Breaking Off A Piece

Big announcement in the candy bar world today: Nestle’s goin’ natural.

According to the Wall Street Journal, you can probably expect others to follow in their footsteps.

The move makes Nestlé USA, a unit of Switzerland-based Nestlé with about $10 billion in sales, the first major U.S. candy manufacturer to remove such artificial ingredients—though others are working on similar moves.

Burgeoning demand for food made with simpler ingredients has put pressure on the packaged-food industry in recent years to develop natural substitutes that have reliable, cost-effective supplies.

Now, call me maybe, but I’m not getting particularly stirred up about this. If the only “artificial” things being removed from the candy bars are artificial flavorings and food dyes, then this isn’t going to change a whole lot — the lactic acid esters and soy lecithins of the world will still be included, and I’m still going to be not sure what the hell they are.

I’ll be OK with that, of course. But this move really seems to be mostly one done for PR purposes.