Vani Hari and Lisa Leake handed over a petition with some 270,000 signatures asking Kraft to change its recipe. Photograph: Vani Hari
A petition containing 270,000 signatures has been delivered to the headquarters of food giant Kraft, demanding the firm remove two chemical food colourings from its mac'n'cheese product.
The protest was started by two food bloggers, Vani Hari and Lisa Leake, and the pair met representatives from the firm for an hour to discuss their request that the firm take out the controversial additives known as Yellow #5 and Yellow #6.
During the meeting the firm appeared to soften a stance on changing its recipe. "Kraft told us they 'can't predict the future' of dyes in Macaroni & Cheese," said Hari in a statement after handing over a petition with some 270,000 signatures.
Hari and Leake, who respectively run the blogs Food Babe and 100 Days of Real Food, began their petition to highlight that the firm's original recipe Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, a staple of many American households, contains two chemicals that are not used in many recipes abroad where regulatory authorities have raised health concerns. Even in the US the Center for Science in the Public Interest has linked them to hyperactivity in children, migraines and asthma.
The bloggers are asking Kraft to change its recipe so that its US product is the same as that sold in countries such as the United Kingdom, where the food dyes are not used, or even Kraft's 14 other mac'n'cheese products in the US which also do not contain them. "If Kraft really wants to do right by their customers, like they've said, they'll make their American products just as safe as their European ones." Hari said.
However, Kraft officials said later that there were no current plans to change the recipe. "I said that while I can't speculate on the future, as we consider new products, we'll keep listening to our consumers," said Kraft spokeswoman Lynne Galia, who attended the meeting.
Kraft says that it fully complies with all the necessary regulatory requirements in the US and has pointed out that the Food and Drug Administration has approved the additives as being safe for human consumption.
Hari and Leake's pettion was set up on the website Change.org and is one of a rash of recent protests aimed at getting major companies to change the ingredients in popular brands. Last year a Mississippi high school student used the same website to get 200,000 signatures on a petition to lobby Gatorade to stop using a specific chemical added to its energy drinks that had been linked to possible neurological disorders. The company later said it would phase the substance out, though insisted its decision was unrelated to the protest.
Other incidents have shown how the growth of viral social media can be a potential peril for major parts of the food industry. Last year ABC news ran stories on a beef product that was dubbed "pink slime" and saw its coverage go viral on the internet. The result was a massive collapse in sales by the firm that made the substance and a rash of lawsuits.
Leake said that the Kraft protest was just part of a wider movement aimed at educating ordinary consumers about the products that they bought. "When we started our petition we knew we wouldn't be able to change Kraft's position overnight. This campaign is one piece of a large-scale food revolution," she said.