Slimmer Kids, Fatter Profits?

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 613.

Charles Davis, a Kraft food maven, is on a health kick. But then, he has no choice. Making cheese healthier is complicated. Add too much calcium, and it starts to taste chalky. Take out too much fat, and the cheese emerges from mechanical graters like Play-Doh. “It becomes a big glob instead of having good shredding integrity,” says Charles W. Davis, vice-president of global technology and quality for convenient meals at Kraft Foods Inc.

Davis can tell you all about finding that delicate balance between what tastes good and what's good for you. Since 2004, the 48-year-old chemist has been leading a team of scientists, technicians, and engineers working to improve the nutritional content of Kraft's popular Lunchables Lunch Combinations line, a process known industrywide as reformulation.

That means he has spent an inordinate amount of time experimenting not only with cheese but also with the juice drinks, crackers, deli meats, and fruit snacks that make up these all-in-one meals. If you count all 41 varieties of Lunchables, Davis has cut calories by an average of 10%, fat by 24%, and sodium by 20%.

Why do Davis and hundreds of other people throughout the company do nothing else but experiment in their kitchen labs all day? Because their employer has no choice. Kraft, the nation's largest food manufacturer, and its competitors risk becoming this decade's cigarette companies: vilified for pushing junk to children, restricted by often conflicted regulators, challenged in court.