Try this simple test. Say the following out loud: Artificial colors and flavors. Pesticides. Preservatives. High-fructose corn syrup. Growth hormones. Antibiotics. Gluten. Genetically modified organisms.<\/span><\/p>\n If any one of these terms raised a hair on the back of your neck, left a sour taste in your mouth, or made your lips purse with disdain, you are part of Big Food\u2019s multibillion-dollar problem. In fact, you may even belong to a growing consumer class that has some of the world\u2019s biggest and best-known companies scrambling to change their businesses. <\/span><\/p>\n Lest you think this is hyperbole, consider the commentary in February at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference, the packaged-goods industry\u2019s premier annual gathering. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe look at our business and say, \u2018How can we remake ourselves?\u2019 \u201d said Richard Smucker, CEO of his family\u2019s namesake jelly giant <\/span>(SJM). A second exec\u2014this one at ConAgra (CAG), which owns 29 food brands that bring in $100 million in annual retail sales apiece\u2014bemoaned to Credit Suisse analyst <\/span>Robert Moskow that \u201cbig\u201d had become \u201cbad.\u201d A third conveyed what her industry feared would be the largest casualty of the public\u2019s \u201cmounting distrust of Big Food\u201d\u2014that shoppers would turn away from them for good. \u201cWe understand that increasing numbers of consumers are seeking authentic, genuine food experiences,\u201d said Campbell Soup Co. (CPB) CEO Denise Morrison, \u201cand we know that they are skeptical of the ability of large, long-established food companies to deliver them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n And here\u2019s one number to capture that skepticism: An analysis by Moskow found that the top 25 U.S. food and beverage companies have lost an equivalent of $18 billion in market share since 2009. \u201cI would think of them like melting icebergs,\u201d he says. \u201cEvery year they become a little less relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTheir existence is being challenged,\u201d says Edward Jones analyst Jack Russo of the major packaged-food companies. In some ways it\u2019s a strange turn of events. The idea of \u201cprocessing\u201d\u2014from ancient techniques of salting and curing to the modern arsenal of artificial preservatives\u2014arose to make sure the food we ate didn\u2019t make us sick. Today many fear that it\u2019s the processed food itself that\u2019s making us unhealthy. Indeed, nearly half of the respondents in a recent Bernstein survey say they distrust the food system. Shoppers still value the convenience that food processing offers, says Moskow, \u201cbut the pendulum has definitely shifted in their minds. They have more and more questions about why this bread lasts 25 days without going stale.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s pretty simple what people want now: simplicity. Which translates, most of the time, to less:<\/i> less of the ingredients they can\u2019t actually picture in their head.<\/p>\n While consumers have long associated the stuff on the labels they can\u2019t pronounce with Big Food\u2019s products\u2014the endless strip of cans and boxes that primarily populate the center aisles of the grocery store\u2014they now have somewhere else to turn (more on that in a bit). And that has brought the entire colossal, $1-trillion-a-year food retail business to a tipping point. Steve Hughes, a former ConAgra executive who co-founded and now runs natural food company Boulder Brands, believes so much change is afoot that we won\u2019t recognize the typical grocery store in five years. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for 37 years,\u201d he says, \u201cand this is the most dynamic, disruptive, and transformational time that I\u2019ve seen in my career.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Shoppers are still shopping, but they\u2019re often turning to brands they believe can give them less of the ingredients they don\u2019t want\u2014and for the first time, they can find them in their local Safeway, Wegmans, or Wal-Mart. Rather than carry traditional products with stagnant sales, chains like Target are actively giving increasing space on their shelves to a slew of New Age players like yogurt-maker Chobani, Hampton Creek (which sells a popular plant-based mayo), Nature\u2019s Path, Amy\u2019s Kitchen, and Lifeway Foods, which makes a yogurt-like drink called kefir. Retailers are creating their own brands too. Kroger\u2019s (KR) Simple Truth line of natural food grew to an astonishing $1.2 billion in annual sales in just two years. And compounding the frenzy is that many brands are discovering they don\u2019t need shelf space to begin with. Natural and organic food company Hain Celestial, with more than $2 billion in revenue, says Amazon (AMZN) is among its top 10 vendors in the U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n The search for authenticity has led organic food sales to more than triple over the past decade and increase 11% last year alone to $35.9 billion, according to the Organic Trade Association. Data provider Spins found that sales of natural products across nearly every category are growing in mainstream retailers, while more than half of their conventional counterparts are in decline.