Today's issue is brought to you by Proving Her Wrong

Hey there! Most of us have a few brands we stopped questioning a long time ago. Reading the label once was enough because the list was short and everything on it made sense. Over the last decade, almost all of those brands have been bought by the same large food companies they were created as an alternative to, and that is what this whole issue is about. The featured piece gets into why that lands harder than an ordinary business story does, and from there we look at what actually changed inside one of these products after it sold, what the rest of them went for, and why the back of the package is the only side that will tell you when something has changed.

— Lacey Baier, Dustin Baier

I found Siete tortillas in a Whole Foods freezer aisle years ago, read the ingredient list without rolling my eyes once, and, once I brought them home and tried them, I’ve recommended them to anyone who'd listen from that day on.

So when PepsiCo bought them, I held my breath and waited, hoping I wouldn’t see any changes.

PepsiCo announced the deal in October 2024 and closed it in January 2025 for $1.2 billion. It's been about a year and a half. Long enough to stop guessing and start looking.

Siete was founded in Austin in 2014 by all seven members of the Garza family, and it started with a single almond flour tortilla sold at a local co-op. By the time the deal closed, its products were in more than 40,000 retailers. PepsiCo said it was dedicated to preserving what made the brand work while making it available on a broader scale.

Here's where things actually stand.

One label has changed, and it isn't the one people are worried about

Siete's Grain Free Almond Flour Tortillas were five ingredients: almond flour, tapioca starch, water, sea salt, and xanthan gum. Their own product page now lists nine: those same five plus apple cider vinegar, berry extract, oregano extract, and flaxseed extract, all listed to preserve freshness.

The cassava products, the tortillas and the grain-free chips that most people actually buy, have no documented ingredient changes at all.

Most of the complaints aren't about ingredients

This is where it gets interesting. In a TikTok with roughly 690,000 views, a shopper pulled a Siete potato chip out of the bag and bent it without it breaking. A dietitian who'd recommended the brand for years posted that her last bag of tortillas tasted off. The comments filled up with the same thing: stale, greasy, different.

Read those closely, and almost none of them are label complaints. They're manufacturing complaints.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Taste and texture can change with no change to an ingredient list at all. A different production facility. A longer supply chain. More time in a warehouse, more time in a hot truck. Same words, more or less, on the back of the bag, but a different chip in your hand.

What a label can and can't tell you

Reading ingredient labels is still the only reliable thing we've got here, and I've been saying so for over a decade. But it's worth being clear about what it does. A label tells you what's in the food. It doesn't tell you which facility ran the batch, where the almond flour was sourced, or how long the bag sat in a warehouse before it reached you.

So, when the ingredients match, and the chip still tastes wrong, that isn't the label letting you down. That's a different question, and it needs a different answer. A fresh bag. A look at the date code. The same product from a different store.

The ingredient list is the one thing in this story you can actually verify. Five ingredients versus nine is checkable. Everything else is people's mouths and a company that isn't talking.

Though even that has a limit, and last week's issue on the avocado oil scandal is the proof. UC Davis tested products where avocado oil was the only oil listed, and most of them had other, cheaper oils. Two of the products they tested were Siete chips (Sea Salt Corn Tortilla Chips and Kettle Cooked Sea Salt Potato Chips). Both failed, both lots. Not the cassava ones this issue is about, but still, and the cassava tortillas haven’t been tested…yet.

That isn't an ingredient list problem. The list was accurate as printed. The oil behind it wasn't. It is true that Siete may not have known, because brands buy from suppliers and take the paperwork at its word. Nonetheless, the ingredient list is still the best tool we have, but it's only as good as the supply chain behind it.

Why formulas change after an acquisition

Usually, it’s not for the reason people assume.

When distribution expands, the product has to survive a longer trip. Preservatives get added for shelf stability. Recipes get adjusted for equipment that runs faster. None of that requires anyone deciding to cheapen anything. It's what scale asks for. The four ingredients apparently added to those almond flour tortillas are all natural preservatives, which is exactly what a shelf-life problem looks like.

Cost pressure is real, too. I ran a small protein company for a few years, and the choice between the better ingredient and the cheaper one comes up constantly. It's a hard call even when nobody is pushing you toward an answer, and requires tunnel vision to get through. With a board, it's a different conversation entirely.

Worth knowing: Cost isn't the only pressure. A food scientist at the Institute of Food Technologists told FoodNavigator this spring that regulatory change is now the biggest driver of reformulation across the industry, with PepsiCo, Nestlé, Unilever, and Danone all reworking products to meet tightening ingredient restrictions and nutrition targets. Which means some of the changes coming to your favorite products won't have anything to do with who owns them.

Where this leaves us

Neither Siete nor PepsiCo has publicly addressed the ingredient or quality questions. Nineteen months in, there's no statement either way.

One more thing. Some of the online reaction got amplified into claims about chemicals and the food supply that go well past what anyone has evidence for. Being skeptical about a buyout is reasonable. Deciding a product is poison because of who owns it isn't.

So: One documented label change on one product, a lot of quality complaints pointing at manufacturing rather than ingredients, and silence from the company.

Not a scandal, but not an all-clear, either.

Real talk on food, health, and feeling good in your body, no perfection required. Cut through the noise and support Cleanish.

