The war on big food

http://fortune.com/2015/05/21/the-war-on-big-food/?src=longreads

by prostoalex • 11 years ago

43 54 11 years ago

bambax• 11 years ago

chains like Target are actively giving increasing space on their shelves to a slew of New Age players like [...] Hampton Creek (which sells a popular plant-based mayo)

I understand people who buy "junk mayo" (I do, more often than I'd like to admit) but I really don't understand why you would buy "high end mayo", because, if you're quality-conscious, how hard is it to make your own?

Or is this some kind of vegan mayo? But it's also possible to make your own mayonnaise with no eggs.

What is not possible however, is for a product that has to sit on shelves for any period of time to have no preservatives and no pasteurisation.

smhenderson• 11 years ago

Here's the ingredient list[1] for their "mayo". Seems vegan to me. Looks like they offer varieties with and without preservatives. I didn't dig any further to see what else they put in the one with preservatives.

Ingredients: Non-GMO Expeller Pressed Canola Oil, Filtered Water, Lemon Juice, White Vinegar, 2% or less of the following: Organic Sugar, Salt, Pea Protein, Spices, Modified Food Starch, Beta-Carotene. Just Mayo is also available with preservative.

[1] http://www.hamptoncreek.com/just-mayo

mason2402• 11 years ago

Look at those marketing buzzwords.

stronglikedan2• 11 years ago

With that ingredient list, they should call it "Not Mayo". Just like a grilled turkey, swiss, and coleslaw on rye is not a Reuben, no matter how many times they call it that.

hoppi2• 11 years ago

I sometimes buy organic mayo that costs more, purely because it tastes better. I've also found this to be the case with vegetables and many other products, especially their peanut butter!

I don't care too much what is in the actual product unless its the lowest priced products which usually contain some disgusting stuff (mechanical chicken etc).

Note: this is comparing Sainsbury's standard to organic range.

copperx• 11 years ago

Mechanical chicken? I'm 100% sure you made that up.

teekert2• 11 years ago

There are other ways of removing bacteria and fungi (filtering, centrifuging, perhaps the ingredients are processed in such a way that bacteria are not present, think: using only the inner, possibly sterile part of a plant etc.) And if there are no constituents that have a fast natural decay time it is quite possible to make things last long without heating or preservatives, just keep the production process sterile.

shalmanese• 11 years ago

Yes, "just" do this. So simple!

VLM3• 11 years ago

"What is not possible however, is for a product that has to sit on shelves for any period of time to have no preservatives and no pasteurisation."

The crowd most likely to buy that product likely will have a negative emotional illogical response to food irradiation but it would technically work.

For awhile irradiated ground beef was available and I bought it all the time, no difference in taste and 0% chance of food poisoning. I was talked out of it by someone making the point that sterilizing the product means the mfgr has no motivation to keep shit and other slaughterhouse waste out of the product, because no matter what it is, blood, maggots, urine, bodily waste, it'll all be made sterile and 0% chance of food poisoning. That was a little gross. Regardless if its irradiated or not, this is going to be an issue for anything preserved. If someone can sneeze into the mayo and nothing happens, that means little motivation will exist not to sneeze into the mayo, which is pretty gross.

dceddia• 11 years ago

I've been grinding my own beef in a food processor recently, for things like hamburgers. It started to worry me that the ground, preformed hamburger patties were actually cheaper than chuck roast. So, homemade hamburgers for me. And they come out better!

keenerd• 11 years ago

because no matter what it is, blood, maggots, urine, bodily waste, it'll all be made sterile and 0% chance of food poisoning.

I'm sorry, but that is incorrect and you were misled. Food poisoning is not directly caused by micro-organisms but by their excreted byproducts. If you take a rotten piece of meat, irradiate it and cook it well-done, you will still get sick. If you take a can that is bulging with botulism, irradiate it and thoroughly cook it, you will still get sick. Because while the micro-organisms are dead, the toxin (literal toxin, not "chemicals") is still present.

For an analogy: boiling water will sterilize it, but not do anything about turbid mud or arsenic or other non-living contaminates. Irradiating food does not mean you get to be lax in other standards.

Arnt• 11 years ago

Making mayonnaise is easy and quick iff you have three steady hands.

stronglikedan2• 11 years ago

Two hands and an electric mixer is all that's required. However, using it before it spoils is the hard part (for someone like me, who cooks for one).

