Uh, guys...

Lost in the rural umbrage over Chipotle cartoons and "responsible raising" was any consideration that this concept might have endurance. I think the Meat Establishment consistently assumed a little pushback would not just be tremendously satisfying, but snap Joe Public back to his burger-loving senses.

That could still be proven correct, but the chances of a significant change in consumer consumption at the fast food level are growing right now - not diminishing.

The numbers were startling: Shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill shot up 12 percent on Tuesday after the company reported a nearly 26 percent spurt in its quarterly profit. For the fast-food industry, this was fresh evidence that the world of Big Macs and Doritos Locos Tacos has room for a menu with healthier-than-average food and higher-than-average prices.But it came as no surprise to a new generation of smaller fast-food chains that are coming up fast behind Chipotle and its peers, and taking its “food with integrity” mantra even further.A handful of rapidly growing regional chains around the country — including Tender Greens,LYFE Kitchen, SweetGreen and Native Foods — offer enticements like grass-fed beef, organic produce, sustainable seafood and menus that change with the season. Most promise local ingredients; some are exclusively vegetarian or even vegan. A few impose calorie ceilings, and others adopt service touches like busboys and china plates.And despite the higher costs and prices, all are thriving and planning national expansions, some directed by alumni of fine dining or of fast-food giants like McDonald’s.Their success marks a milestone: After decades of public hand-wringing about the empty calories and environmental impact of fast food, the farm-to-table notions that have revolutionized higher-end American restaurants have finally found a lucrative spot in the takeout line. The result already has a nickname: farm to counter.“This is not a passing fad,” said B. Hudson Riehle, the research director for the National Restaurant Association, who added that locally grown food and sustainability were the top two customer priorities reported this year in the group’s annual poll of American chefs. “It’s only going to get stronger.” [More]

The numbers are still absurdly lopsided, but with traditional fast-food (jeez - who'd have thunk that would be a legitimate label?) struggling to generate sales growth, I think there is a real risk that market for proteins - and consequentially, grains - may move slowly overseas. Fast food's future could be dependent on a rising lower class - not a thriving middle class.

It's tough to say how much of Chipotle's strong sales are a result of its campaign, but many analysts give the practices lots of the credit.

McDonald's doesn't expect full-year international comp sales to be too different from its June performance, and July global comps are expected to be negative.That's in spite of the late-April makeover for the iconic Ronald McDonald clown, who traded in his pear-shaped yellow onesie for a hip vest-and-cargo-pant combo. For special occasions, he wears what the firm calls a whimsical red blazer and bow tie. His floppy red shoes remain.Shares of the Oak Brook, Ill.-based company slid 1.4% in the stock market today.By contrast, Chipotle wolfed down profit in spite of higher menu prices, reporting late Monday a 17.3% jump in Q2 same-store sales. Earnings topped views as revenue growth accelerated for a third straight quarter.The company's antibiotic-free proteins and fresh ingredients have made the chain a fan favorite in the fast-casual world.Making over menu items — instead of mascots — may be the ticket to success with consumers. [More]

The numbers are all the more impressive given the healthy (heh) price increases Chipotle announced earlier this year.

Dietarily, I don't really have a stake in this battle. I eat increasingly less beef, but have been doing so for years. But I travel enough to use fast-food for refueling simply because it's, umm...fast. Come to think of it, that may be the large majority of the attraction.

Nonetheless, I think treating this sales trend with the respect the numbers deserve might not serve us better that echo-chamber outrage-fests. 

The Chipotle affair...

I have been more than a little puzzled by the kerfuffle between the beef industry and Chipotle - for multiple reasons. But it's evident  - although virtually predictable - my opinion doesn't line up with the majority of farmers and ranchers. This became obvious when we talked about it on Agritalk Friday.

Chipotle has turned to Australia to source grass-fed beef. Considering the price of beef, especially the lean beef they need to cut our higher fat fed beef down to burrito level, this is hardly a surprise. But the beef industry took offense at their CEO comments.

In 2013, our company purchased about 45 million pounds of domestic Responsibly Raised beef; but the U.S. supply isn't growing quickly enough to match our demand. Even though our loyalty to American ranchers is strong, rather than meet the shortfall with conventionally raised beef from cattle treated with growth hormones and antibiotics, we decided to take this opportunity to start sourcing more truly grass-fed steak. So in addition to expanding our supply of beef raised without growth hormones or antibiotics, we are particularly excited to be able to serve more beef that comes from cattle raised entirely on grass. [More]

Of all the possible reasons, I think this quote hints at the most important one: the supply/price crisis in the US. Cull cows are setting records for both price and small numbers. So getting to 80/20 for ground beef is really tough with our beef output. Sure we have grass-fed beef but I can't even get any good numbers on the size of our grass-fed herd, let alone the percentage that are non-hormone and antibiotic free.

