There’s disappointment, and then there’s despair, and a vivid example of the latter came in the unlikely form of an April review on the Annie’s Homegrown website for its boxed Macaroni and Classic Cheddar, which has a new recipe that the package proclaims is “Now Cheesier!”

“I’ve been eating this mac and cheese since I was literally 2 years old,” the one-star review began. “To say I’m devastated over the recipe change is an understatement. It tastes NOTHING like it used to. I’m never buying again unless you change the recipe back.”

General Mills, which purchased Annie’s in 2014, announced the new recipe for some of the brand’s mac-and-cheese products in September, calling it a “delightful upgrade” that has “even more ooey gooey real cheese” in a press release.

But many Annie’s customers disagree, and with the exception of incentivized positive reviews it imported from the Influenster.com website, many recent reviews on its website have been negative.

“‘Now cheesier’ is extremely disappointing :(” stated an April one-star review from a woman who said she’d been eating the product “exclusively for 22 years” but now found the sauce to have “significantly less flavor” and wouldn’t be purchasing it again unless they “bring back the old recipe.”

A recent post on Mouse Print, a consumer advocacy website, compared the old and new ingredient lists for the products and concluded that Annie’s is engaging in “skimpflation,” which refers to the reformulation of products with cheaper ingredients.

The post concluded the new “ingredients don’t exactly shout new and improved.” Even though cheese is high in protein and calcium, it turns out the “Now Cheesier” recipe has 22.3% less of both protein (9 grams, previously 11) and calcium (90 milligrams, previously 110).

That nutritional shift appears to come from a change in the recipe that General Mills did not highlight in its press release.

Keep reading here.—AAN

Wellness is big business—a $2 trillion business to be exact, according to the Global Wellness Institute. Now, a new survey by McKinsey that accounts for “six dimensions” of wellness—health, sleep, nutrition, fitness, appearance, and mindulfullness—reveals many ways wellness is changing.

The survey—which included responses from over 9,000 consumers across countries like China, the UK, Germany, and the US—found that younger consumers have become pretty devoted to wellness over the past year.

With the US wellness industry worth about $500 billion in annual spend alone, according to previous McKinsey research, 84% of US customers from the survey said that wellness was a top or important priority for them.

Among those, around 30% of Gen Z and millennials responded that wellness was a “a lot more” important to them compared to a year ago. Meanwhile, 23% of older generations felt the same.

Keep reading here.—JS

That little blue Energy Star logo affixed to energy-efficient home appliances is at risk of being cut by the Environmental Protection Agency, and trade and consumer organizations are pleading with the Trump administration to save it. Their actions are the latest in a slew of letters and pronouncements from professional organizations asking the federal government not to cut programs and tax credits.

The Energy Star program, which was created by the EPA and Department of Energy under President George H.W. Bush, sets energy-efficiency standards for home appliances. In turn, those that meet the standards can advertise with the program’s logo. Earlier this month, CNN reported that the EPA was planning to shut down Energy Star, and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has now said that he hopes to privatize the program.

In response to the news that Energy Star might be shuttered, Consumer Reports, a nonprofit product testing organization, urged the EPA to “find a way to preserve” it.

Keep reading here on Tech Brew.—TC