Kraft Foods Removing Artificial Dye from Mac and Cheese Packages

As more and more parents become health conscious and aware of the food they offer their families, Kraft is hoping to capitalize on this and is removing artificial dyes from three macaroni and cheese varieties which are targeted at children.

According to the Associated Press, the changes, which begin next year, will be made to the SpongeBob Squarepants, Halloween, and Winter varieties of Mac & Cheese, but will not affect the original flavor of the product. Two new shapes will also be added.

Kraft has been using Yellow #5 dye and Yellow #6 in a number of its products. Yellow No. 5 (Tartrazine) and Yellow No. 6 are artificial dyes that are approved for use in food in the U.S. if the product is certified by the Food and Drug Administration.

Michael Jacobson, the Center for Science in the Public Interest executive director, said he is satisfied with Kraft's announcement but is "puzzled" as to why Kraft would not change its original elbow-shaped macaroni product as well.

"As Kraft has today shown, it is clearly possible to make macaroni and cheese without these harmful chemicals," Jacobson said in a statement.

Kraft's decision to remove these artificial dyes from their products did not originally come from the company itself, but from a Food Babe blogger Vani Hari who started a Change.org petition along with "100 Days of Real Food" blogger Lisa Leakes to convince Kraft to remove these "potentially harmful" dyes from all of the company's products.

"We recently discovered that several American products are using harmful additives that are not used -- and in some cases banned -- in other countries," the pair wrote on the petition. "One of those products is an iconic staple that almost every American, us included, has had at one time or another: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese."

The Food and Drug Administration must approve color additives in the United States; Yellow No. 5 and Yellow No. 6 were approved for use in foods in 1969 and 1986, respectively.