Healthier Oreo may not race to stores

Existing stocks to be sold first, Kraft says
By Delroy Alexander
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 21, 2005

Just days before a government deadline will force food manufacturers to detail the amount of artery-clogging trans fat in their products, Kraft Foods Inc. said local consumers may have to wait months to get a promised healthier version of the popular Oreo cookie.

For more than two years Kraft has been promising to reformulate the world's best-selling cookie, but a spokesman said Tuesday that a new version will not appear in local stores until all existing stocks are depleted.

The new U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation, which is supposed to force foodmakers to list the amount of trans fat on food labels, goes into effect Jan. 1 but allows for the delay.

"It's hard to say exactly when a zero trans Oreo will be in all stores," said David Tovar, Kraft's director of corporate affairs. "I can't tell you when Chicago stores will get a zero trans fat Oreo."

After repeatedly insisting that it would meet the deadline and avoid having to indicate the amount of trans fat in Oreos, Tovar said Tuesday that the company was "still working through the changes and it could be weeks or months" before the new version of the Oreo hit local stores.

He said that as of Jan. 1, only Oreos using the new formula would be produced, although packages may not reflect that because of warehoused stock that will be sold first before the trans-fat-free version appears in stores.

In April 2004, Kraft unveiled a new, improved Reduced Fat Oreo, as well as new Golden Oreo Original and Golden Uh-Oh Oreo, all with zero grams of trans fat. But it continues to struggle with producing a new version of its mainstay Oreo cookie.

Kraft has spent more than 30,000 people-hours and carried out 125 plant trials in a bid to develop a redesigned Oreo, ultimately settling on a blend of specialty canola oil and palm oil, Tovar said.

For more than two years, food scientists at the nation's largest foodmaker have been struggling to purge one of its flagship products of trans fat.

The push became all the more urgent in light of recent research linking the artery-clogging substance to at least 30,000 deaths a year in the United States alone.

A federal advisory committee last year recommended Americans cap the amount of trans fat they eat. The limit is so strict that consumers would surpass it with one serving of Oreos, or three cookies, in a day.

Kraft not alone in change
Northfield-based Kraft is among an array of food processors employing alternatives to partially hydrogenated vegetable oils in bakery products to cut down the amount of trans fat. The partial-hydrogenation process hardens the oil and adds to the shelf life of products, but it is also blamed by experts for introducing harmful trans fatty acids.

Several companies are switching to highly specialized genetically modified canola oils. In Kraft's case, the company is blending these new oils with a small amount of palm oil, a tropical oil that is high in saturated fat, to help produce some of the same hardening and a better shelf life.

Kraft said it is spending millions on new production equipment to blend and store the new oils.

Two weeks ago rival Kellogg Co. said it plans to replace trans fat-producing oils in its products like Cheez-It crackers and Pop Tarts toaster pastries with Monsanto Co.'s Vistive, a soy alternative.

Kellogg will introduce the first of its reformulated products in early 2006.

It said the variety of soy oil it sees as a healthier alternative is not yet fully available for use in all of the company's snack foods.

Just 80 million pounds of the new types of specialty oils are expected to be produced in 2005, one-fifth of the production scheduled for next year, according to the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils. It takes years of planning to grow the new varieties of canola oil, which primarily comes from Canadian provinces such as Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

In late 2002, PepsiCo-owned snackmaker Frito-Lay said it was eliminating trans fats from several of America's favorite salty snacks--Doritos, Tostitos and Cheetos--with other popular chip products following shortly after.

In response to Frito-Lay's swift action, Kraft and other foodmakers have argued that their task of finding suitable new oils to replace core ingredients is far more complex than changing out frying fats as the chipmaker did.

Hundreds of products affected
In all, Kraft's researchers spent more than 100,000 people-hours reformulating company's portfolio.

"Roughly 650 products needed new formulas or manufacturing solutions, or both," Jean Spence, Kraft's executive vice president of Global Technology & Quality, said in a statement. "In some cases, we even had to develop proprietary blends of oils to help meet our goal of ensuring that the combined level of saturated fat plus trans fat did not increase as a result of the reformulation."

Brands such as Kraft Easy Mac, DiGiorno Thin Crispy Crust Pizza, Wheat Thins crackers, and Jell-O Pudding Snacks will now be labeled as containing zero trans fat per serving.

The company said that fewer than 2.5 percent of the products in its portfolio will have a label that declares the presence of trans fat.

These include products where trans fat is naturally occurring, such as cheeses, lunch combinations and "products where reformulation efforts would have negatively altered the taste and quality of the product."

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dalexander@tribune.com

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