Shivetya• 11 years ago

not only do they want simple ingredient lists with names they can recognize or even picture in their heads, for many consumers these specialty brands an easy way for them to fool themselves into believe they are being healthy. For some it may even fall into the category of luxury items, treating themselves. the food scares a few years ago with imported food from China probably has done some to move this market as well.

Yet it will be interesting to see what happens to people's choices when after years of moving to easy to understand foods their health doesn't improve. The one connection most of them haven't made is that it isn't necessarily the types of food they are eating but simply the volume especially related to their activity levels.

teekert2• 11 years ago

But it is easier to eat large volumes of pizza than broccoli as it lacks certain substances that make you eat more. There is also less salt in your home made tomato sauce (at least you have control over the amount.)

VLM3• 11 years ago

Sugar levels too. I've noticed pizza is a sweet desert now, whereas when I was a kid, pizza was herbal/savory. I've made homemade pizza that is herbal/savory and it was interesting, you can't buy pizza either frozen or delivery that doesn't have sickly sweet dough and sauce.

Some of the sauces are totally gross corn syrup ketchup level sweet.

Maximal processed food profit does occur when everything sold is a glazed donut, but when everything tastes like that, flavor and interest is lost.

phkahler• 11 years ago

> Yet it will be interesting to see what happens to people's choices when after years of moving to easy to understand foods their health doesn't improve.

So you don't believe any of it. It will be interesting to see what people attribute the increase in people's health to then. Just keep in mind that modern commercial medicine knows nothing about prevention - only treatments that are generally not cures. So if we see a drop in disease in 10 years, what will you attribute it to?

sageabilly• 11 years ago

I'm getting really tired of zeitgeist shifts away from "the way it's always been" being sensationalized as "The WAR on [ENTRENCHED WAY OF DOING THINGS]!!1!!!!!!!111!!!"

Especially with goods that are sold, especially in America. Aren't we supposed to all be completely and totally enamored with capitalism and are't we all spoon fed the line that "The market will sort things out"? Because I see this as capitalism and the free market doing what conservatives always bark about it doing- the market following along with consumer demand. And yeah we can sit here and argue till we're blue in the face about whether or not the marketing behind that consumer spending shift is sound or not or "fair" or not, but at the end of the day, people are voting with their wallets and they're voting against the old guard, and the old guard is panicking and flailing about because they see that change is coming and they don't want to have to change.

hueving• 11 years ago

The media is part of the market. Getting worked up when you see articles like this is a waste of your time. Sensationalist crap will always pop up when incumbents are threatened. It doesn't mean they are fighting the free market. It just means they are trying a marketing strategy.

moron4hire2• 11 years ago

Can we also please stop using the phrasing "War On..." for anything that doesn't involve shooting guns at people?

theandrewbailey• 11 years ago

More specifically, can we stop saying "War on X" or "War against X" when X is a common noun? e.g. when it's not a nation-state, an organization, nor a person?

knodi1232• 11 years ago

So "war on drugs" is still accurate, since it employs more armed soldiers than world war 2?

mason2402• 11 years ago

You seem to be confusing what individual companies want with what capitalism wants.

eli_gottlieb• 11 years ago

Aren't we supposed to all be completely and totally enamored with capitalism and are't we all spoon fed the line that "The market will sort things out"?

There's a difference between Ideology X being used to apologize for what established powers wanted to do anyway, and actually taking Ideology X so seriously that it impedes the established powers.

VLM3• 11 years ago

Something not discussed is long term food fads. You could get me to eat pop tarts and pizza rolls in the 80s because they were new. I knew they were bad, but new and interesting enough to try. Pizza rolls in 2015? Dude I was eating those when Reagan was president, boring, try my homemade carnitas instead. Unfortunately I go food shopping every week, and there isn't anything processed that is interesting enough for me to try for a couple years. I'm always looking for something interesting, but there isn't anything new.

Specifically, I'm claiming processed foods follow a fad trajectory, unlike, say, apples or steak, and fad trajectory shows natural decay over time, and there simply are no new processed food fads that are gaining traction.

The closest thing I can find to a current processed food fad, is about a year ago there was an attempt to push greek yogurt into freaking everything, but that seems to have failed. A few years ago there was a push for ready to eat rice on shelf stable bags, but that kind of rice tasted like contaminated styrofoam so I only bought it a couple times.