<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps more frightening for Big Food, shoppers are doing something else as well: They\u2019re skipping the middle aisles altogether. For each of the past two years, according to Bernstein research, the annual volume of <\/span>packaged food sold in the U.S. has fallen more than 1%. While that dip may seem small, it\u2019s a portent of a much larger, even seismic, shift in the stuffing-our-gullets business. Yes, as in every other legacy industry, Disruption (with a capital \u201cD\u201d) is here. Big Food is under attack from Startup Granola.<\/span><\/p>\n Traditional packaged-food companies, however, aren\u2019t taking the assault lightly. Some are attempting to buy their way into the natural space, acquiring small health food companies by the fistful. Almost all are radically rethinking their own product recipes. Kraft Foods, for instance, is removing synthetic colors and artificial preservatives from its flagship mac and cheese. Tyson has announced it is eliminating the use of human antibiotics in its chickens raised for meat. General Mills (GIS), which has already removed genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from its original Cheerios, has cut sugar by 25% in its Yoplait yogurt. All of these developments have happened in the past half year.<\/span><\/p>\n Fortune<\/i> spent months getting inside several of the industry\u2019s key corporations to understand how they\u2019re responding to the mounting threat. One thing is clear: Big Food is suddenly looking like an underdog.<\/span><\/p>\n American shoppers<\/span> have become skeptical of \u201cthe barn on the package.\u201d That\u2019s the catchall phrase that Stonyfield Farm co-<\/span>founder and chairman Gary Hirshberg uses for how big food companies dress up their products as \u201cnatural\u201d\u2014a mystical term in the food industry that has no real meaning. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not even define it. But as consumers, especially millennials, have taken a more active and informed approach to what they buy, the barn has lost its appeal. Says Hirshberg: \u201cThere\u2019s enormous doubt and skepticism about whether large companies can deliver naturality and authenticity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Some are betting that authenticity can be purchased. Industry goliaths are busy filling up their shopping carts, hunting for natural food brands to buy. \u201cThe prices have gone through the roof because everyone wants in,\u201d says Edward Jones analyst Russo. Arran Stephens, co-founder and president of organic food company Nature\u2019s Path, says he receives some 50 overtures a year from interested buyers. \u201cI\u2019m talking about all the major names,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t think there are any that haven\u2019t contacted us.\u201d (He refuses to sell.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat these companies are trying to do is expedite their evolution,\u201d explains Hirshberg, whose yogurt operation is today owned by Danone.<\/p>\n Campbell CEO Morrison has clearly been in expedite mode. One of the more candid executives when it comes to addressing Big Food\u2019s woes,<\/span> Morrison tells Fortune<\/i> that she knew she had to \u201cshift the center of gravity at Campbell\u201d<\/span> when she took over the company in 2011. The trends for soup, Campbell\u2019s core business, were not looking good. Over the past decade, industry tracker NPD Group has recorded an 18% decline in canned-soup consumption at dinner and a 7% decline at lunch. Not only were the category\u2019s volumes declining, but so too was Campbell\u2019s portion of the bowl\u2014with its namesake brand\u2019s U.S. share dropping from 49% in 2005 to 42% in 2014, according to Euromonitor International.<\/span><\/p>\n Campbell CEO Denise Morrison is remaking an American icon. Photograph by Patrick James Miller for Fortune<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Something had to change. One of the fastest ways to do it was to acquire a change agent.<\/span> Morrison had been tracking Bolthouse Farms for years, after coming across its juices and smoothies in the fresh produce aisle during a market tour. She understood the beverage market well through Campbell\u2019s V8 brand, but seeing beverages in that section of the store was new to her. When the private equity firm that owned Bolthouse put it up for sale in 2012, Morrison decided to make her move\u2014that is, if she could sell it to her board. And here there was a long orange sticking point.<\/p>\n In addition to selling fruit and veggie drinks, Bolthouse grows and packages fresh carrots\u2014an old-fashioned, weather-sensitive farming business that Morrison suspected would be a turnoff for any packaged-goods company, including her own. True enough, Morrison\u2019s board was skeptical at first. \u201cCarrots, Denise? Really<\/i>?