"kraft" news and stories

So does that box of cereal seem a little slimmer, that can of tuna a little lighter? Does it feel like you just bought that jar of peanut butter that you're now scraping the bottom of?

Well, at least you can take comfort in the fact that you're not going crazy. As the New York Times reports, we can say so long to the era of "supersizing": Meet the incredible shrinking carton of ice cream.

No doubt you've heard that the cost of, well, just about everything is going up. But what you may have only had an inkling of until now is that one sneaky way food makers are passing those costs onto you is not to raise prices; it's to get you to shell out the same amount for just a little bit less in return.

There's something about a plain bottle of water that just doesn't cut it anymore. American consumers are wild for new ways to flavor nature's perfect beverage, and companies are happy to oblige them. (The water flavoring market is worth a staggering $1 billion, reports USA Today.)

Kraft is the latest to join the crowd. Their new MiO Liquid Water Enhancer, set to debut in March, is a zero-calorie line of flavorings ranging from Berry Pomegranate to Strawberry Watermelon. The twist? This isn't a powder. MiO is a concentrated liquid that comes in tiny eye-drop-sized bottles.

You may be intimate friends with the classic Kraft blue box, and you may have experienced the company's recent "Cheddar Explosion," but how about the new line of mac-and-cheese dinners called Homestyle Deluxe? Susannah Chen, over at YumSugar, dug into all three varieties (Classic Cheddar, Hearty Four Cheese and Old World Italian) and chose her favorite, then voiced a few gripes.

In only 30 minutes of prep time, the three flavors were lined up side-by-side for the comparison test. How did they stack up? Did it make Chen nostalgic for the old blue box? And was it worth the extra effort? Head over to YumSugar to find out.

Avoiding being left in the dust of the new health wave, as propelled by Mrs. Obama's meeting with major food markets in May, Kraft announced Monday that it will be pumping up its whole grain content in more than 100 of its products over the next three years.

This move comes after four years of development, the company says, in an effort to increase the use of whole grain without sacrificing the taste consumers have come to know. Despite industry skepticism, Kraft and other major food companies, including ConAgra and Del Monte, recently claimed they've made reductions in sodium; others, in sugar. Last June, Kellogg claimed it would increase fiber by the end of 2010 and last week introduced a line of FiberPlus cereals.

The term "whole grain" signifies an unadulterated product of wheat, something that became less common as major food companies realized that stripping the grain's kernel of its bran, endosperm and germ (all of its nutritional fiber, iron and vitamin content) would produce a finer texture and increase shelf life.

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."