Nobody collects information on exactly how much of the grass-fed beef that Americans eat comes from abroad. Theo Weening, the global meat coordinator for Whole Foods, says his company buys very little. "We probably import maybe 3 percent. The rest is regional, local; that's what we really push for," he says.But you'll see plenty of Australian-origin beef in other supermarkets. Organic Valley, meanwhile, gets all of its grass-fed beef from Australia. There's also a lot of grass-fed beef coming in from Uruguay and Brazil.So why does the U.S., the world's biggest beef producer, have to go abroad to find enough of the grass-fed variety?Curt Lacy, an agricultural economist at the University of Georgia, says some of the reasons are pretty simple. Weather, for instance. In most of the U.S., it freezes. In Australia, it doesn't. So in Australia, as long as there's water, there's grass year-round.And then there's the issue of land. "If you're going to finish animals on grass, it takes more land," Lacy says. Grassland in Australia is relatively cheap and plentiful, and there's not much else you can do with a lot of it, apart from grazing animals.As a result, Australian grass-fed cattle operations are really big. In fact, they're the mainstream. Seventy percent of Australia's beef production comes from cattle that spent their lives grazing. And when beef operations are large-scale, everything becomes cheaper, from slaughtering to shipping.On Monday, the U.S. company Cargill announced a new deal with Australia's second-biggest beef producer — a company called Tey's. Cargill will now sell more Australian beef in the U.S., both grass-fed and grain-fed. [More]

I think Chipotle knows exactly what they are doing. And for the most part, the beef industry isn't thinking this through. Chipotle is arguably the brightest star in the food service galaxy right now, and seems to be handing both fast and casual dining competitors their heads, by inventing - along with Panera, etc. - a new category: fast casual.

There are now over 1,400 Chipotle locations in 43 states, and the chain reportedly made a 25% profit margin on $2 billion in sales in 2011.Chipotle began a trend in restaurants that the industry has dubbed “fast casual,” which offers a more upscale dining environment and food quality, along with higher prices, but in the familiar, convenient limited service format of fast food. “When I started Chipotle, I didn’t know the fast-food rules,” Ells explained years later. “People told us the food was too expensive and the menu was too limited. Neither turned out to be true.”By either ignoring or directly challenging all the dominant trends in its industry, Chipotle quickly became a great brand. Now Chipotle has become the trend-setter in the category, and trade publications feature headlines such as, “Who Will Be the Chipotle of Pizza?” Wendy’s and Taco Bell are just two of the most prominent fast food players investing in new store designs that look shockingly similar to that of Chipotle. The Wall Street Journal dubbed Ells the “Fast Food Revolutionary,” and Esquirecrowned him America’s most admired CEO....McDonald's sold its stake in Chipotle in 2006, and since then, Chipotle has moved farther and farther away from the typical fast food way of doing business. Ells’s latest obsession is the issue of sustainability. Chipotle is now the largest buyer of higher-priced pork, beef, and chicken from animals that have been naturally fed and humanely raised outside of the factory-farming system, which provides inexpensive commodity meats to the rest of the food industry. Produce served at Chipotle is also locally raised if possible (lettuce served in January on the East Coast still comes from California). What Chipotle has learned is that customers notice the difference in flavor from natural meats and fresh vegetables grown “with integrity,” as the chain’s tagline states--and they’re willing to pay extra for it. [More]

Chipotle is adding 200 restaurants a year to boot. Even the NCBA rep on the show with me pointed out the lines out the door at the stores in the DC area. Oddly, he couldn't connect that with the dots that suggest Chipotle knows what they are doing.

Mostly Big Beef hasn't gotten over their big beef (I've been saving that line for, like, ever) with the slick Chipotle videos, notably the latest - "Farmed and Dangerous". Partly this is due to the clearly top-notch production values, and mostly I think it's simply a lack of any effective response. 

The beef industry has decided, for reasons I cannot fathom, to go with "you hurt my feelings". 

Some U.S. producers say they were not given adequate opportunity to fulfill the company’s rising orders. While U.S. beef supplies are very tight, they aren't tight to the point where there's not enough supply. The company's decision to source some of its beef from Australia likely has more to due with price. Plus, the firm continues to strive for use of beef raised with no antibiotics or hormones, which it calls, "responsibly raised."Chipotle has the right to source its beef (and other meat) needs from wherever it chooses. But to say there isn't enough "responsibly raised" beef in the U.S. is a slap in the face of cattlemen here in the States. Cattlemen (and the entire farm community) should choose to "eat responsibly" and opt to dine at restaurants other than Chipotle. [More, but gated from Profarmer]

Brian Grete (above) reports this pretty accurately. I've heard and seen the "slap" reference repeatedly. It strikes me (heh) as one of the worst metaphors cattle producers could use. First, imagine somebody slapping the quintessential 'Merican cowboy (Marlboro Man, or Clint Eastwood from Rawhide). These are the rough-tough personas invoked often by our cow-calf people, so talking about a face-slap is an inexplicable transition from grizzled survivor to playground victim. Maybe the victimhood thing has worked so well for my sector (the weather/Chinese/Big Oil/etc.!), they have decided to join the whine cellar crowd.

But unlike corn farmers who are whining to government for hidden subsidies, cattle producers are aiming, I guess, for the public. This could be a big mistake. Jane Q Consumer is already aware of painful beef prices. And she is responding just like economists predicted, for once.  Beef consumption continues to drop. While there is substitution going on, total meat consumption is a tide that carries all proteins along.