\u201d asked one director. But in the end, the numbers sold themselves. The so-called packaged-fresh sector, where Bolthouse was a standout, was already an $18.6 billion business\u2014and one with promising growth.<\/p>\n Campbell paid $1.56 billion for the company in 2012. Today it has roughly half that amount (more than $800 million) in sales. The following year Morrison bought baby-food maker Plum Organics for $249 million. (It has over $90 million in sales.) Both of these new businesses are small in the context of the soup company\u2019s total $8.3 billion in revenue, but they are transformational in their own way\u2014giving Morrison some pastoral cred when she calls Campbell an \u201corganic carrot farmer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The acquisitions have also, as intended, shifted Campbell\u2019s center of gravity\u2014moving it closer to what the food industry calls \u201cthe perimeter,\u201d the outer ring of the supermarket where fresh foods are stocked. This is where the big growth is.<\/p>\n More important, Morrison didn\u2019t just set out to buy Bolthouse, she went after Bolthouse\u2019s DNA. Following a trend in the tech industry, legacy food companies are on an acqui-hiring spree, hoping to gobble up foodpreneurs, their more agile management operations\u2014and their know-how in the natural food arena. Morrison made Jeff Dunn, who had been president of Bolthouse, the head of Campbell\u2019s new \u201cpackaged <\/span>fresh\u201d division, where he is tasked with expanding the portfolio (though Dunn is cagey about what that might entail).<\/p>\n General Mills did much the same thing when it acquired Annie\u2019s, a hotshot \u201creal ingredients\u201d mac-and-cheese maker: It began using Annie\u2019s broker to sell other General Mills products to natural food retailers, says Jeff Harmening, General Mills executive vice president and chief operating officer for U.S. retail.<\/p>\n The inherent risk with such acquisitions is that the parent company swallows up the scrappy upstart into what food industry veteran Alan Murray calls \u201cthe machine\u201d\u2014a hidebound, groupthink corporate enterprise\u2014rather than learning from its entrepreneurial culture.<\/p>\n Stonyfield\u2019s Hirshberg says major food companies can bring their considerable acumen and deep pockets to help their new fast-growing divisions with their supply chains, but that \u201cthey should stay the heck out of their brand.\u201d If not, they\u2019ll pay the price, he says. Kellogg (K) made the mistake of relocating Kashi from the San Diego area to its parent\u2019s headquarters in Battle Creek, Mich., but moved Kashi\u2019s operation back after the brand\u2019s sales slipped. \u201cThey tried to bring it under their corporate umbrella, and it lost its cachet,\u201d says Erin Lash of Morningstar.<\/p>\n Morrison seems to have gotten the message\u2014keeping Bolthouse managers (including Dunn) in Bakersfield, Calif., rather than integrating them into Campbell\u2019s Camden, N.J., headquarters.<\/p>\n In what may be the clearest sign that Morrison is intent on doing more than \u201cputting the barn on the package,\u201d she backed Plum\u2019s decision in 2013 to become a public benefit corporation, which codifies the business\u2019s social and environmental purpose in its charter. It is among a slew of changes in corporate culture that Morrison has tried to make. Executives now even talk a bit differently, infusing a more wholesome-sounding vocabulary in day-to-day conversation. The company \u201ccooks\u201d and \u201cpreserves\u201d rather than \u201cprocesses\u201d and \u201cmanufactures\u201d; employees follow \u201crecipes,\u201d not \u201cformulas.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Sincere or not, these transformations may not be enough. General Mills got a ton of buzz when it purchased Annie\u2019s, but the salubrious brand, with its cute bunny logo and cultlike following, makes up just 1% of its new parent\u2019s $17.9 billion in revenue.<\/p>\n Likewise, at Campbell, soup is still the heart of the business, constituting the bulk of a division that contributes 55% of the revenue and an overweighted 70% of total operating earnings. While sales of soup are only simmering these days, its operating margins are greater than 20%, which is significantly fatter than margins for most other packaged-foods categories, according to Morningstar. Plum and the beverage biz at Bolthouse are the opposite: Sales for both lines have been leaping ahead at double-<\/span>digit growth, but their margins are comparatively slim. (In fact, Campbell\u2019s overall gross margins have suffered since absorbing both companies\u2014an issue that has raised flags with some Wall Street analysts.)<\/p>\n That\u2019s why, no matter how serious the rebellion among American shoppers is, Campbell can\u2019t completely remake itself as Bolthouse Inc. It\u2019s also why Mark Alexander, the Campbell exec who oversees the rows and rows of Warhol-celebrated cans on U.S. supermarket shelves, has such a tough job. He can\u2019t risk doing anything to those classic soups that might hurt margins or sales, because Campbell needs that \u201cbig economic engine,\u201d he says, to invest in fast-growth areas. Says Alexander, \u201cIt\u2019s not an either\/or.