Pizza Hut is trying to move away from artificial ingredients they have used in the past.
PLANO, Texas – Pizza Hut, a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, will remove several ingredients from its foods, including meats containing BHA/BHT, artificial preservatives in cheese and chicken meat sourced from animals raised on antibiotics important to human medicine.
Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) are preservatives used to prevent oils in foods from oxidizing. The company already removed artificial flavors and colors from its core pizzas in May 2015. Additionally, Pizza Hut removed partially hydrogenated oils and monosodium glutamate (MSG) from the chain’s ingredient list, and 2.5 million lbs. of salt from its ingredients over the last five years.
“Providing our customers with restaurant quality ingredients is something that has been at the core of Pizza Hut since the very first restaurant opened in Wichita 58 years ago,” Jeff Fox, chief brand and concept officer, said in a statement. “It’s so fundamental to our superior restaurant quality beliefs that we rarely feel the need to talk about it. That said, 58 years later, we are extremely proud to say that we still get our vegetables, our meats, our tomatoes, our flour, our cheese — everything that makes a great pizza — from top suppliers around the world. We are constantly working to lead the industry in this area and believe it is important to let customers know exactly where their food comes from and how it’s made."
The company plans to remove BHA/BHT from all meats by the end of July, while artificial preservatives in cheese will be removed by the end of March 2017. Antibiotic-free chicken will be on the menu by the end of March next year.