[Source] [Note: I couldn't find any charts beyond 2012, but trend has not changed]

I see no evidence that pity-based marketing has been working or will work for the beef industry - unless they are shifting to subsidy-based ag, which could be, given the new livestock support in the recently passed Eventual Farm Bill ™. (This is my designation, which I thought up all on my own because the timeline for the current farm bill seems to be stretching to infinity and beyond)

Complicating this response is when you are "slapped in the face", simply griping about it seems a little...umm, limp, to put it mildly.

It could also be our grass-fed producers were simply out-hustled by the Aussies. [I would include an excerpt, but they lock down their content] At any rate, without oodles of corn, we should hardly be surprised Australia would be very, very good at growing and marketing grass-fed beef.  And just as we laud our export efforts in Asia, etc. when US beef takes market share from domestic suppliers, why are are miffed when the free markets works freely (both ways)?

But the bigger picture may be what is troubling most US cattle people (if only subconsciously). What if Chipotle's upfront promotion of "responsibly raised" beef works? What if competitors are forced to match their move? [See also: gestation crates] What if slick videos posed next to feedlot pictures sway consumers to eat less conventional beef?

Right now the answer seems to be, "We'll just export our product." This is a legitimate countermove. The US could become the high-value dominant supplier and simply leave the ground beef sector to others. While it seems to be working, there are things to watch as well. 

Increasing dependence on exports means greater volatility, IMHO. From currency fluctuations to competition to foreign policy entanglements to outright conflicts, lots can go wrong with exports. Secondly, growing income inequality here at home means the growth in the domestic market will be in exactly the sector dominated by the "Chipotles" of the industry. The domestic/export trend could intensify rapidly.

To sum up, beef producers at ticked at Chipotle for saying things they don't like, but can't answer effectively. They are also miffed at losing a grass-fed customer. But if it hasn't dawned on them there is not much they can do about it, they risk looking like ineffectual complainers.

The American and perhaps global consumer is getting used to vendors catering to even illogical preferences. Amazon has taught them they can really have it their way. Tomorrow. All of agriculture needs to realize this will ripple through our value chain and arrive our our farm gate, whether we like it or not. Meanwhile, our government is busying eating its own and can't be bothered with a tiny, never-satisfied slice of constituents. We can wrap US beef in the flag all we want, but that got tiresome back when Japanese cars kicked our automotive butts into the 20th Century. Patriotic shopping happens when consumers prefer US products.

I don't think Chipotle "slapped any cowperson's face". I think they said, "No thank you, I like Brand X".  It's not about us, it's about our products. And if we weren't plowing rangeland to grow insured-for-nearly-free crops, maybe we could play in the Big Grass-fed Leagues.

For the time being I think I'd take a pass on tattling that "Chipotle slapped me!"

Trooping farmers to Washington, DC...

 Won't solve this problem.

Consumers, or at least food companies are replacing regulators as the deciders-in-chief about what America eats. And how it is grown.

There are, apparently, a number of ways to make breaded chicken sandwiches healthier. To this end, Chick-fil-A has been quietly switching out ingredients over the last decade. According to Nation’s Restaurant News, the chain eliminatedheart-disease-promoting trans fats in 2006, removed high-fructose corn syrup from its bagels and golden wheat bread, and gradually reduced sodium in some products. Now, the 1,700-store chain is working to remove preservatives from its breads and oil.What’s unusual about the efforts is that Chick-Fil-A has largely avoided publicizing them until now, hoping to avoid ire about any perceived change in flavor. Fast food companies have had to balance customer loyalty to well-known menu items with growing pressure to offer healthier options. “We didn’t necessarily want the customer to know we’ve tweaked their favorite product,” the chain’s senior nutrition consultant told NRN.Chick-fil-A is testing a new preservative-free white-bread bun in about 200 stores, and it’s trying out a peanut oil without TBHQ, a chemical that extends the shelf life of oils but can cause health problems if consumed in large volumes. It will remove high-fructose corn syrup from sauces and dressings. And due to concerns about thehealth-effects of food dyes, the chain is also looking into removing yellow food dye from its soup base and ice cream, reported NRN. [More]

And the animal welfare crusade seems to have a weekly victory as well.

Nestle's Northbrook-based pizza division, which makes DiGiorno and Jack's frozen pies, has cut ties with a Wisconsin farm after an animal rights group released a video of dairy cow abuse.Mercy for Animals revealed an undercover investigation on Tuesday that showed video footage of cows being beaten, stabbed and dragged by a tractor. [More]

Like generals in WWI, agriculture is fighting this war the wrong way. We shouldn't be at war with consumers to begin with. But so far, our plan seems to be:

• Deny, deny, deny
• More security (Farm fortresses)
• Federal regulation (even though we hate federal regulation)
• Refusal to consider alternatives
• Self-reassuring reporting in ag media that consumers are sadly misled imbeciles
• Lather, rinse, repeat

I grow more bearish on meat consumption and public support for ag every day.

Hard to take seriously, but...

The gluten-free trend seemed to me to be a fad with natural limits and a definite lifespan, but like my belief GMOS's would eventually win the day, I seem to be badly mistaken. Proof: marketing vodka as gluten-free.

