• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, May 5, 2015

Panera Bread yesterday announced that it is implementing a “No No List” of ingredients for its offerings that is based more on what consumers say they want — and don’t want — than on hard scientific proof that they are bad for you. 

The wide-ranging compendium includes ingredients it promises to banish from its bakery-cafes by the end of 2016 such as artificial colors and flavors as well as controversial additives such as aspartame and sucralose that are not in its food today and won’t be in the future.

“I’m not a scientist and I’m not wading into the debate over whether any of these things cause cancer or are otherwise bad for you,” Panera Bread founder and CEO Ron Shaich tells the New York Times’ Stephanie Strom in one of several interviews he personally conducted with reporters. “I just think this is where the consumer’s head is right now.”

He doesn’t have to go far to conduct a focus group.

“My kids are eating Panera 10 to 11 times a week,” Shaich tells Fortune’s John Kell about his 11-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son. “I don’t want to serve them junk.” 

Actually, “the list is based on research and standards developed by Johns Hopkins, the Environmental Working Group, the Natural Resources Defense Council and various European governments,” Strom points out, “not just what his kids are telling him.” Or those discerning and demanding Millennials.

After analyzing its menu, Panera found about “160 items out of 460 that required reformulation,” Bloomberg’s Craig Giammona writes. “Panera’s move will apply to soups, sandwiches, salad dressings and many baked goods, but artificial ingredients will remain in some products, including soda,” reports Ilan Brat in the Wall Street Journal

“Also, beginning Wednesday, Panera will only sell salads with ‘clean’ salad dressings, all made without artificial sweeteners, colors, flavors and preservatives,” Bruce Horvitz reports in USA Today. “The ingredients on Panera's salad menu [that are] still evolving to meet the 2016 commitment are croutons, tortilla strips, pepperoncini and bacon.”

A pointed YouTube video on the site this morning features interviews with otherwise articulate, mostly 20- and 30-somethings trying to pronounce words such as “tertiary butylhydroquinone” and “azodicarbonamide.”

“What are those? Are these ingredients?” asks one incredulous man. “I think the idea is that if you can’t recognize it or pronounce it, it shouldn’t be something you eat,” says a woman with a young girl hovering nearby. Another spot shows some of the same people trying to spell “azodicarbonamide.” Not even close, of course.

“There’s an old saying out there that says, ‘You are what you eat.’ And while we’re certainly not chickens frolicking around a meadow or kale absorbing the morning dew, we’re most definitely not made of artificial preservatives, colorings, sweeteners or flavors,” reads the copy in an infographic announcing the policy. “Those are four things we believe should never be in our food. It makes up a lot of other food, but we not longer want it to be part of ours.”

“The changes by Panera — a company already among leaders in reacting to health trends such as the growing preference for meat raised without antibiotics — highlight the complexity of revamping restaurant supply chains to adapt to fast-changing consumer tastes,” observes the WSJ’s Brat. 

“The movement is changing not only the restaurant sector, but also the aisles throughout the nation’s grocery stores as consumers migrate to the perimeter of those stores where fresh fruits and vegetables, meats and dairy are stocked,” points outFortune’s John Kell. 

“To me, this has gone way beyond anything that could even be remotely considered a fad and become a powerful trend,” Carl Jorgensen, a consultant at Daymon Worldwide, tells the NYT’s Strom, whose story also points out that companies open themselves up to criticism if they don’t entirely walk the talk they put out in their releases. 

Chipotle’s  announcement last week that its foods were free of GMOs, for example, has been roundly criticized for not including sodas and meats. The jibes at Panera have already begun.

“I applaud Panera for replacing dyes and certain other questionable additives in its foods,” Michael Jacobson, executive director of Center for Science in the Public Interest, tells USA Today’s Horovitz. “But eliminating many of the ingredients with unfamiliar chemical names, like calcium propionate and sodium erythorbate, is done solely for PR purposes and not to make safer, more healthful foods.”

“We want to be an ally for people eating well — not the food police,” Shaich tells Horovitz. 

Kell’s piece concludes with another quotable observation from Shaich: “It is a much higher standard than what makes business sense,” Shaich says. “It is ‘How do I want to feed my daughter?’ That’s the gold standard question and when I answer that, it tells me what I want to do for my customers. Because my customers are no different than my daughter.”