for the food you want.