Annie’s Homegrown: Convenient, organic, and healthy…or not?

Salon.com has a fascinating article (The bunny vs. the blue box) about Annie’s Homegrown, maker of the now-famous purple box with the bunny on it, which happens to contain macaroni and cheese.

Annie’s Homegrown out-bads McDonald’s and Coca-Cola because it plants a corporate beachhead right there in your family’s kitchen. Every time you reach for the rabbit, you’re delivering the message that the almighty brand trumps Mom or Dad’s efforts any day of the week. So, stand up, please, and receive a heartfelt thank-you from the American food industry. Where would they be without the culinary passivity and anesthetized palate you are so assiduously cultivating in the next generation?

Ouch!

Of particular interest is the step-by-step comparison on page two of making truly home-made mac and cheese vs. making Annie’s. The verdict? Nine steps for the home-made version vs. eight steps for making the ready-made stuff. The difference lies in grating the cheese vs using the desiccated cheese powder that Annie’s supplies. The same powder, by the way, that’s used in the other product that Annie is famous for making: Smartfood popcorn. Yes, that one invention—cheese powder—has now spawned two hit foods products.

Seeing the preparation steps laid out for comparison like that makes me wonder how much of our sense of helplessness in the kitchen is a calculated byproduct of marketing by the food production companies…

(I wrote a letter to Salon.com pointing out that there are a couple of steps missing when thinking about Annie’s in terms of convenience…)

Also of interest is the fact that Annie’s isn’t actually organic. Yes, I know, I was under the mistaken impression that they were in fact organic, but in reality it’s all just marketing hype. Notice that nowhere does it say “organic”...rather, the word choices include “totally natural” and while the ingredient list is shorter than that of Kraft’s Mac and Cheese, and doesn’t include any chemical-y sounding words, there isn’t anything particularly organic about the ingredients themselves.

So what exactly is Annie’s selling? It would seem they’re selling convenience. But having seen the difference in preparation as being a single step, I have to wonder if it makes sense…