2 Moms to Kraft: Stop Using Yellow Dye

Love Kraft’s Mac & Cheese? Two food bloggers are asking the Northfield-based company to make the product yellow-dye free. 

Lisa Leake and Vani Hari, food bloggers in North Carolina, started a petition on Change.org asking Kraft to remove artificial food coloring yellow 5 and yellow 6 from its macaroni and cheese product. As of 11 a.m. Tuesday, some 220,000 people have signed the petition. 

The women say the food coloring has been banned in Norway and Austria and causes an increase in hyper activity in children, according to their petition on Change.org. 

From their investigation, the women found that Kraft uses natural beta carotene and paprika to create the same color for their Mac & Cheese sold in the United Kingdom because of the country's stricter rules regarding additives, ABC News reported.

Roxanne Junge, who manages Glenview Farmers Market and is the vice president of the Illinois Department of Public Health Farmers Market Task Force, told Glenview Announcement, yellow dye is an allergen that could make people sick and shared an example of North Shore farmers market vendor, who was shut down because a child got sick from the vendor’s pickles that used yellow dye but did not label it on the container.