General Mills bought Annie's in 2014 for $820 million, and for years, the box on the shelf looked and tasted like the one people had been buying since the nineties. The change didn't come until a decade later, and it arrived with cheerful packaging rather than an announcement.

The front of the box said "Now Cheesier." The press release called it a delightful upgrade with even more real cheese. What the press release did not mention is what came out of the recipe. Butter and nonfat milk, the fourth and fifth ingredients in the old sauce, were removed and replaced with cornstarch, which is a cheap thickener with no protein in it.

The nutrition panel tells the rest of the story. Protein dropped from 11 grams a serving to 9, and calcium fell from 110 milligrams to 90. Less protein and less calcium, in a product marketed to parents partly on the strength of those things. Consumer watchdog site Mouse Print, which compared the old and new labels side by side, called it “skimpflation.”

Here is the part worth sitting with. Nothing about this was illegal, and nothing about it was hidden, either. The new ingredient list was right there on the back of the box, accurate and complete, the entire time. It just came wrapped in a label that said the product had gotten better and from a brand we already trusted.

The front of the package is advertising. The back of the package is information. When a brand you trust changes hands, the back is the only side that will tell you.

Want the side-by-side comparison? Mouse Print laid out both labels, and Retail Brew covered the fallout.

16%

of US adults say they find health claims on food labels very trustworthy, even though 78% of us look for those claims before buying.

10%

of packaged foods actually meet the FDA's criteria to be called "healthy," and only about 5% use the claim at all.

45

food and beverage class actions were filed in a single month this year, most of them over labeling, ingredient claims, and health marketing.

The claim on the front is a marketing decision before it's a nutrition one, which is why the ingredient list on the back is the part actually worth your attention.

Sources: NSF consumer survey; FDA final rule analysis; Juris Law Group class action tracker

Go through the brands most of us reach for without thinking and read what's actually on the back of the package, so you know which ones still earn the spot in your cart. Watch on YouTube →

🏷️ FTC finalizes its order against a supplement brand that said it could make kids taller

TruHeight will pay $750,000 over claims its gummies were clinically proven to boost height in children and teens, along with reviews the FTC says were written by its own employees and vendors.

💭 The Bottom Line → "Clinically proven" is a phrase anyone can print on a label, right up until somebody makes them prove it.

🤝 Loneliness is strongly linked to poorer mental health and wellbeing

A large new analysis found loneliness tracked closely with worse mental health, lower wellbeing, and more physical conditions, which puts connection in the same category as sleep and movement rather than in the nice-to-have pile.

🧪 Eight common food preservatives were linked to higher blood pressure and heart disease

Researchers followed 112,395 people for up to eight years and found the heaviest consumers of certain preservatives had a 29% higher risk of hypertension, though a study like this can show a link and not a cause.

🕐 Eating within a shorter daily window may help keep the aging brain sharp

In a small six-month trial, older women who kept their meals inside roughly an 8 to 9 hour window scored better on planning and problem-solving than those eating across 12 hours, and both groups lost about the same weight, which points at the timing rather than the pounds. Early findings, presented at a conference rather than published yet.

🏋 Researchers found the strength training sweet spot for a longer life

In a 30-year study of more than 147,000 people, the biggest drop in mortality risk showed up in the 90 to 120 minute a week range, and piling on much more than that didn't add a lot.

Proving Her Wrong is Lacey Baier's personal essay newsletter on identity, hiding, and finally showing up as yourself.

Almost every brand that built its name on a short ingredient list now answers to a company that also sells the products those brands were created as an alternative to. Six deals alone account for roughly $9.5 billion, and four of them closed in the last two years. Mondelēz owns Clif. PepsiCo owns Poppi and Siete. Also: the company behind Wonder Bread now owns Simple Mills.

The catch is that being acquired doesn't automatically mean the recipe changes. Simple Mills said publicly that its recipes and certifications would stay put. Siete customers have reported a difference since the PepsiCo deal closed, but neither company has confirmed a reformulation. The pattern isn't that every brand gets worse. It's that when something does change, you're unlikely to be told.

One honest note: a deal price says nothing about the food itself, and a reformulation isn't automatically a downgrade. These are announced purchase prices and one documented label change, not a verdict on any of these companies.

Sources: company announcements from Mondelēz and Flowers Foods; Food Dive 2025 deal roundup; Mouse Print label comparison

Greens powders, amino tablets, turmeric shots, probiotics, and a few of the biggest ticket items in wellness right now, each one looked into and given a straight answer on whether it's worth your money. Read it →

Anyone over 10 years old was alive when you could order a burger for less than $10. With the average burger out now costing $14.71, and in many cases being over $20, a family of six like ours would have to spend over $140 just to go out and have a decent non-fast-food burger.

While inflation has been happening the last few years everywhere you look, restaurant prices are climbing faster than grocery store prices. The last few years, they have risen around 4% while groceries are slightly below 3%. The result is that there is a larger gap than most people can ever remember between eating out and eating at home. The Food Institute has the numbers.

Crackers are the exact aisle this issue is about, so here's the version where you can be sure of the ingredients. Whole-wheat pastry flour, olive oil, water, sea salt, and dried herbs, with nothing in there to make it survive a warehouse. Dairy-free, no added sugar, and built for hummus. Get the recipe →

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