Lately, I have been going to Target less and less. I don’t buy any food items there. Just diapers, wipes and things like that. Today on my trip there I decided to take some pics of a few popular processed foods and their labels. So the first one I go to is, of course, Kraft Mac and Cheese. Here is the two “healthier” options they have.
And here are the labels.
As you can see there is a ridiculous amount of sodium and sugar. If you were making homemade mac and cheese, you wouldn’t add sugar so why do they? They do it because sugar is a cheap filler. Remember, these are the whole grain and organic options! Now onto the ingredients.
The “whole grain” product contains artificial food dyes. You can read more about those here. The “organic” product contains annatto as a food coloring. You can read about that here.
Here is the Annie’s brand of mac and cheese.
And here is the label.
As you can see here, there is still a substantial amount of sodium and still some sugar too.
Let’s look at the ingredients.
Annie’s may be a better choice, but keep in mind the sodium factor. These products are made to sit on store and warehouse shelves for 2 + years. That is why they add so much sodium. You can read more about high sodium risk factors here.
Lastly on the list are two products given to toddlers. I used to give these to Meadow before we started this path to eating unprocessed. I was pretty shocked.
Seen these before right? Here is the label that I never bothered to read up until 6 months ago. I just trusted the box.
The second ingredient is fructose aka processed sugar. The first ingredient? Processed flour. The sixth ingredient is also sugar. Corn solids is on there too. Corn is one of the most genetically altered foods out there. Since this brand is not organic, it also contains GMO’s. You couldn’t pay me to feed this to my kids now. Nasty!
Here is another Gerber baby product.
Here is the label.
This product contains high fructose corn syrup. Highly refined sugar. I would never give these to my kids either. Gerber is owned by Nestle, one of the companies that is fighting against Prop 37. In other words, they don’t want you to know whats in their food.
So the moral of this story is to always read your labels!
My Whole Food Life 
Wow! It’s just shocking what is in some packaged foods! I can’t believe I ever fed that stuff to my family. In the same amount of time it takes to cook that box of macaroni and cheese, you can steam or sauté veggies that are way healthier and tastier. I don’t even know what some of those ingredients are – and if I don’t know what it is, I don’t want to put it in my body or feed it to my family!
I totally agree! I make a vegan mac and cheese that my daughter loves! My kids like raw veggies much better than cooked ones though. We just picked up my 3 year old from school and she asked me for fruit instead of junk for an afternoon snack. Love that I am bringing up kids up exposed to whole foods as opposed to fake ones!
I find it all so very scary! When I am grocery shopping, I tend to take a peek at some carts and I want to approach the consumer to chat about the ingredients in their chosen foods – especially when I know they have children. My kids, too, have been brought up on natural, whole foods and thank goodness their palates are accustomed to this healthy food (they are now 13 and 9). They would much prefer a homemade mac & cheese over the box kind. Thank you for publishing your article!
I feel the same way! I, too, scan peoples carts and sadly most of what I see is them buying processed garbage. I started this blog to inspire people to start improving their eating. I am glad you enjoyed the post. There will be more like this to come. I am just the crazy lady taking pictures of foods! Haha! 🙂
Excellent expose! Keep it up! 🙂
Thank you! I took some pictures at Whole Foods today. Hope to get the time to write up that post. 🙂