It's not just alcohol, of course. The new FDA label guidelines allow bottled water, vegetables and fruits to be labeled gluten-free even though these products do not naturally contain gluten. The FDA says gluten-free labeled products cannot contain any type of wheat, rye, barley or crossbreeds of these grains. The regulation also requires that the food does not contain an ingredient derived from these grains.The new labeling has created a marketing frenzy that may become a $6.2-billion gluten-free product industry by 2018, according to a 2013 report from research firm MarketsandMarkets. Some say the risk of cross-contamination warrants such broad labeling; others claim the FDA just made gluten-free living much more complicated.Although she is pleased with an FDA formal definition of gluten-free in labeling, Schluckebier notes the less than 20-ppm gluten allowance is likely to create an artificial sense of labeling security. A 2011 FDA report, “Health Hazard Assessment for Gluten Exposure in Individuals with Celiac Disease,” recommended the “most sensitive individuals with CD” eat foods with less than one-ppm gluten levels to protect them from “from experiencing any detrimental health effects from extended to long-term exposure to gluten.”But Taylor, for one, defends the FDA’s 20-ppm measure and assures celiac disease sufferers that there’s no risk in drinking distilled spirits. As he says: “the FDA and other public health agencies around the world have reviewed the evidence and concluded that products with less than 20-ppm gluten are safe for the vast majority of celiac sufferers.” [More]

The other lesson I learned is my skepticism that the complaints have any medical basis wither in the face of first-person confrontation with friends and family who have found their lives measurably improved by eliminating  gluten. Hard to argue with that kind of data. Not socially smart either (see, I am learning).

While $6.2B is a big number, the total food and beverage market is a $1.4T market, so some context helps. But the range of gluten-free-products continues to grow.

Why has gluten-free eating gotten easier? The Food and Drug Administration recently defined what it takes for a food to qualify as gluten-free. Before their ruling, there were no federal standards or definitions for the food industry to use in labeling products "gluten-free." As one of the criteria for using the claim "gluten-free," FDA set a gluten limit of less than 20 ppm (parts per million) in foods that carry this label. This is the lowest level that can be consistently detected in foods using valid scientific analytical tools. Also, most people with celiac disease can tolerate foods with very small amounts of gluten. In addition to limiting the unavoidable presence of gluten to less than 20 ppm, FDA allows manufacturers to label a food "gluten-free" if the food inherently doesn’t have any gluten such as bottled water, fruit, vegetables and eggs.This level is consistent with those set by other countries and international bodies that set food safety standards. While most products are accurately labeled, there is an estimated 5 percent of foods currently labeled "gluten-free" that contain 20 ppm or more of gluten. These manufacturers that want to use the phrase on their products must adhere to the strict guidelines. They will have until August 2014 to comply with the new regulations. [More]

The bigger issue here could be the impetus this gives to good labeling of all kinds. It's not hard to see a kind of "if it's good for gluten, then why not X" becoming the norm as retailers and manufacturers find there is market share gold in the fine print.

All this reinforces my feeling that GMO labeling will happen in some way or other eventually. That's a pretty vague prediction, of course, but it would take a popular tide reversal to change the inevitability of disclosure. I don't think Monsanto, et al, can spend enough to prevent it occurring.

Almond juice?...

 Apparently, soy milk is soooo yesterday.

Something is clearly dampening enthusiasm for drinkable soy. WhiteWave claims that across the plant-milk industry, soy now represents just 35 percent of sales; almond milk, by contrast, has surged to more than 55 percent of the market. Research firm Euromonitor International expects U.S. retail sales of soy milk to falla further 11 percent this year.What gives? Well, almond milk contains no saturated fat, has fewer calories than soy, and is rich in vitamin E. Another factor: Soybeans just aren’t hip, says Larry Finkel, director of food and beverage research at Marketresearch.com. “Nuts are trendy now,” he explains. “Soy sounds more like old-fashioned health food, like tofu, and could probably benefit by a reinvigoration of their brand.”It’s also possible that some consumers remain concerned about research linking soy and breast cancer, even if those claims may be unfounded. The American Cancer Society says soy is fine in moderation. [More]

I wonder if anti-GMO is playing a part in this. 

Two years ago, Dean Foods, owner of Silk Soymilk, was heavily criticized  for switching from organic to conventional soy beans without clearly labeling the change with different packaging. For many years, Silk soymilk was certified organic. In 2009, they introduced a “natural” line where the soymilk was made from conventionally grown soybeans (where pesticides are used along with GMOs), but the packaging was identical to the organic line. Even the price retailers charged was the same. [More]

Meanwhile, my local elevator, AC Grain - now a joint venture between Cargill and Mitsubishi - has been surveying local famers to find out what premium it would take to source non-GMO beans. What was entertaining was trying to explain to Aaron how you can grow beans without glyphosate. He found it hard to believe, but looking at our fields, we may have to relearn.

This keeps popping up...  

