Smartfood White Cheddar popcorn is the solely snack I ever need. I imply this. I don’t usually crave sweets, and whereas I’ll fortunately settle for chips and Cheetos and numerous Haldiram’s mixes, Smartfood is the one one which sends me right into a centered stupor. I’ve often eaten complete baggage of it — massive ones, those meant for a complete household — whereas watching a film. As a baby, I’d beg my dad for it on each bodega journey, and he’d normally give in, as a result of the entire concept was that Smartfood was the snack that was good for you. Or no less than not absolutely the worst. In an age of muted Snackwells and Crystal Gentle, what a revelation that one thing “wholesome” additionally tasted so good.
And it did style unimaginable, like biting into the sharpest cheddar and discovering it to be all ethereal crunch. My cheeks puckered. My mouth watered. It took intense sucking to get all of the powdered residue off my fingers. It was simply so tacky, someway extra so than precise cheese. Consuming every handful felt like quenching a thirst I didn’t know was biologically attainable, like there was some dairy-forward opioid receptor the snack had single-handedly activated.
However then, one thing occurred. It solely occurred to me lately, after grabbing a couple of handfuls throughout a sport evening with associates. The zing wasn’t zinging; the sharpness was boring. My fingers barely had a dusting of cheese powder on them. The Miss Clavel in my mind awoke from her slumber — one thing shouldn’t be proper. I spotted then it had not been proper for a while.
At first, I assumed that is simply what being 38 appears like. Is something pretty much as good because it was once? Maybe Smartfood solely tasted good as a result of I may eat it by the fistful whereas watching Muppet Infants and I didn’t know what a calorie was and I didn’t have a job. I beloved it with an depth that feels not possible to realize in maturity, one solely attainable as a result of I actually had nothing else to place my thoughts to.
Nevertheless it wasn’t simply me. I took to Instagram, posting to my tales that Smartfood was simply not hitting prefer it used to. Instantly I obtained a deluge of responses, associates and acquaintances and colleagues agreeing that Smartfood appeared worse to them. “It’s so much less sharp as of late,” stated one. “Even the feel feels off,” stated one other.
Rachel Ross first observed that Smartfood tasted totally different in 2020, round COVID lockdown, when she stocked up on Smartfood for consolation consuming. “It was once actually tacky. Like Annie’s mac and cheese besides in popcorn kind.” It’s an apt description. Smartfood was based in 1985 by Ann Withey and her then-husband, Andrew Martin, at a time when “pure” snacks had been all the fad, and “whole-grain” popcorn appeared like a more healthy different to potato chips. The couple offered the product to Frito-Lay in 1989, and used the cash to begin Annie’s Homegrown, of mac and cheese fame.
Everybody I spoke to stated they turned conscious of the change to the flavour of Smartfood over the previous few years. “I positively observed final yr once I purchased some on objective, relatively than being handed a mini bag at some occasion or lodge check-in, as a result of I dismissed these as simply being outdated or stale,” says Alyssa, who requested that we hold their final title non-public. “However even once I purchased it, it was nonetheless much less flavorful, powdery however not tacky or sharp, simply principally dusty.”
“It’s onerous to pinpoint precisely once I observed that the style had much less bang,” says Nick Brennan. However every time he eats it, “every handful feels considerably extra bland than in my reminiscence.”
Some followers, like me, had been prepared to chalk up any change to the inevitable technique of getting old. Calvin Kasulke, who says he ate a snack bag of it for lunch nearly day-after-day in highschool, imagines “if I attempted it now and it tasted totally different, I’d have a tough time discerning whether or not the popcorn had modified or I had, and whether or not or not it was simply nostalgia for that dependable college lunch snack that was tricking me into considering it didn’t hit the identical.” In spite of everything, our tastes change over our lifetime; our style buds actually shrink as we age. “I satisfied myself it was simply in my head, and it’s as a result of I’m not a child having fun with it anymore,” says Alyssa.
Nevertheless it couldn’t be that each one our tongues had been deceiving us. One thing needed to have modified. I turned decided to determine what it was.
Even after Frito-Lay purchased Smartfood in 1989, for a very long time it was simply Smartfood. It got here in smaller or larger baggage, but it surely was the identical yellow ear of corn, the identical italicized font on a white banner, the identical taste the entire time. In 2012, Frito-Lay introduced it was increasing the Smartfood line of snacks, including new flavors for the primary time within the model’s historical past. Now there can be Buffalo Cheddar popcorn and Cinnamon Sugar popcorn, and quite a lot of corn chips. And in 2019, the Smartfood brand modified to function a sleeker, minimal corn cob and a rounder font. Nonetheless, at the same time as Smartfood got here out with new flavors like Krispy Kreme doughnut and Kettle Corn lately, the unique White Cheddar remained obtainable.
