How Kraft Heinz lost its lock on mac and cheese and American shoppers | Hacker News Reader

How Kraft Heinz lost its lock on mac and cheese and American shoppers

wsj.com

29 pointsnoleary32 comments

This read like an ad to me. I don’t think anyone’s buying mac n cheese for the health benefits, and if anything Kraft is selling less because it doesn’t taste as good anymore. A return to the original recipe would win me back, and I’m willing to bet I’m not alone.

Nuclear Orange Dust (and not the Cheetoh dust, the og mac dust) and bigger fatter noodles (that late 90s skinnier noodles trash is what ruined it for me, texture ruined, etc...)

But Annies wins the flavor contest (at least with the cheese sauce pouch, not the Kraft dust kind)...

Annie's is a close second in the dry-packet, to Goodles (which cook slightly faster, and are gluten-free). Both are winners.

My tip: Immediately after draining, I mix in a beaten raw egg to coat the noodles and make them a tad creamier in mouthfeel - regardless of brand. The noodle heat soft-cooks the egg.

Whole lotta foods in that snack food group seem to use the same hot dog water flavored spice.

Kraft Mac n Cheese, let’s just say the same cemented consistency it turns into after an hour sitting in the dirty dishes is not far off from the physical state it reaches inside the digestive tract.

How do you know that?

Warning: of all the powdered Mac and cheese brands, Annie's had the highest micro plastic content.

I eat a fair bit of mac&cheese, and I'll bet it's still not 1% of my micro plastic intake. From what I can see, they're still not even twice the content of Kraft.

> A return to the original recipe would win me back, and I’m willing to bet I’m not alone.

People don't notice the gradual enshittification ... until they do. The problem is that, at that point, they're not just going to switch; they are now angry at your brand and getting them back is going to be impossible.

Like many people, I've been making Kraft macaroni and cheese for decades by this point. The recipe is on the box. It's not hard to make.

Or at least, it didn't used to be hard to make. Whatever they've done to the stuff recently, they've actually broken the instructions. It no longer even cooks correctly. Three cooking failures in a row, means I will never buy your product again. Why should I? There's a dozen alternatives. Most are either unhealthy or don't taste right to at least one member of the family, but there's a dozen of them... one worked out.

I'm angry and I'm not going back.

Broken how? It’s one of the simplest recipes I can think of. Boil pasta until done, drain, add butter, milk, powder, return to heat, mix.

Whatever the pasta is now, it cooks quite differently. You'll get softer noodles much quicker, and will congeal into a blob unlike the old recipe. Additionally the water gets extra starchy with the new recipe. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else but the quantity per box has decreased as well. Special shapes came in smaller weights, but now even the regular box does too.

> congeal into a blob

That is the specific problem I get now. The powdered sauce-stuff just never turns into a sauce but instead likes to stay in these horrid blobs full of unreconstituted powder, while half the noodles aren't coated. When it happens three times in a row, with three separate batches/box date codes and different milk/butter, I can cook your competitor's product with no issues, and I used to be able to cook yours so I know I'm not just being dense, that means it's your fault and you're out. Forever. Having real alternatives means I have no mercy for enshittification.

I should probably also note that this is specifically the "Thick and Creamy" variant because the " 'Original' Flavor" got banned from the household a long time ago for somehow being inferior to store-brand generic. Kraft just really does not want our business.

They changed something about the noodles and now they are way overcooked if you follow the box instructions. And you need way more butter to get a similar flavor to before.

> A return to the original recipe would win me back

Ah yes, those "new and improved" recipes which almost invariably are about improving production costs and not improving taste.

I've started shopping by ingredients label. If I see more than a few ingredients I'm gonna pay attention, if it's multiple lines of weird names I'm just putting it back.

However that presumes the companies are honest about what they put in there. I know from a close friend that's not always the case (and yes I avoid that brand).

can you anonymously reveal what brand(s) those are? that sounds dangerous and probably illegal in most countries?

We're trying to figure out how to report this to the proper authorities here without it being obvious who's leaking.

It's not like direct health threat, but it's bad enough that it warrants attention from the authorities.

I know it's garbage (from a health perspective), but I still eat a box of Kraft Mac n Cheese periodically. It's absolutely gone down hill. I couldn't articulate how without spending more time than it's worth thinking about it. I miss how much I enjoyed it fifteen years ago. It was a delicious treat.

If you're in the US, oddly enough the Aldi brand tends to be pretty close to the pre-cheapified name brand recipes.

Occasionally they do silly 'heath' things like omitting the necessary MSG from their cheetos, but this is easily remedied.

It's garbage from a taste perspective too. Kraft mac and cheese is truly disgusting stuff; any real mac and cheese recipe will get you 10x the flavor for only 2x the effort.

A real mac and cheese recipe where you make a bechamel sauce and mix in grated cheese is way more than 2x the effort, time and cleanup of the boxed stuff.

> Kraft mac and cheese, first sold in 1937 for 19 cents a box, was the creation of Chicago cheese monger James L. Kraft, who got his start selling cheese from a horse-drawn wagon. Marketed as a meal for four [...]

That's $4.37 per box in November of 2025 dollars, according to the US BLS Inflation Calculator, for a box that was said to serve 4 -- or ~$1.09 modern dollars per serving.

A modern box of Kraft Mac and Cheese contains 7.25oz, and serves 3.5 [WTF?] people, and costs ~$1.24, or ~$0.35 modern dollars per serving.

Maybe if they weren't seeking the bottom dollar at every possible expense, they'd have held onto their sales.

Personally I just learned how to make butter and cheese water:

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/eieSNW5pK8w

Pasta Roni White Cheddar Shells are still the best in this category, esp. if made with sour cream instead of milk.

Kraft Dinner will never die up in Canada

It sucks in Canada too. When my family wants a KD fix, we get the Annie's blue box. It tastes better and doesn't have the off-putting colour. It's basically like KD used to be.

I haven't eaten KD in like 15 years. /shrug

Do you go around bragging that you don't watch TV, too?

The comments are a good read.

Kraft? It’s Annie’s all the way.

This is one of those foods in my world which just kind of “exists” without consideration that it’s actually eaten by some people as a preference. Other candidates include: Campbells tomato soup, pork rinds, and ranch dip.

Two of these things are not like the others. Pork rinds and ranch both vary in quality from mass produced crap that I would actively avoid to delicious products that I would seek out. In particular a really tangy buttermilk ranch (or even a really lemony ranch) with lots of black pepper and freshly minced herbs is supremely tasty.

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