Manufacturing a healthier chocolate bar

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The friendly cream-colored label hit on all sorts of healthy messages. “Low sodium!” “Fresh roasted peanut taste,” and “Contains 90% peanuts” were among them.

Directly below the Natural Jif rested a shelf of the regular Jif, with its suddenly ominous tri-colored label. And no healthy messages attached.

I couldn’t help wondering… what’s in that jar?!? Then I chuckled to myself at the juxtaposition. Certainly, food producers aren’t putting harmful substances in our food … are they?

There must be some difference between Natural Jif and regular Jif. Why not just make it all the healthy way?

Last week, a pair of major chocolate producers — including our own The Hershey Co. — struck healthier stances by vowing to pay closer attention to ingredients. Nestle went first by promising to remove artificial flavors and colorings from all of its chocolate candy products by the end of 2015.

Hershey followed a day later with its promise to start using simpler ingredients in its chocolate bars and Kisses brands, as well as locally produced milk. The chocolate maker said it would shift to using simpler ingredients beginning this year.

While Hershey didn’t make any commitments to dropping any ingredients, the company said information on the sourcing, manufacturing and labeling of the products would be made available on the packaging or online.

What will it mean for the chocolate manufacturing processes? A bigger impact on Nestle, it seems. The company claimed the move means changes to about 75 recipes, including the reformulation of the Butterfinger. According to an NPR report, that orange hue that colors the crunchy center of the Butterfinger is made by combining the synthetic dye Red 40 with Yellow 5.

The dyes will be replaced with a natural coloring called annatto.

Call it the power of the consumer demanding change. A recent Global Health & Wellness Survey by Nielson confirmed the consumers’ desire for healthier eating options.

Roughly 75 percent of global respondents believe they “are what they eat” and nearly 80 percent are actively using foods to forestall health issues and medical conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol and hypertension.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for food manufacturers and retailers to lead a healthy movement by providing the products and services that consumers want and need,” said Susan Dunn, executive vice president of global professional services for Nielsen. “While diet fads come and go overtime, innovative, back-to-basics foods that taste good, are easy to prepare and provide healthful benefits will have staying power.”

So there’s that. Kudos to Hershey for getting on board, although a few more specific actions on the healthier ingredients would have been better.

Are you aware of what you eat? And how important is it to you?