No wonder the food industry is a tough market - consumers are a restless bunch. One particular idea that keeps popping up in new forms is the anti-carb concept. Three anecdotes:

1. A former NCGA president is dropping white carbs from his diet.  When I raised my eyebrows he ascribed it lamely to his wife, but did say he felt better and had lost weight. The better mental attitude was the claim that struck me.
2. At dinner the other night in a slightly too-trendy-for-me restaurant in the Chicago suburbs, I had to ask what the abbreviation "gf" stood for. (Gluten-free) The waiter explained it wasn't that people were gluten-sensitive, but rather a range of reasons why they wanted to avoid it.
3. Then there was this hidden note in an article about the most-highlighted passages in Kindle books. [For those who don't use a Kindle, it shows you how many people have highlighted a given passage, and of course, Amazon keeps track of such things. I have always been mystified by most of the selections]:

The bleakness of the worldview suggested by those passages is striking. It’s no surprise then, to find self-help passages appearing alongside them: They help us cope with our inherently flawed human selves. Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People appears several times—“It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us”—as does Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People. Quotes about the healing power of God also make a strong showing, as do musings on the nature of marriage, and work, and leadership, and white carbohydrates. [More] [My emphasis]

Really? Carbs are one of the existential questions of our day? The fact this curious aversion has been around now since the Adkins diet suggests it may have enough penetration and longevity to seriously affect the American diet. Jan has decreased our potato/bread/rice intake surreptitiously enough I haven't really noticed anything except a deeper apprecation for French fries at the occasional meal out.

Like other seemingly hopeless trends in the US, perhaps a series of relatively small adjustments, rather than a massive campaign can actually affect a curve bending change. The last thing anyone expects is for people to solve the obesity problem on their own, but it's not impossible, I guess.

Another problem for red meat...  

While the recent salami-cancer link has been disputed, new evidence of another culprit is striking even skeptics of the red-meat-cancer linkage.

The researchers had come to believe that what damaged hearts was not just the thick edge of fat on steaks, or the delectable marbling of their tender interiors. In fact, these scientists suspected that saturated fat and cholesterol made only a minor contribution to the increased amount of heart disease seen in red-meat eaters. The real culprit, they proposed, was a little-studied chemical that is burped out by bacteria in the intestines after people eat red meat. It is quickly converted by the liver into yet another little-studied chemical called TMAO that gets into the blood and increases the risk of heart disease.

That, at least, was the theory. So the question that morning was: Would a burst of TMAO show up in people’s blood after they ate steak? And would the same thing happen to a vegan who had not eaten meat for at least a year and who consumed the same meal?

The answers were: yes, there was a TMAO burst in the five meat eaters; and no, the vegan did not have it. And TMAO levels turned out to predict heart attack risk in humans, the researchers found. The researchers also found that TMAO actually caused heart disease in mice. Additional studies with 23 vegetarians and vegans and 51 meat eaters showed that meat eaters normally had more TMAO in their blood and that they, unlike those who spurned meat, readily made TMAO after swallowing pills with carnitine. [More]

This mechanism stikes me as plausible as well. Since Jan has been shifting us to less beef and pork for years, it won't require a major change in our diets. (It doesn't hurt I've become fond of dry white wines either, I suppose.)  Mild adjustments are my kind of lifestyle changes.

I'm not alone.

Well, today I got a big challenge to that theory. Scientists have isolated what looks like a plausible mechanism by which red meat damages your heart: the gut bacteria of frequent meat eaters process carnitine, a chemical found in red meat, into something called TMAO. And TMAO is associated with a higher risk of heart attacks.  

Interestingly, this only happened to frequent meat eaters; vegans who ate a steak did not show elevated blood-levels of TMAO. Over time, their gut bacteria had changed, so they no longer had lots of bacteria that like to eat carnitine.  

I tend to discount dietary fads, but the association between red meat and heart disease is sufficiently long-standing that I'm trying to cut back to once a week. If we see more studies like this, I may cut back even further.
Of course, as many of you will no doubt point out in the comments, it's impossible to be sure. New studies could overthrow these results any time.  
But that's always a problem in this uncertain world. In this case, my best guess is that red meat probably promotes heart disease (which anyway runs in my family). And the cost of eating more poultry and fish and less steak seems relatively small. Much smaller than dying of a heart attack in my sixties. [More from a food-fad skeptic]

This furthers my guess that beef consumption will continue to decline in the US as it climbs elsewhere (areas where folks are "under-beefed). Yet another segment of agriculture with a growing steak (hee-hee) in freer trade.

The honey smuggling solution...  

Everything's better with lasers. We talked about Chinese honey-running and contamination on USFR recently. Scientists are on it.

By training the appropriated isotope ratio-meter on the carbon dioxide emitted from burning a bit of honey, Weidmann and company are able to use isotopic fingerprints to compare samples from all over and determine their origins. The same process works for other foods, too, which means better regulation could be coming to the chocolate and olive oil industries as well.

Let this be a lesson to all would-be food counterfeiters. We built a laser for Mars, but instead, we’re aiming it at you. [More]

I would also suspect the price of honey is about to jump as well.

 

Am I the only one...  

To see a market opportunity for US beef in Europe right now? The Great European Horsemeat Scandal could just be beginning.