However across the time these new flavors started displaying up, folks additionally began complaining that the flavour of White Cheddar was off. Three years in the past, a thread on the r/snacking subreddit requested, “What occurred to Smartfood popcorn?” The unique poster puzzled, “Inside the previous few years with common Smartfood, there’s much less taste and [it] leaves your palms spotless, anybody discover this? Did they modify the recipe and sacrifice taste for cleanliness!?” There have been 47 responses, not a ton, however everybody was in settlement. One particular person speculated producers had been utilizing subject corn meant for animal feed. One other steered all of them complain on to Frito-Lay.
Counting on an organization to supply your favourite meals means you don’t have any management over it. The corporate may fold, it may cease promoting the product, or nearly worst of all, it may change the recipe to supply an imitation of the one you love, just like the Males In Black bug alien in his Edgar go well with, ransacking your pantry as if he belonged there. The opposite drawback with counting on an organization on your favourite meals is that if it had been to change, how would you realize? Often firms will crow a few modified recipe, like Chips Ahoy! asserting its use of a better high quality chocolate chip. However that is normally solely when the change is one thing the corporate hopes is optimistic for the patron. Most manufacturers don’t need to publicize that they’re altering their merchandise. Frito-Lay didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark from Eater. However we do have one device: the ingredient record. And it gives us some clues.
Two years in the past, a Reddit person posted a bag of Smartfood from 1987 to r/nostalgia. This was from earlier than Ann Withey offered the product to Frito-Lay, when it was nonetheless a household enterprise working out of Marlborough, Massachusetts. Right here’s the record of components: “air popped popcorn, pure corn oil, aged cheddar cheese (pasteurized milk, salt, cheese cultures, enzymes), buttermilk, whey, salt, sodium phosphate.”
“Substances labeling was one thing that the FDA began requiring within the Seventies,” says Xaq Frohlich, affiliate professor of historical past at Auburn College and the creator of From Label to Desk: Regulating Meals in America within the Info Age. Earlier than that, the FDA stored its personal requirements of id for various meals merchandise, and so long as your product adopted that customary you didn’t must disclose the particular components. However customers needed to know what was within the rising variety of processed meals on grocery retailer cabinets, and the labels had been meant to permit folks to make knowledgeable decisions.
Based on the FDA, on any meals label, “the components are listed in descending order of predominance by weight, with the components used within the best quantity first, adopted by these in smaller quantities.” So we are able to glean from this that cheddar cheese is a distinguished ingredient within the 1987 model of Smartfood.
Frito-Lay clearly knew it had a success on its palms, as a result of the corporate hardly modified the recipe. A package deal of Smartfood with a copyright of 1995 lists “popcorn, vegetable oil (corn, canola, and/or sunflower oil), cheddar cheese (milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes), whey, buttermilk, pure taste, and salt.” This record swaps the order of buttermilk and whey and provides a small quantity of pure taste, however in any other case it’s fairly much like the 1987 model. The components stay the identical in a package deal copyrighted in 2019, after the corporate up to date the brand.
The bag I purchased in early March 2025 says the data on the again was copyrighted in 2021, and its ingredient record considerably diverges from the 2019 model. Right here’s what it lists: “popcorn, vegetable oil (corn, canola, and/or sunflower oil), pure flavors, whey, maltodextrin (produced from corn), buttermilk, cheddar cheese (milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes), salt.” Cheese is now the penultimate ingredient — seventh as an alternative of third, because it had been till now.
“The change so as means that they’ve had a change within the internet weight between these totally different merchandise. So it does counsel a system change,” says Frohlich. Particularly, it suggests Smartfood started utilizing much less cheddar cheese, and extra “pure flavors,” which Frolich says is a meals time period that tends to obscure greater than it illuminates. Pure flavors are “very chemical, however they’ve been derived from pure issues,” he says; Smartfood itself describes them as “obtained from essences or extracts of sources present in nature equivalent to spice, fruit, vegetable, yeast, herb, plant materials, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy merchandise.” So, just about something. Firms aren’t required to reveal what particularly they derive their pure flavors from, or what flavors they’re making an attempt to imitate.
Then there’s the brand new ingredient: corn maltodextrin, an additive usually used as a “bulking agent” in powdered meals. It’s additionally used as a provider for pure flavors, which can evaporate if not blended with one thing else. The presence of maltodextrin mixed with the elevated placement of pure flavors alerts that extra of the tacky taste in Smartfood is coming from processed flavoring brokers, not cheese.
It’s clear we have now a special Smartfood on our palms. However as to why Frito-Lay would change the recipe, there are fewer solutions. Vitamin labels are written in a method that also protects a model’s commerce secrets and techniques. We could know the order of components, however that doesn’t inform us easy methods to make Smartfood ourselves. That’s as a result of “your entire packaged meals trade is basically constructed round this concept that the meals turns into the model, and that you just style the model,” says Frohlich. He brings up Coca-Cola, the mass-produced meals with maybe probably the most famously guarded recipe. It tastes like Coca-Cola. Frito-Lay needs you to style Smartfood, not white cheddar cheese popcorn. And so they need you to style it no matter how they make it.