Its hard to believe but just a few decades ago things like frozen pizza, hot pockets, and pop tarts were new and vibrant food fads. What we call processed food in 2015 was actually NEW in maybe the 80s. There just isn't anything new anymore.

saboot• 11 years ago

There are definitely industry wide food fads. Thinking recently we had added protein in everything, the pretzel bun craze, and for a brief period mango flavoring was offered in several chains suddenly. I didn't save the comment but I had read a user discussing previously that these are usually introduced at industry events and conferences to businesses looking for the next 'new' thing

mdm_• 11 years ago

I've noticed, at least here in Canada, there's been this real push with avacado over the last two years. Subway seems to be the biggest pusher, but I've seen all kinds of other advertising about avacado, which previously had been this sort of weird fruit they'd stock in small quantities at the grocery store, and which I'd never seen anyone eat.

dneronique• 11 years ago

I'm always looking for something interesting, but there isn't anything new.

Agreed. There's been a shift where the focus isn't on introducing new products. Instead, focus has been on expanding the options within already established items. Eg. more flavors of chips, more types of hummus, different sizes of the same products, gluten free/HMO/low sugar versions, etc. Have you been in the cereal section lately? There are about 10 flavors of frosted mini wheats. Part of this trend could be that consumers are facing severe decision fatigue and end up opting for simpler (and in most cases cheaper) products.

TACIXAT• 11 years ago

I found out a few years ago that HFCS was contributing to my digestive issues and that gluten was contributing to digestive issues as well as sinus issues. I cut the two out (and caffeine for more sinus issues) and I feel great. There seems to be this spectre about fad diet gluten free eaters. I've never met anyone who doesn't eat gluten for fun. Even for me, it took a year on and off to actually stop eating it.

I'd really like to see a study done on how many people follow these diets for medical reasons, diagnosed or not, and how many people are doing it for 'fad' reasons.

I'm not diagnosed with anything, but I've had these problems my entire life and discovered the root cause by an elimination diet. If a hospital had pointed out these issues when I was a child or teenager, it would have changed my life. Recently when I brought up these issues to my doctor his response was more or less 'well then don't eat gluten'.

Big food is losing market share and I'm sure they're fighting back. Not to get too conspiracy theory but all the media on GF sensitivity being made up has made me doubt myself multiple times, and multiple times I have regretted those decisions to 'test to confirm'.

All told, I feel a lot better with the dietary changes I've made, and from the health issues I hear other people describe I think they could benefit from an elimination diet as well. If you have gas, diarrhea, or a stuffy nose/sinus headaches on a regular basis, look at your diet as it could change your life. Unless of course you enjoy those symptoms, in that case, carry on!

bowlich• 11 years ago

When I was a kid I used to get sick all the time. Out of school probably two months a year and just never really felt well ever. We identified the source as pretty much corn products via an elimination diet.

The amazing thing is just how much corn is in the American diet. It's everywhere. Crammed into every inch of pre-processed food. Pretty much set us up for having to go back to making food from scratch and eating a lot of whole foods which has been my diet ever since. No soda, no corn chips, no cereal, except home-made granola, very few processed "box" foods. Instead I'm sentenced to a life of eating whole vegetables, fruits, meat and cheese... the horror! (j/k)

Eliminating corn from my diet while I was still young, I feel really set me up to continue eating healthy throughout my life and opened my family's eyes to the sheer amount of corn in everything in America.

specialist• 11 years ago

Going paleo largely cleared my psoriasis. A delightful unexpected side effect. And I feel better overall. I previously had been going vegetarian, based on the belief that it'd be healthily for me. (Oops.)

Becoming a foodie makes the incremental change in nutrition easier. Reward yourself with awesome meals with the freshest ingredients, instead of mourning the loss of daily comfort food like pizza.

werber• 11 years ago

People are cooking more, buying pre-made food less... WAR, meh

glup• 11 years ago

I largely exited the standard food supply about two years ago after my partner developed a number of food allergies including Celiac. It has been altogether a wonderful experience. Our mix has been since then around 50% from farmers' markets, 20% bulk goods from an organic grocer, 20% we grow ourselves (or more between June and August), and at most 10% from a high-end butcher. Our expenditures have increased only minimally (from ~10 to 12% of income; we are graduate students so it is relatively high). We now spend less time overall getting food: we spend ~1 hr a week the farmers' market (and see friends at the same time) and ~1 hr a month at the grocery store. The butcher takes about 10 minutes a week. Charcuterie like chicken confit and smoked duck breast keeps for weeks so we can keep a supply in the fridge; between this and the bulk goods we never make extra runs to the grocery store.