The source of the horsemeat that ended up in beef factories in Ireland and France before being processed into food for British and Irish supermarkets is still unclear. ABP told us it had never knowingly imported horsemeat to its factory and was cooperating with investigators. It initially blamed its continental European suppliers and denied that any of the suspect material came from its own factory in Poland, pointing the finger at other Polish suppliers. Tests on meat from five Polish abattoirs identified from paper records as part of the ABP supply chain came back negative, however, and official Polish veterinary staff suggested the British and Irish look closer to home.
The trail moved rapidly through the week from Poland, back to a cold store for frozen meat in Newry, Northern Ireland, called Freeza Meats, where a large consignment, already quarantined and removed from the food chain by the authorities for irregularities, was found to contain 80% horsemeat.
A spokesman for Freeza Meats' owners told us they had refused to buy the meat because they were suspicious of its state and the accuracy of its labelling with Polish healthmarks, and were merely holding it in store as a "goodwill" gesture for the company that had sent it to them, McAdam Foods.
ABP acknowledged that it had on occasion bought Polish meat "in good faith" for the factory that made the dodgy burgers for Tesco, Burger King and other retailers, from McAdam Foods. But ABP and McAdam could not agree what had been bought when. McAdam in turn passed the blame for the horsemeat to one of its suppliers, saying it had sourced the 80% horse consignment which ended up in Freeza Meats from a Hull-based company called Flexi Foods, which in turn has operations in Poland.
Neither McAdam nor Flexi Foods were answering their phones when the Guardian made repeated attempts to contact them. The French manufacturer Comigel did not respond to requests for comment.
With the next vast round of new tests due in next week, few expect the horse meat scandal to end here. [More]

Of course, we're not so much a ground beef exporter as higher level cuts, but still, the marketing campaigns almost write themselves:

• All the hormones, but none of the horse
•  Beef from America, from American cows. Only.
  

Then again, it's not like we're doing DNA testing on lasagna here at home. Meanwhile, the enormous problem of disposing of unwanted horses - who happen to be made of edible stuff, remember - is bringing pressure to alter the emotionally-driven ban on horse slaughter.

 Rural U.S. lawmakers with ties to the cattle industry and economically-strapped horse breeding registries have been pushing to reopen horse slaughterhouses since the last three plants shut down in 2007 (two in Texas, one in Illinois).
On Tuesday, February 5, 2013, they're poised to try again in Oklahoma when a new bill sponsored by state Senator Mark Allen (SB375) is scheduled for a second reading in the state's Agriculture and Rural Development Committee. Allen's bill would overturn Oklahoma's existing 1963 ban on selling and producing horsemeat.
Representative Skye McNiel is also pushing to overturn the ban with another bill, HB1999.
What's behind it are 140,000-150,000 U.S. horses that are now being slaughtered in Canada and Mexico for the EU and Japan plus about 45,000 mustangs unwisely removed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from public lands and warehoused at taxpayer expense, many in long-term holding pens in Oklahoma.
Quite a few people in the meat trade are pushing to weaken laws that would allow them to legally buy and sell these protected wild horses at a large profit to slaughter plants. (In fact, they've been doing this illegally for some time, as revealed in the National Journal article, "Is the U.S. Government Complicit in the Killing of Over 1,000 Wild Horses?" as well as in an investigation reported on in The Desert Independent).
They also want to slaughter horses disposed of by racetracks, rodeos, horse breeders and owners struggling in the recession -- a surplus market that has made the actual raising of horses as meat animals (the way cattle are) completely unnecessary in the U.S. for decades.
Sen. Allen's and Rep. McNiel's bills are trying to harness that business for their home state, which ranks fourth in the nation in horse ownership per capita and bills itself as the "horse show capital of the U.S."
It also happens to have several struggling racetracks as well as a large cattle industry--same as in Ireland and the UK. They don't raise horses for meat over there, either. [More]

The above source is mildly slanted, IMHO, to be sure, but I'm sure legislators and the equine industry trying to solve this problem were just thrilled to see this blunder across the pond. Great timing, you bozos!

But this fraud does help in one very perverse way: it reinforces the truth that horses are edible. In a protein-short world, burying and burning enormous amounts of nourishment derived at great environmental expense is absurd. Especially when there are people willing to eat it.

There was no health hazard involved, just straightforward substitution larceny. The
bigger question for me is how much expansion this scandal has left.

But it may be a problem for US cattlemen to benefit from the fiasco simply because of our domestic shortage of lean beef needed to mix with corn-fed trimmings to get to the modern standard for hamburger - 80/20. That's one of the reasons we came up with LFTB, after all. (It is ~ 95% lean) It could also be a small factor for the mixing in Europe as horsemeat is generally leaner than beef.

Then there is the whole EU-beef trade battle whichwill outlive me. And the latest on antibiotic use in animals isn't really a selling point either.

[Source] [Click to enlarge]

DNA-testing - it's not just for paternity tests anymore.







 

Coffee vs. Coke...  

I think the HFCS market is slip-sliding away, but I did not see the downtrend in soda consumption becoming as pronounced as it has.

 Now look where we are: Soda is in a free fall, with domestic revenue down 40%. Coffee culture is ascendant, up 50% in ten years. In another decade, the United States could easily spend more on coffee than soda -- something utterly unthinkable at the turn of the century (industry data via IBISWorld) [More]

Like so much else, it is driven in part at least, by generational differences. And when Coke tried to staunch the bleeding with a 2-minute commercial, it did not impress much - in fact. it may have hardened anti-sugar positions.