\u201d<\/p>\n Americans are willing<\/span> to give up a lot for their newfound interest in wellness. But apparently they are not willing to say goodbye to chocolate and candy, which have resisted the declines felt in other parts of the packaged-food industry. Confectioneries have held up in part because there was never any confusion over whether they\u2019re an indulgence.<\/span><\/p>\n The world\u2019s collective sweet tooth propelled Hershey (HSY), with $7.4 billion in 2014 sales, to the No. 2 spot on Credit Suisse\u2019s list of the fastest-growing big U.S. food and beverage companies of the past five years. Sales are up from $5.3 billion in 2009, and Hershey has gained share in its category.<\/p>\n Photograph by Adam Levy for Fortune<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n It might seem, then, that Hershey had no cause to be worried over the food revolution. But executives at this all-American chocolate maker could see the tumult happening all around them. Research had found that 68% of global consumers wanted to recognize every ingredient on the label, and 40% desired food made with as few ingredients as possible. \u201cThere is a connection in consumers\u2019 minds between overall health, wellness, and knowing exactly what I\u2019m eating,\u201d says Hershey\u2019s head of global R&D Will Papa. \u201cConsumers want treats, and they want to know that the treat is really good and wholesome.\u201d<\/p>\n This relatively new notion that a treat\u2014which by definition is something that gives pleasure\u2014should also be good for you, coincides with what Papa calls the \u201cunreasonable consumer.\u201d Explains Papa, who spent close to 30 years at P&G before coming to Hershey: \u201cIt used to be I could have great cellphone coverage and pay a premium for it, or I could have slightly lesser coverage and get a deal,\u201d he says. \u201cNow consumers want great cellphone coverage all the time and<\/i> the deal. Because they\u2019re getting it many places, they now expect it everywhere.\u201d Translation: If we\u2019re going to eat something bad for us, we want to know it\u2019s the best kind of bad we can get.<\/p>\n In February, Hershey took a mammoth leap to get ahead of that trend when it announced it was starting to transition its products to \u201csimple ingredients.\u201d What\u2019s more, the makeover would start with two of its most venerable products\u2014Hershey\u2019s Milk Chocolate bar and milk chocolate Kisses. Rather than, say, remove just artificial flavors\u2014or only GMOs or milk from cows raised with the growth hormone rBST\u2014Hershey was going to spike all of them. In their stead would be only ingredients that people understand: milk, sugar, vanilla, etc. Both the milk chocolate bar and Kisses will have \u201cclean labels\u201d by the end of the year. Says CEO John P. Bilbrey, \u201cFor us, this is really a very holistic concept in terms of how we want to run our company.\u201d<\/p>\n Hershey\u2019s first formidable task was to convince suppliers that this wasn\u2019t some one-off experiment. \u201cWe made ourselves kind of a pain,\u201d says Terry O\u2019Day, Hershey senior vice president and chief supply-chain officer. \u201cSuppliers would tell us how difficult it was, what the incremental cost would be. They\u2019re testing you to see if you flinch when they tell you the price.\u201d When it came to finding GMO-free corn sweetener, so little was available in the U.S. that one vendor had to restructure its operations to create the ingredient for Hershey. When the company broached the idea of using milk from cows that hadn\u2019t been treated with rBST, some families that had been supplying milk to the company for 100 years questioned the logic. \u201cWe were asking them to really change the way they did business,\u201d says O\u2019Day. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of emotion that comes out.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n For now, Hershey is absorbing the added costs for the ingredient changes while it looks for savings elsewhere. \u201cWe want to prove we can change the supply chain,\u201d Bilbrey says. He believes costs will come down as demand accelerates.<\/p>\n Apart from the hit to the P&L and the giant monkey wrench thrown into operations, there was one additional hurdle to contend with\u2014and this one would be a heck of a challenge for the company\u2019s food scientists: Under no circumstances, for any of Hershey\u2019s classic products, could the taste change. \u201cThe experience has to be identical,\u201d says Papa.<\/p>\n Some switches, like going GMO-free, don\u2019t typically mess with flavor. But swapping out synthetic vanillin for natural vanilla is not so easy. Vanilla helps mellow out the taste of unsweetened chocolate, but as with any agricultural product, its taste can vary depending on the crop. So over the years, most chocolate manufacturers switched to synthetic vanillin, which is<\/span> uniform from batch to batch. It falls to Jim St. John, Hershey\u2019s master chocolatier, to make sure his milk chocolate\u2019s taste isn\u2019t altered in any way with the shift to the natural stuff. \u201cConsumers do change,\u201d he says, \u201cbut we would have a hard time changing the Hershey flavor profile.