Frohlich mentions a couple of causes meals firms have traditionally modified their product formulations. There is likely to be new public concern about an ingredient that encourages a model to take away it, like Steak ’n Shake deciding to cook dinner its fries in beef tallow to appease those that are panicking about seed oils. The FDA may change its labeling necessities. Over time, the FDA has added necessities about labeling issues like added sugar or trans fats, usually spurring firms to alter their recipes to look higher to customers.
Evaluating the 2019 and 2021 baggage of Smartfood, there are a couple of variations within the vitamin info. In each, a 28-gram serving is 160 energy. The newer label has barely much less ldl cholesterol, 1 p.c of the beneficial every day consumption as an alternative of two p.c, and 15 grams of carbohydrates to the older label’s 13 grams. There’s additionally a change in sodium. In 2019, a serving had 240 milligrams and now it’s 200 milligrams.
In October 2021, the FDA issued trade steering round voluntary sodium discount targets. “Meals firms normally attempt to reformulate their merchandise earlier than any change in labeling rules turns into official, to attenuate the notion that their product needed to be modified,” says Frohlich. “That stated, this was a voluntary steering and never an FDA requirement.” And whereas Smartfood’s sodium went down, each quantities had been inside the FDA tips.
Then there’s the ever-present wrongdoer: the provision chain. Typically formulation modifications occur “when immediately one ingredient turns into actually costly or actually onerous to supply in a constant method,” says Frohlich. We don’t know the place Frito-Lay sources its cheddar cheese, but it surely’s affordable to imagine {that a} perishable ingredient like cheddar cheese is costlier, and could also be topic to extra provide chain points, than pure flavors made in a lab and a corn byproduct that comes fairly low cost. Even when an ingredient shouldn’t be tough to supply, saving cash is at all times interesting.
In 2022, Cory Doctorow coined the time period “enshittification” to explain how tech firms like Amazon launch with a top quality product, after which as soon as they’ve achieved a monopoly available on the market, slowly make issues worse and worse after prospects have made a behavior of utilizing them. The phrase has since come to explain all of the methods capitalism and the pursuit of infinite development have made issues worse for customers, who’ve ever-fewer decisions. And even when an organization modifications its product due to elements past its management, it may be onerous to not really feel just like the buyer is getting the brief finish of the stick.
Frito-Lay crows that “Smartfood is America’s #1 promoting popcorn model based mostly on 2024 retail gross sales information.” Based on trade journal Snack Meals & Wholesale Bakery, “Prepared-to-eat popcorn took in $2.1 billion in greenback gross sales for the 52-week interval ending April 21, 2024,” with Smartfood main the class at $571.1 million in gross sales. In order for you white cheddar popcorn, it’s possible you’ll discover a bag of Smart or LesserEvil on the grocery retailer — it’s not a monopoly — however probably you’re getting Smartfood, whether or not it’s as a result of it’s what you’ve at all times most popular or as a result of it’s the one your retailer gives.
Frito-Lay can transfer across the components and swap actual cheddar cheese for cheddar cheese “taste” as a result of they already have you ever. What are you going to do, strive one other white cheddar popcorn you may like even much less? The explanation I and others assumed one thing was unsuitable with us is as a result of we trusted Smartfood to style a sure method. We had constructed up a lifetime of nostalgia and goodwill towards the model, and had been prepared to maintain going even when our tongues had been telling us one thing was unsuitable.
And but, there’s solely a lot energy nostalgia can have within the face of actuality. Ross says she’s stopped shopping for Smartfood as a lot, going as an alternative for cheesier choices like Garrett or Cretors, each of which record cheddar cheese because the third ingredient. Brennan goes in the other way, choosing SkinnyPop, with the logic that if it’s going to be blander anyway, he may as properly go for the model with fewer energy. I now discover myself shopping for LesserEvil or Bjorn Qorn’s signature taste with tacky dietary yeast if I see it, or simply making my very own tacky popcorn with shredded Parmesan.
However LesserEvil isn’t what lit up my coronary heart when my dad unpacked it from the grocery bag. Bjorn Qorn isn’t what my associates and I shoved in our faces by the fistful throughout sleepovers. SkinnyPop isn’t what my spouse picks up once I’ve had a nasty day or gotten excellent news, each equally deserving of a particular deal with. I discover myself nonetheless reaching for Smartfood, hoping that regardless of all of the proof, it actually was me this entire time, that the subsequent bag will probably be as sharp and messy as I keep in mind. I’ll hold studying the ingredient record. Possibly sooner or later, one thing will change once more.