This explains why the reaction to the commercial was immediate and derogatory, even in the advertising community. “Critics Jeer Coke’s Entrance Into Obesity Discussion” read a headline in a MediaPost blog. “The soda giant makes an awkward first stab at addressing obesity,” said AdWeek, which called the video  “shameless.” Among food and health writers, the response was mocking, perhaps best represented by Marion Nestle’s “Coca-Cola Fights Obesity? Oh, Please.”
...There is virtual consensus that drinking too much soda is bad for you, and it’s not hard to understand the evidence. I asked Rob Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and the author of “Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease,” if he’d sum it up for me. His response: “A calorie is NOT a calorie. Different calories have different metabolic fates in the body.
Those from fructose overwhelm the liver, forcing the pancreas to make more insulin and driving more energy into fat cells. And soda is nothing but a fructose delivery system.”[2]
Soda is a fructose delivery system as tobacco is a nicotine delivery system. (And if it’s not “truly” addictive but only habit forming, so much the better; it’ll be that much easier to get people to cut back.) That’s why added sugar, especially in liquid form, is rapidly becoming the focus of savvy public health officials, scientists, physicians, journalists, parents and even politicians. And the ridiculous notion that government has no role in public health — the blind “nanny-statism” argument, which ignores everything from seat belts to tobacco to guns — is being overwhelmed by the tide of evidence, as demonstrated by a recent poll by The New England Journal of Medicine, in which 68 percent of nearly 1,300 respondents worldwide “favored government regulation of sugar-sweetened beverages." [More]

These are charges that may be more definitely proven, but if we have learned nothing else from GMO's, climate change, etc., it's that public perception doesn't wait for replicated studies or respect scientific consensus when it suits them.

 There is some kind of synergy I think developing with social media, search engines, economic discontent, and anti-consumerism that could rebuild our food system. From meat to drink, a growing number of people aren't just eating what's set in front of them.

Your inner conservative caveman...  

It used to be standard copy to poke fun at food faddists, especially for those of us in agriculture. But the curious trend is such food belief systems are not just growing by adding adherents, but multiplying to offer diets/lifestyles to match up with your other worldviews, including politics.

While we automatically look to the left when vegans are discussed, a new approach on the right is every bit as unique: the Paleo-libertarian conjunction.

Paleo’s main proponents aren’t particularly partisan. Mark Sisson, who keeps the Paleo blog MarksDailyApple.com, says on his page that “people’s health and personal enjoyment of life matter more to me than politics and the hot air from the latest pundits.” But Libertarians have embraced the caveman set as kindred spirits, and it would appear that the caveman lifestyle and anti-state, laissez-faire tendencies often come hand in hand. Paleo-Libertarian logic maintains that the U.S. government is to blame for obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and dozens of other ills by virtue of telling us to eat the state-subsidized fruits of Big Agriculture’s labor. It says the USDA’s nutrition guidelines were created with the food lobby, not the human body, in mind.

These are by no means implausible or even particularly radical claims. Some socialists and environmentalists have come to the same conclusions, at least nutritionally speaking. Still, this admittedly healthy distrust of government — not to mention the adoption of a diet that is the complete antithesis of the USDA’s recommendations — is innately libertarian. Gary Taubes, a science writer best known for his anti-sugar crusades, is widely cited in Paleo circles. When Reason magazine asked him why so many libertarians are drawn towards Paleo, Taubes responded that perhaps they simply “like the idea that government agencies and federal agencies can be just dead wrong.”

Some true believers take the “natural” argument even further by asserting that the centralized state, and all of its freedom-thwarting attributes, are a consequence of a grain-based agricultural society. The low-fi libertarian website LewRockwell.com features pages upon pages of articles about the Paleo lifestyle written in a rugged, conspiratorial tone. “It came to me like a revelation on my morning commute: Bread is a tool of the state,” writes one commentator. “The ‘staff of life,’ the very symbol of food itself, has become to me a symbol of the domestication of humankind. It has also suggested one more way I can work to strengthen the individual and weaken the state.” [More]

It is the growth in food-politics crossovers that convinces me it will have more impact on our food system and the politics of agriculture than farmers currently imagine. Since it is a splintering of demand for food products and production methods, the market signals will be weak and confusing. Our large-scale approach to food will struggle, I would think, to address consumer desires - at least the wealthiest and most lucrative markets.

At first, I thought it would be largely confined to meats and ripple back to me through corn demand, but the growing grain/starch-avoidance diets, to cite one example, also present market questions. Moreover these divisions will occur within political camps, not just across them.

Of course, these market forces are still quite small, and frankly, I think production issues like climate change will overshadow their influence on markets in the near future. Still, I have some background suspiscions that market opportunities are going unexploited.

The white other meat...

This struck me as an idea that might reshape protein markets...along with sky-high feed costs. 

Brown got into fake meat after working in the clean-energy business. He says he loves the taste of meat, but his childhood on a family farm convinced him to refrain from killing animals*, and he’s been vegan for many years. In 2009, he met Fu-Hung Hsieh and Harold Huff, food scientists at the University of Missouri who’d been working to create a meat substitute for more than a decade. The three formed a company, and they’ve been working to build the perfect fake meat ever since.

The process has moved along in fits and starts. “It’s a combination lock,” Brown says. “There are three different parameters we’re working with—heat, cooling, and pressure.” To make the meat, the firm starts with a powdered protein—for the chicken strips, they’re using soy; for the beef, they’ll use a protein from a kind of pea—that they form into a liquid paste. The paste is heated, then it’s extruded through a machine that resembles a pasta press, and then cooled. “It was a process of trial and error to get all of those to align exactly right in the right sequence,” Brown says. “But if you do—if you get the heating and cooling sequence right, and you apply exactly the right pressure through the extrusion—you get the proteins to align in a way that makes them almost indistinguishable from animal proteins.”