\u201d<\/p>\n Another challenge has been what to do about emulsifiers. Hershey is ditching one ingredient that has long been a head-scratcher for consumers: polyglycerol polyricinoleate, or PGPR, which helps the chocolate flow into molds. To compensate, St. John and his team will add more cocoa butter to the mix\u2014something that may ultimately increase the bar\u2019s calorie count from 210 to 220. (All in the name of good health!)<\/p>\n The candymaker is taking a different tack with lecithin, a second emulsifier, which prevents ingredients from separating. Even though lecithin might be unrecognizable to your average shopper, Hershey says the emulsifier is not an artificial ingredient because it sources it from soybeans\u2014something the company will explain on its website.<\/p>\n As for the ingredient transformations at the company\u2019s other brands, from Almond Joy to York Peppermint Pattie, the details\u2014and, in some cases, the big questions\u2014are still being worked out. Should the Kit Kat be gluten-free? And what to do about the inimitable Jolly Rancher, which no amount of marketing spin could rebrand as healthy? \u201cI can\u2019t speak for all consumers,\u201d says O\u2019Day, \u201cbut I\u2019d venture to say they\u2019re not expecting an all-natural thing when you\u2019re eating something that\u2019s basically sugar and corn syrup.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Still, Hershey is working feverishly on a solution to it all. \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s back to the unreasonable consumer,\u201d Papa says. \u201cWe have to do what the consumer asks. It\u2019s in no way a judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2014, Nestl\u00e9<\/span> called Jeff Hamilton back to the U.S. to help turn around the company\u2019s frozen-food business. The biggest drag there was Lean Cuisine. Launched in 1981, Lean Cuisine grew for nearly 30 years with a low-calorie and low-fat message that meshed well with consumers\u2019 views on diet and weight loss. But in 2010 the brand started to slip. Over the past five years, sales have dropped by about a quarter.<\/p>\n Working for Nestl\u00e9 in Canada, Switzerland, and Australia, Hamilton had spent a decade out of the States. Returning home, he was struck by how much things had changed. Before 2005, when Hamilton first left the U.S. for a posting in Sydney, American consumers considered the amount of calories and fat in a product as the ultimate measure of its healthiness. Now a new language around health had emerged that included terms like \u201cnatural,\u201d \u201corganic,\u201d and \u201cgluten-free.\u201d And more important, anything having to do with dieting was out. Astoundingly, unit sales of products with the words \u201cdiet,\u201d \u201clight,\u201d \u201clow,\u201d or \u201creduced\u201d in their names had declined by 11% in 2013, according to Nielsen, and had been flat to down for several years prior to that. <\/span><\/p>\n For the food industry as a whole it was an extraordinary paradigm shift. So in April 2014, Hamilton began to reframe Nestl\u00e9\u2019s Lean Cuisine brand to align with the new wellness lexicon. The company is in the process of rolling out its Lean Cuisine Marketplace line, which taps into what Nestl\u00e9 calls \u201cmodern health benefits.\u201d Shoppers can now choose gluten-free, organic, high-protein, or extra-veggie options.<\/p>\n The creation of these Marketplace meals happened with lightning speed, at least compared with food industry norms. In the past, such product development took 18 to 24 months on average; in the revolutionary new world order, says Paul Grimwood, Nestl\u00e9\u2019s head of the U.S. business, such a leisurely timeline is increasingly untenable. \u201cIn food, change is happening at a pace we\u2019ve probably never seen before,\u201d he says. The willingness of people to adopt new food trends \u201cis at its highest level, probably, ever.\u201d<\/p>\n But the cultural headwind driving into Lean Cuisine is stronger than even the anti-diet fervor would suggest. In truth, the brand faces a double-whammy backlash because American shoppers, it seems, are also rebelling against frozen food. Unit sales across the frozen-food category as a whole dipped 2.5% in the past 12 months alone, Nielsen reports. To many, after all, frozen is the antithesis of fresh. <\/span><\/p>\n Nestl\u00e9, for its part, is trying its best to fight that perception\u2014banking on a notable exception to the sales chill in frozen food: the subcategory of \u201cnatural and organic\u201d offerings, like those made by Amy\u2019s Kitchen. Nestl\u00e9 is nearing completion on a $50 million global R&D facility in Ohio dedicated in part to creating such healthy frozen fare. The stakes couldn\u2019t be higher. Wrote Credit Suisse in a late-April report on Nestl\u00e9: \u201cWe and investors are about to find out whether the biggest food company can turn around one of the largest categories in \u2018Big Food.