So, in other words, hipsters are just as lazy and drawn to nutrion-free "food" as, say, your average suburbanite. Great. Thanks for sharing. This was a poorly written article, unpleasant to read, and really didn't contribute much at all to... anything. Who cares?

Thanks.

Punky lil' librarian

Ithaca, NY

Man, this is absurd! Doesn't this Annie womyn know that all hippies who have success have a duty to keep it to themselves and other like-minded hippies instead of selling it to, to, to ANYONE????? Gosh, what pryck!

Finally we discover that hipster macaroni-in-a-box is not measurably healthier than Kraft dinner. Next up: an article revealing that braised tofu is not a taste sensation, soul patches are, like, SO over, and $120 "fair trade" outfits for toddlers that make children look like midget Land's End customers are both overpriced and impractical.

It's a very small segment of the population that's actually impacted by this article, even if we include anyone who might briefly feel a bit of schadenfreude.

Are people really smug when they serve their kids boiled pasta in reconstituted cheese sauce? That must be the mucho wine talking, no?

The Wall Street Journal (good god, not the wall street journal!!!!) ran a pretty good piece the other day about how much better organic foods really are for you or your kids, and whether it makes sense to buy them for health reasons. By and large, except for porous fruits and vegetables (not bananas and oranges and things that have peels) and meats and dairy, it's largely not worth it. Mac and cheese in a box is still a highly processed food, even if mother nature herself dehydrates the cheese.

Like another poster said, the WSJ piece took the view that organic food is grown in a different way that is liklier to be less detrimental to our environment -- but we're still talking big agri-business in most cases.

So, all the posturing about how much better your kids are because they eat organic cheese powder is probably misplaced. You're still going to have to have a bigger house and hotter more multi-lingual nanny and a more exclusive private school if you want to make your other parent friends jealous.

. . . proofread anymore. Next-to-last paragraph (before the white sauce recipe): "Withey's company acquired it's doppelgänger." Uh, that would be "Withey's company acquired its doppelgänger." How could you have gotten the umlaut correct yet miss that? Any chance you guys could fix that? Thank you very much. (This was yet another reason why I dropped my subscription; but that's another letter, which I already wrote, which I never got a response to.)

Otherwise, I enjoyed the article. Yes, Annie's isn't the crunchy-good brand some may have thought, and yes, that doesn't mean it's (note the correct use for "it's"!) a bad food, either. Yet, why not just make your own? This article made me think about that, and the next time I'm about to reach for the Annie's macaroni, perhaps I'll just go and buy some bulk macaroni and try it with the Joi de Cooking cheese sauce recipe (thank to you who posted it) instead.

The author's daughter may prefer Annie's, but when she's an adult she'll probably be very glad that her mother taught her to cook!

Okay, you want the TRULY easy homemade mac and cheese? Only one pot to clean?

1) Boil water

2) Add noodles

3) Grate cheese

4) Put cooked noodles in collendar

5) In the same pot, add grated cheese to a can of "cream of whatever" soup.

6) Mix. Add salt. It takes no extra effort to add Worchestire sauce, or tabasco, or seasoned salt, or whatever the hell else is within reach that you like.

7) Put the noodles back in and stir.

One pot to clean. If your kids don't think it tastes enough like "REAL" Macaroni and cheese, triple the salt. That's what makes home-made different tasting than the box kind.

Oh - step 8 -

8) Give thanks to me for the recipe!

If these harried organo-hipsters are stupid enough to be taken in by Annie's--let alone feel smugly superior to Kraft eaters!--I hope Annie increases the hefty markup on her prices, because her customers deserve it. Processed food bad. "Natural" processed food a scam. Homemade food good. None of this is news to anyone with both brain cells and tastebuds. This article was as junky as orange cheese powder.

Aside from being devoid of insight, this article is just plain silly. So Annie is a marketing genius - so what? More power to her for being a successful entrepeneur. So the ingredients of her product are very similar to Kraft mac and cheese - so what? If you don't like it, or your kids don't like it, or you think other food is better - don't buy it. Nobody is forcing you, or anybody else, to eat mac and cheese. Every once in a while Salon features an article like this, in which an alleged "healthy" food (Pirate Booty, etc.) is exposed as something everybody knew it was in the first place - a not-that-healthy food that is marketed to the organic crowd. Again: if you don't like it, by all means don't buy it.

The instructions on Kraft M&C call for 4 tbsp butter -- that's half a stick to you and me. Annie's calls for a pat of butter, or some yoghurt.

If I've got this wrong I apologize, but it seems to me that the comparison in the article is comparing the boxes before preparation.

Wow, what a poorly written article.

If Ms. Anti-Annie's sold her own mac and cheese product, might there be the image of a straw man on the box? Oh, right, her recipe's cheese--probably from a very pleasant cheese shop that also sells fine dessert wines--wouldn't last in a box. Whoops. There goes the pasta fresca too.

Who is so wed to the idea that Annie's is a health food? Or a healthy food or whatever? Who? Who. Why the sarcasm? The anger? Who is being fooled? Nobody, Anti-Annie's. Nobody. The article's premise is flawed, but there's a complex psychology at work in it. On the other hand, maybe it's meant to be a funny piece. But it's not. You know why? Nobody cares about Annie's.

I do love it though when the comfortable classes get all bored and righteous and then decide to put those feelings to paper. Or cyberspace. So that we might all read and be enlightened and fascinated by the boredom of others. Does it get any edgier than that?