Some observations on the transition: -Expensive fresh items are easy to grow in small amounts of space (e.g. herbs, berries) -"discrete meat is a treat": we eat steaks, fillets, etc. less frequently and instead use stocks, bake vegetables in animal fats, fry veggie cakes, and the like instead -Charcuterie is amazing: pork and chicken are relatively expensive, and a lot of the French preparations take very little time to prepare to serve -Fruits and vegetables at farmers' markets are only marginally more expensive -Our farmer's markets are a mixture of certified organic and conventional produce. We buy both, what matters more is that it is small-scale. -Growing your own isn't for everyone, and is certainly more expensive than buying it through a store (factoring in opportunity cost for time and land, and you don't get economies of scale). However, I would recommend it as a hobby to pretty much anyone on HN: I spend 8-12 hours a day on a computer, so spending 2-4 hours a week planting things, pruning fruit trees, thinking through drip irrigation systems, and learning about soil ecology is a ton of IRL fun.

We are very conscious that our diet is not 'natural' or in some way a reversion to older ways of life. I can get ridiculously cheap drip irrigation equipment on Amazon Prime delivered to my door, many of the vendors at the farmer's market take Stripe, and there's no such thing as a crop failure in mid 21st century coastal California. Our food system is what's next, no what came before.

chrisdone• 11 years ago

At some point I just stopped buying anything that isn't fresh or obviously a food I recognize. I live in a modern first-world country with a decent salary, I enjoy walking to the shop a couple to a few times per week, I'm not slaving away on my job so much that I don't have time to sit down and prepare a proper meal throughout the day.

The realization seems to be that there's really no reason for me to buy these kind of sugar/salt-packed opaque possibly-dangerous glorified ration packs that we call food in our supermarkets.

The irony is that the ambiguity/confusion of nutrition has been a good way for the industry to sell its garbage for generations, but now people are so cognizant of the complexity of diet that they want to narrow down the possibilities to the simplest thing possible, and that's not good for the complex food industry. This also makes sense:

Confectioneries have held up in part because there was never any confusion over whether they’re an indulgence.

It's the rest of the food that people eat when they're "being good" that they care about.

giltleaf3• 11 years ago

I had a comment ready to add but you nailed it. The only thing I'd add w/r/t packaged food, people are right to develop their own priorities in life - but if you buy into this system, clearly your own health and the health of the environment are not a priority for you.

Food and nutrition should not be an industry. What I mean by that is there needs to be more concerns besides production efficiency and profit.

cmdrfred2• 11 years ago

I don't believe you can throw production efficiency by the wayside until the world is fed. While any population starves the utmost priority is feeding them. True believers of 'organic' food and its massively lower crop yields should not have children and probably should commit suicide to make their dream even a remote possibility.

throw72• 11 years ago

Yeah, the title is way overblown ("war"... come on).

Big Corps are already shifting... my favorite personal example is Heinz ketchup... they make a simple ketchup called Simply Heinz. Awesome.

commentzorro2• 11 years ago

Still contains the same amount of sugar so just about as bad for you.

JoeAltmaier2• 11 years ago

Turns out the standard for ketchup includes that sugar. If you don't put it in, they make you call it 'imitation ketchup'. My local grocery makes their own, and has a sign explaining this.

throw72• 11 years ago

Hey now, I get it, but this is a good step that big foods are moving toward ingredients you can read. Heinz has a reduced sugar ketchup... unfortunately that is just shifted to sucralose and I'd rather just have sugar personally.

saturdaysaint• 11 years ago

There are sea changes/disruptions going on in food comparable to changes in media consumption, ride sharing, the music industry etc. Look at McDonald's rapid decline, microbrew beer going from a niche to outselling Budweiser.

Even 10-15 years ago, %90 of what the average person learned about food came from mass media ads. Now it's probably %90 social media. In this world, mass produced food is practically the definition of "unshareable" - there's not much interesting about something that's inherently common and such food usually isn't too photogenic. Like so many products on the internet, this is a world where "the long tail" of food products, restaurants and even recipes can thrive like never before.

More than anything, I think there's a healthy competitive dynamic going on - food is legitimately getting better. Yelp reviews give local restaurants equal footing with national brands. Restaurants of all stripes have to compete with their own consumers, who have easier access to good recipes (and greater incentive to cook).

lhc-2• 11 years ago

On beer, craft beer is still far from outselling Bud. According to their own trade group[0], they hit 11% of total US sales last year, their highest ever by far. By comparison, so-called domestics (A-B Inbev, Miller Coors) control a vast majority of the market, with 47% of the total US market just going to A-B Inbev according to wikipedia [1].

[0] https://www.brewersassociation.org/press-releases/craft-brew... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anheuser-Busch_InBev

The war on big food

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