\u2019\u2009<\/span>\u201d<\/p>\n The existential crisis facing<\/span> the legacy food giants becomes even more pronounced when you consider a company like Hain Celestial\u2014which, with its $2.2 billion in sales last year, is clearly on the path to Big itself. CEO and founder Irwin Simon says he hopes to hit $5 billion by 2020. Hain owns more than 50 brands, from Greek Gods Yogurt to Terra Chips, all in the realm of natural and organic food and personal care. More than 90% of its products are GMO-free and about 40% are organic\u2014two sweet spots for today\u2019s consumer. That helped propel Hain onto Fortune\u2019<\/i>s ranking of the fastest-growing companies in 2013 and 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n Simon launched Hain more than 20 years ago after stints at H\u00e4agen-Dazs and then SlimFast (he recognizes the irony), where he saw how consumers were desperate to lose weight but had a hard time keeping it off. When he took Hain public in November 1993, it had a market cap of $7.5 million. Today it\u2019s worth more than $6 billion. \u201cThey don\u2019t have any of the old stodgy processed-food mentality,\u201d says Russo of Edward Jones.<\/span><\/p>\n Hain\u2019s strategy is simple: Take mainstream items and bring them into the natural realm. The company is getting its growth by taking market share from what Simon calls \u201cdead or dying brands.\u201d Says the 56-year-old native of Canada: \u201cThere are so many categories out there where consumption is not growing, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re picking away at.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Simon has never started his own brand. Instead he buys up smaller ones and nurtures them, testing possible acquisition targets by seeing what products his kids eat when he brings them home. \u201cIf it\u2019s untouched,\u201d he says, \u201cwe\u2019re not buying it.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Despite Hain\u2019s success, Simon still gets grilled by analysts about his margins, which lag those of traditional food manufacturers. \u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve been beaten up about on a regular basis,\u201d he says. \u201cBut thank God, my growth is not the same as theirs either.\u201d If your products are non-GMO, organic, and have no artificial ingredients, says Simon, you\u2019re always going to give up 10% to 15% on margin. He questions whether the hungry giants are really willing to leave that on the table. \u201cThe big companies today, they want to have Annie\u2019s and Small Planet, but on the other hand they want to sell genetically modified ingredients,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t go both ways. You\u2019ve got to put your stake in the ground.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Indeed, the polarizing and emotional GMO-labeling issue may best illustrate the dilemma facing big food companies today. Polls show that the vast majority of consumers say they support labeling products that contain GMOs, even though regulators\u2014and established scientific organizations\u2014have declared such modifications safe. Big food companies, however, have poured millions of dollars into overturning state initiatives that require labeling.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe smartest thing you can do as a CEO right now is to side with the consumer,\u201d says Stonyfield\u2019s Hirshberg, who is also the chairman and co-founder of the pro-GMO labeling group Just Label It, and clearly has a dog in the fight.<\/p>\n Iger, Benioff, Williams, Dorsey: Getty images; Kaplan: AP Photo<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Campbell Soup has been caught in the middle of the controversy. It helped fund industry anti-labeling efforts in two states before backing off. Morrison says she has always supported letting consumers know which products have GMO ingredients, but she wants one piece of federal legislation rather than 50 state laws. \u201cWe have three soup plants that ship all over the country,\u201d she says. \u201cWe can\u2019t be shipping a different label to Vermont vs. other places.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The message is resonating in Congress. A bill making its way through the House of Representatives and heavily backed by Big Food would create a voluntary national labeling standard, while preventing states from mandating labeling on their own. If it passes the House, that likely won\u2019t play well with consumers. And that\u2019s a marketing wedge that Big Food\u2019s rivals are only happy to exploit.<\/p>\n For the old-school titans, says Boulder Brands CEO Steve Hughes, \u201cIt\u2019s a classic case of winning the battle and losing the war.\u201d\u2002<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Editor\u2019s note: This story originally appeared in the June 1, 2015 issue of Fortune. Try this simple test. Say the following out loud: Artificial colors and flavors. Pesticides. Preservatives. High-fructose…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":824,"featured_media":6621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[485,176,397,1826,1242],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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