"KraftFoods" news and stories

Everyone knows Kraft Foods as a supermarket giant, churning out iconic products like Oreos and Philadelphia cream cheese on a massive scale. But since a major green initiative in 2005, they're making a lot less of one thing: garbage.

Over the past four years, the company has reduced net waste from manufacturing plants by 30 percent, exceeding a goal of a 15 percent reduction by 2011, according to company officials. When you're a company this big – Kraft is the world's second-largest food company, with a staggering $48 billion in revenues -- that kind of reduction makes a huge environmental impact.

"Employees took our aggressive waste reduction goal and ran with it," said Steve Yucknut, Vice President of Sustainability, in a company press release. "Not only did they meet our goal two years early, they simply crushed it."

He added: "Their enthusiasm has made a huge impact. In fact, we now recycle or reuse 90 percent of our manufacturing waste."

Remember those old Bill Cosby commercials for JELL-O? Cosby and Kraft Foods had a long-running relationship, with Cosby doing spots for JELL-O pudding, gelatin, pops, and jigglers for nearly thirty years. The last Cosby commercial for a JELL-O product aired in 1999, but the company has announced that the comedian will be pairing up with them again.

"Reunited with strawberry, raspberry and blueberry, I am berry, berry, happy to be back working with JELL-O," Cosby was quoted in the company press release. "Still today, people come up to me and ask me about JELL-O pudding and gelatin, and as the great comedian Jack Benny said, 'JELL-O Again!'"

The new media campaign, Hello JELL-O, puts Cosby behind the camera, however, not in front of it. According to the AP, Cosby will participate in a 22-city search tour for "the country's best giggle," which will be the subject of the new TV ads. JELL-O will also be the presenting sponsor for a new weekly Web series called "OBKB," which will consists of ten-minute episodes aired on Cosby's own Ustream channel. The new series -- featuring Cosby interviewing small children for laughs, a schtick he has pulled off with great success in the past -- will premier this summer.

For those of you out there with iPhones, there are all sorts of great food-related applications available for your nifty gadget. You can plan your evening meal with the Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner or find the closest grocery store or take-out joint with Fast Food. The UrbanSpoon app allows you to find area restaurants with a simple shake of your phone.

Kraft Foods has decided to get in on the iPhone app-action and to do it has creating the iFood Assistant. This app serves up a daily recipe, as well as ideas for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner. However, as far as I can see, there are a couple of glitches in Kraft's plan for iPhone domination. When it comes to healthy eating, Kraft's reputation is a bit dubious. I would be concerned that the recipes it serves up would be laden with overly processed, chemical-laden ingredients. Second, they've decided to charge $.99 for their app. I could see people downloading it if it was free, but I'm not sure how many takers there'll be for a this sucker when it's got a price tag on it (especially since the Allrecipes.com download is free and offers many of the same services).

For those iPhone accessorized foodies in the audience, does Kraft's app appeal to you? Would you be willing to pay a buck to have recipes and meal suggestions sent to your phone?

[via Deidre]

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Our Apple-obsessed sibling blog, TUAW picked this up a few days ago. Apparently catching iPod fever, Kraft Foods has created a spot on their website where you can download recipes using Kraft foods. Not podcasts, these are 100 recipes that you can carry around with you for meal planning on the go. As the Dave at TUAW pointed out, it's a bummer that they can't be printed out. Also since you can't open the files on your computer it doesn't look like you'd be able to select out the individual recipes so you might be stuck with things like the mayonnaise and parmesan covered corn on the cob whether you want them or not.

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