From Salon comes this very alarming piece of news about Annie's Mac and Cheese, the grup parents' comfortable alternative to the radioactive-looking Kraft version:

Annie's stinks. Ever caught a surprise whiff as you guide stove-top traffic at dinnertime? (Right rear pot cleared for takeoff. Climb to avoid hot and high left front.) The stuff is rank; think sweaty T-shirt marinated in a gym bag for a week. Yet kids, whose palates are usually so delicate, lap it up. Which leads one to wonder, what's in those little hare-festooned envelopes anyway? Heroin? As a matter of fact, it's pretty much the same thing that's in the famous blue box: pasta, cheese, milk, salt. Granted, Annie's has only nine ingredients while Kraft has 20, most of which, nasty as they sound, replace nutrients removed in processing or are naturally occurring and have a long history as additives. Just two Kraft ingredients raise the mercury on the toxic-meter: yellow dyes No. 5 and No. 6, which impart the infamous fluorescent hue.

But from a nutritional perspective, that's the only time Annie's lands a punch. The rest of the match is a draw.

We can almost see the crazed look in Park Slope parents' eyes as they rush to clear the now-cursed boxes from their pantry shelves. Personally, we're sticking with the Kraft version; we find its soupy-sticky qualities appealing. Also, the color kind of looks like the sesame chicken from the cheap Chinese place next door.

The Bunny vs. the Blue Box [Salon]

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