Food Science in System C
How to Evaluate Whether a Food Product Delivers a Human Health Outcome — Using Kraft PowerMac as the Case Study
The Question System C Asks
Most food companies optimize for three things: taste, cost, and shelf claim. System C asks a different question: what happens in the human body after someone eats this?
Not what the label says. Not what the marketing implies. What the gut, liver, and brain actually experience at the cellular level.
As a thought experiment, this piece walks through a possible System C evaluation framework, ingredient by ingredient, using Kraft’s new PowerMac as the worked example. The goal isn’t to pick on Kraft. It’s to show what it looks like when you evaluate food the way a clinician evaluates a drug, through the lens of pharmacokinetics (what the body does to the compound), pharmacodynamics (what the compound does to the body), and measurable outcomes.
Every food product on a shelf can be run through this framework. PowerMac just happens to be a timely, well-marketed example of what System B+ looks like when you hold it up to System C light.
On a spectrum from whole‑food din…