Chipotle Going GMO-Free
Chipotle Mexican Grill has announced that it is using non-GMO ingredients to make all of the food in its U.S. restaurants – including all of the food at its Asian restaurant concept, ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen. According to a press release, the company is now developing new recipes for its tortillas, which are the only food items on its menu that include any artificial additives.
GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, are crops that have had specific changes introduced to their DNA that don’t occur naturally, using the science of genetic engineering. GMOs are common in the American food system. According to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, 94% of corn and 93% of soybeans grown in this country came from GMO strains in 2014. As a result, more than 80% of foods consumed in the U.S. contain genetically modified ingredients, by some estimates, making it very difficult for consumers to avoid GMO ingredients in restaurants or in food purchased in grocery stores.
“There is a lot of debate about genetically modified foods,” said Steve Ells, founder, chairman and co-CEO of Chipotle. “Though many countries have already restricted or banned the use of GMO crops, it’s clear that a lot of research is still needed before we can truly understand all of the implications of widespread GMO cultivation and consumption. While that debate continues, we decided to move to non-GMO ingredients.”
Chipotle became the first national restaurant company to voluntarily disclose GMO ingredients in its food in March 2013, and pledged at that time to move to non-GMO ingredients for all of its food. At the time, most of the company’s use of genetically modified ingredients was tied to soybean oil, which it used to cook chips and taco shells, and in a number of recipes (such as the adobo rub it uses for grilled chicken and steak) and for cooking (both on its grills and for use in sauté pans). Corn and flour tortillas also included some GMO ingredients.
Chipotle suppliers planted non-GMO corn varieties to meet Chipotle’s needs for corn tortillas, and the company replaced soybean oil with sunflower oil to cook its chips and taco shells, and with rice bran oil for other recipes and uses. Both oils are extracted from crops for which there are no commercially available genetically modified varieties. Other GMO ingredients in tortillas were replaced with non-GMO alternatives.
The company said the move to non-GMO ingredients didn’t result in significantly higher ingredient costs for the company, and it did not raise menu prices.
With the transition to non-GMO ingredients for its food completed, Chipotle has set its sights on eliminating the few remaining artificial ingredients from its tortillas. Excluding tortillas, the food on Chipotle’s entire menu consists of just 46 ingredients – nearly all of which are simple, whole ingredients that could be purchased at any local supermarket.
The tortillas include a few preservatives and dough conditioners. While the company has made significant strides in reducing the number of additives in its tortillas, it is now embarking on a quest to eliminate all of the remaining additives.
Achieving this goal will be difficult and take time. Tortillas today are made very quickly and require the use of dough conditioners to give the tortilla the consistency that was once achieved by allowing the dough to rise slowly. Chipotle is working in close partnership with its tortilla suppliers and the Bread Lab at Washington State University to develop a new system of making tortillas that will allow the dough to rise slowly and eliminate the need for the dough conditioners. Eliminating the few preservatives will be slightly easier, but still a challenge simply because tortillas are difficult to keep fresh for long.
For more information about Chipotle’s ingredients and its move to non-GMO foods, visit www.chipotle.com/gmo. To learn more about its quest to make tortillas even better, visit www.chipotle.com/tortilla-journey.