Is America breaking up with Kraft singles?
The brightly-colored, individually-wrapped processed cheese product — long an icon in American cuisine — has seen its consumption decline among U.S. consumers.
Processed cheese sales were down 1.8 percent in 2018, and Kraft Heinz took a $15.8 million write-down in its brands Kraft and Oscar Meyer earlier this month, according to The Washington Post.
Corby Kummer, a senior editor at The Atlantic, an award-winning food writer and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy, says it's part of a larger trend of consumers gravitating toward fresh, artisanal, locally-made foods.
"Consumers have decided they care about how many ingredients are on the label, they care about local production," Kummer explained on Boston Public Radio on Thursday.
But Kummer says there is a real need for processed cheese in American cuisine: melted in omelets and on top of cheeseburgers.
"Velveeta has these incredible emulsifying properties, which regular cheese — which separates, clumps, and turns messy — does not," Kummer continued.
"It has its lurid, dyed-orange, salty place in American life," he continued.
