Panera Bread is banning dozens of artificial ingredients from its menu

Panera Bread sandwiches.
(Image credit: Jesse Grant/Getty Images)

By the end of 2016, Panera Bread plans to remove at least 150 artificial preservatives, flavors, colors, and sweeteners from its soups, sandwiches, salad dressings, and several bakery items.

The chain will discontinue using ingredients like fat substitutes and propylene glycol, a preservative used in deodorant and e-cigarettes, The Wall Street Journal reports. While a lot of food products will be affected, some offerings, like soda, will still have artificial ingredients. The company's chief executive officer, Ron Shaich, said Panera is trying to "give people a simple, easy Good Housekeeping seal-of-approval kind of approach to it."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.