Walmart’s ingredient changes were not spurred by ‘MAHA’, exec says
This month, Walmart moved to remove synthetic dyes and more than 30 other ingredients, like some preservatives, artificial sweeteners and fat substitutes, from thousands of private-label food products.
The change will begin with new versions of products launching within the next few months but willl happen over the course of several years, though the company says 90% of its private-label food products are already free of synthetic dyes.
The move coincides with the surging popularity of the “Make America Healthy Movement” around health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s proposed ingredient reforms that may impact American food companies. But Scott Morris, svp of private brands, food and consumables for Walmart U.S., denied the idea that the MAHA movement or regulatory changes spurred the company’s decision to reformulate its products, in an interview with Modern Retail.
“That wasn’t our impetus,” Morris said in an interview. “We’re always aware of what’s going on in the macro environment — whether it’s regulatory, competitively — but that’s not what drives us.”
Instead, he said the company was responding to research showing that consumers have been paying more attention to the ingredient label when making shopping decisions. According to results from a 2025 Walmart customer survey the company provided to Modern Retail, 62% of shoppers said they want more transparency around what’s in their food, and 54% said they review food ingredients.
“People are clearly more astute to what’s in their their food and their beverages, and we want to make sure we’re responding to that,” Morris said, adding that synthetic dyes came up in the conversation of making food with fewer ingredients.
Morris also said the move was also spurred by the positive reception the company received after launching its private label Bettergoods line last year. The line includes plant-based products with green branding, as well as a “Made Without” pillar with gluten-free products or those made without artificial flavors, colors or added sugars. Products range from coffee creamer made with four gluten-free, antibiotic-free ingredients to all-white-meat chicken nuggets. For the most part, Morris added, Bettergoods was already in line with the company’s new ingredient standards.
“We’ve been working on it for years, technically, when you think about some of the ingredients that we’ve been targeting to take out of our goods. But maybe the majority of the work really started to accelerate itself with the launch of Bettergoods just over a year ago,” Morris said. “Once we launched that, we started to see how the customer was responding to those goods, and it told us we were on the right track. It made sense, as we got to this point, that this should be where we contemplate accelerating this even further.”
Morris said customers expect higher standards for the quality of private brands. Bettergoods “was really something where we moved quickly to launch something that the customer expected out of us, and the results we’ve seen have been very favorable,” he said. “We believe the insights that we’re getting, and we think it’s the right path to follow. It’s the right thing to do.”
Jennie Bell, managing director of snacks and beverages for NielsenIQ, similarly said at Groceryshop that customers are looking for more premium products within retailers’ private-label portfolios. Retailers “will continue to adopt, creating a portfolio of private-label brands that are competing with the national brands across the board that have large portfolios,” she said.
Walter Holbrook, a retail consultant and former Kmart executive, said he expects other food and retail companies to follow Walmart’s lead in simplifying the ingredient label and following consumer sentiment against highly processed foods.
“I really do think as a nation — and I think Walmart is reading this really well — we are starting to think about this a lot more,” he said.
It remains to be seen how customers react to the changes to Walmart’s products, which aren’t expected to wrap up until 2027. In 2017, General Mills brought back artificial colors to Trix cereal after removing them in 2016, citing negative feedback from customers on color and taste after reformulating them with fruit and vegetable juices. Walmart claims its changes will not compromise taste, and Morris said he hopes customers won’t notice the change in color on some products.
“Our goal is to get as close as we can to the colors they’re used to in those products,” Morris said. “We do find that some natural colors show a different hue, some are often a little bit softer, but we’ve seen that the substitutions we’ve made are sometimes even better received. The colors are actually more enticing, and they’re things that people were looking for in the simplicity.”