Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday, June 17th, and I'm your host, Kim Kahn. Our top story so far. What color is Kool-Aid in the wild? We may soon find out.

Kraft Hines announced it will not launch any new products in the

U.S. with food, drug, and cosmetic colors effective immediately. The food giant also announced

that it will remove the remaining FD&C colors from its U.S. product portfolio before the end of

2027. That includes products like Kool-Aid and Jello. Kraft noted that nearly 90% of Kraft-Hein's

U.S. products are already free of FD&C colors as measured by sales. For the small portion

of products that currently contain FD&C colors, the company has invested significant resources

and is mobilizing a team to address the complex challenge. Looking ahead, the strategy will be to remove

colors where it is not critical to the consumer experience, replace FDNC colors with natural

colors, and reinvent new colors in shades where matching natural replacements are not available.

Pedro Navajo, North American president at the company, said, the vast majority of our products

use natural or no colors, and we've been on a journey

to reduce our use of FD&C colors across the remainder of our portfolio.

In fact, we removed artificial colors, preservatives, and flavors from our beloved Kraft

Mac and Cheese back in 2016.

Our iconic Heinz tomato ketchup has never had artificial dyes.

On the economic front, May U.S. retail sales fell 0.9% on the month

versus the consensus for a 0.5% drop and a 0.1% prior drop revised from 0.1% higher.

That was the steepest drop in more than two years.

Core retail sales, which exclude motor vehicles and parts, fell 0.3% month-on-month,

versus a consensus estimate of a rise of 0.2% and flat prior.

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