Why This Family Will Never Make This Popular Staple Ever Again
What this video covers
An early Food Babe TV episode from October 2013 in which Hari visits a busy family at home for what she calls a “major pantry makeover.” The family remakes its go-to dinner — boxed mac and cheese — and Hari cooks them a homemade version without what she describes as petroleum-based artificial food dyes, noting the children’s enthusiastic response. She steams and grates cauliflower to sneak into the dish, a first for the mom (“literally the first time I had cauliflower since 1986”); a month-later check-in shows small shifts, like organic milk and organic cereal in the pantry.
The episode doubles as campaign infrastructure for Hari’s then-active petition asking Kraft to remove artificial food dyes from its mac & cheese, which she says in the video had gathered 275,000 signatures ahead of a delivery to Kraft headquarters. The pantry dive itself becomes part of the message: she calls out shredded cheese containing “wood pulp” (cellulose), grain bars she says are dyed brown rather than whole grain, 100%-whole-wheat bread with calcium propionate, and boxed mac and cheese with Yellow 5 and 6 — dyes she says are contaminated with carcinogens and linked to asthma, allergies, and migraines, and carry a warning label in Europe. She argues it’s cheaper for companies to use petroleum-derived dyes than real paprika and beta carotene. She also shares updates from her visit to Kraft headquarters and from Chick-fil-A, which she says informed her it was making ingredient changes. The video closes with her naming monoglycerides and diglycerides — labeled as emulsifiers — as what she calls sources of hidden trans fat that companies can avoid labeling as trans fat because the FDA categorizes them as emulsifiers rather than lipids.
Key points
- Hari visits a family’s home to remake boxed mac and cheese from scratch, without artificial dyes — a demonstration of her “pantry makeover” format.
- She promotes her petition to remove artificial food dyes from Kraft Mac & Cheese, citing 275,000 signatures in the video ahead of her delivery to Kraft headquarters.
- She demonstrates a homemade mac and cheese with a block of goat cheese (one ingredient: goat milk), steamed grated cauliflower sneaked in, and a grass-fed butter.
- In the pantry dive she flags shredded cheese with “wood pulp” (cellulose), breakfast bars she says are dyed brown to look whole-grain, mandarin cups “dowsed in sugar,” and boxed mac and cheese with Yellow 5 and 6.
- Hari claims Yellow 5 and 6 are contaminated with carcinogens, linked to asthma, allergies, and migraines, and carry a warning label in Europe — her claims, not established findings.
- She reports updates from visits to Kraft headquarters and Chick-fil-A, the latter of which she says committed to ingredient changes.
- The episode exemplifies Hari’s early activist model: a home-visit demonstration tied directly to a corporate pressure campaign.