These are changes we’ve all been encouraged to make but that seem impossible to do. Nearly everything we eat seems to contain artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, sweeteners — so how is it possible to remove them from our diets?

Yet Panera, the national bakery cafe chain, announced Friday it has removed those ingredients from its menu and home products in all 2,000 stores across the U.S.

The St. Louis-based company gave a heads-up last August about the changes. The additives removed include federally approved artificial colors, sodium benzoate, sodium nitrite and sodium phosphate, the company stated.

Reformulated are 122 ingredients, resulting in changes to most of the bakery-cafe recipes. Panera has also partnered with more than 300 food suppliers to replace ingredients and change preparation methods.

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Will we see other restaurant chains follow suit? It's already starting to happen. McDonald's and Pizza Hut have both committed to removing artificial preservatives from some of their ingredients and menu items. McDonald's is also looking to remove antibiotics important to human medicine from its food supply. The company also announced in 2015 it would be serving low-fat white milk and fat-free chocolate milk from cows that are not treated with rbST, an artificial growth hormone.

"Kids are what they eat — and we're building a child, mind, body and soul."

Even Kraft Heinz removed artificial preservatives, flavors and dyes from its macaroni and cheese recipe in December 2015.

Do people even care? Will customers just continue doing what they were doing before these announced changes?

"I guess their feet [the customers'] are going to speak as to whether that is a good idea or not," said Dr. Rosemary Stein, a pediatrician in Burlington, North Carolina.

Eating more naturally and holistically is what she counsels her patients to do — so she's curious to see if the general public buys into it.

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"It might not be a bad idea for us to look at doing similar things at home — trying to think of things that don't have colorants, a lot a sweeteners, and are more natural. I think we would do better as a society," Stein told LifeZette. "We're in such a hurry that sometimes we don't look at those things. Kids, especially, are what they eat — and we're building a child, mind, body and soul. If you're constantly feeding children additives, colorants, artificial sweeteners and that kind of stuff, at some point it's going to have an effect on the child. The changes sound like a good thing."