Food Companies Cut Down on Ingredients, If Not Sugar or Fat

Haagen-Dazs has a new line so simple it contains only five ingredients. Doesn't that sound healthy and wholesome? The product is ice cream and the ingredients are milk, cream, sugar and eggs, plus an additional flavor source like mint or vanilla bean.

Yes, it's still bad for you. But it will sell. "Simple" is one of the new product buzz words, along with "natural." And Haagen-Dazs is far from alone. Starbucks (SBUX) recently slashed the number of ingredients in its banana bread from 15 to 10. Kraft Foods' (KFT) Triscuit brand has trimmed ingredients and emphasized the fact by using a simpler package design.

The trend is influenced by food industry critics like Michael Pollan, who has written books attacking the industrial food system and encouraged people to "eat food," meaning food that is natural rather than highly processed.

Simply formulated junk foods was probably not what Pollan had in mind. Nevertheless, he and his supporters have no doubt contributed to trends like the nostalgic favoring of sugar over high-fructose corn syrup, and even Campbell and Progresso's soup war over MSG.

"We've seen a lot of consumers moving toward saying they want fresher, less processed, more real foods," Laurie Demeritt of The Hartman Group research firm told Food Business News. And when consumers look at ingredient lists, she said, "They sort of eyeball it to say, 'Is it long? Is it short? Does it have words in it I can pronounce or not?'"

And it isn't necessarily a bad thing, even for those who favor Pollan's vision of natural simplicity. Nutritionist and food industry critic Marion Nestle tends to roll her eyes at the devious ways marketers jump on these various health trends, but she still concluded that "Any trend towards less processing is good."