Kind Healthy Snacks has pulled a fruit-based snack from the market because it didn’t appeal strongly enough to children – and is using the occasion to chide the industry for the amount of food dyes in child-targeted products.
Kind Fruit Bites are apple-based dried fruit snacks with no dyes or added sugar. Introduced to the market two years ago, they have been pulled from retail stores, although they will still be available online.
In a release, Kind blamed the product’s failure on its refusal to use dyes to impart bright colors.
Photo credit: Seth Olenick
“After just two years in the market, the company has decided to remove the product from shelves as kids regretfully prefer to eat fruit snacks that resembled candy gems versus the dried, whole fruit that Kind uses in its products,” the release says.
To make its point, Kind unveiled a display in Herald Square in New York City of giant test tubes containing 2,000 gallons of food dye – the amount that Kind claims American children consume in food every day.
This display is a continuation of Kind’s strategy of calling out its competitors for what it sees as a dependence on unhealthy ingredients. This spring it launched a website that specifies what percentage of sugar is in popular brands of snack bars, cereals, granola and yogurt.