Brown says that other hurdles remain, and Beyond Meat is constantly working to refine its methods. Making the perfect fake beef is harder than making chicken, because people expect real beef to look a bit red, from blood. Beyond Meat can add a red hue using beet juice or other natural colorants, but Brown doesn’t know yet if people will consider it strange to have bloody-looking fake meat. This sounds like a trivial factor, but one study has shown that a meat substitute’s appearance is the most important factor to consumers—even before you taste it, you decide whether fake meat is acceptable based on how it looks.

Over time, Brown believes, the firm will get all these little details just right. He’s also confident that society will accept his innovations just as it has adapted to tech revolutions of the past. “Once, we had the horse-drawn carriage, and then we had the horse-less carriage, and then we had the automobile,” he says. “I’m firmly convinced we’re going to go from beef and chicken products that are animal in origin to those that are made with plants—and at some point in the future you’ll walk down the aisle of the supermarket and ask for beef and chicken, and like the automobile has no relationship to the horse, what you get will have nothing to do with animals.” [More]

More reviews here, here, here.

Commercial ag has been justifiably dismissive of the faux meat market threat, yet it is hard not to sense a number of things to cause rethinking.

First, the animal cruelty cause doesn't seem to be going away. We're just a Walmart away from junking gestation crates everywhere - without any loathsome government regs to blame.

Second, as shown above the meat imposters are getting better, and given our preference for prepared (i.e. seasoned and cooked) food, the differences apparent raw begin to become meaningless. All they need is some economies of scale to undercut real meat, and I think a significant market share could switch, at least in categories like frozen dinners.

Finally, as pork and beef follow chicken into near total concentration due to economic pressure from feed costs, public connections to producers will likely unravel. CAFO's just look like CAFO's. And they don't match what the public wants farms to look like. Or what we peddle in the PR marketplace.

*But what really struck me was the highlighted line above. I thought putting kids to work (on ROPS-less tractors, for example) was how you made them stalwart champions of producing food the way Grandpa did.

Perhaps not always.

True mystery meat...  

I'm not a  big fan of the McRib.  It's too messy, especially for the road and the texture defies mouth analysis. But I'm far from being it's biggest critic.

Some point to the lengthy list of unappetizing ingredients. But hey - what prepared food or restaurant fare doesn't read like that?

The more unsettling accounts are how the umm, meat is processed.

Roger Mandigo is an emeritus University of Nebraska animal science professor credited with the technology that made the McRib possible. And here's its story, straight from the meat scientist's mouth.

Roger Mandigo earned induction into the Meat Industry Hall of Fame for his invention of "restructured meats."

Back in the 1970s, Mandigo tells The Salt, he was approached by the National Pork Producers Council (the folks who later brought you "the other white meat") to create a product with pork trimmings that could be sold to the fast food giant.
"The pork producers wanted to see more pork on the menu, and they were targeting McDonald's," Mandigo said.
Mandigo went to work in the lab and came up with a new take on an old-fashioned technology: sausage-making. Instead of just stuffing pork meat inside a casing, Mandigo used salt to extract proteins from the muscle. Those proteins become an emulsifier "to hold all the little pieces of meat together," he says.
"All we did was reuse the technology that had been around for hundreds of years and emphasize that we could shape products to shapes people wanted," he says.
And here is where our story takes an interesting twist: Seems the McRib was not born in the shape of its current pork patty. The original concoction Mandigo made was formed as a faux pork chop.
McChop? Maybe not.
"[McDonald's] chose the shape," Mandigo said. "They wanted it to look like the boneless part of a backrib."
That's why Mandigo is adamant that he was not the father of the McRib, despite getting the credit for it all these years. [More]

Still others use the McRib to bash modern hog production methods.

Bad news for fans of the infamous McRib: The Humane Society filed a legal complaint against Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, which supplies the pork for McDonald's sandwich. In an undercover operation from 2010, the animal rights group says it uncovered a number of disturbing farming practices, including the use of tightly confining gestation crates that cause sows to suffer "from open pressure sores and other ulcers and wounds," with nary a veterinarian in sight. Will these gross allegations sully the reputation of the barbecue-sauce-slathered sandwich?[More]

But the most curious element is the intermittent appearance of the McRib on the MacDonald's menu. There is even a theory for that.

Now, take a look at this sloppy chart I’ve taken the liberty of making. The blue line is the price of hogs in America over the last decade, and the black lines represent approximate times when McDonald’s has reintroduced the McRib, nationwide or taken it on an almost-nationwide “Farewell Tour” (McD’s has been promising to get rid of the product for years now).

Key: 1. November 2005 Farewell Tour; 2. November 2006 Farewell Tour II; 3. Late October 2007 Farewell Tour III; 4. October 2008 Reintroduction; 5. November 2010 Reintroduction.
The chart does not include pork prices leading into the current reintroduction of the McRib, but it does show it on a steep downward trend from August to September. Prices for October, 2011 hogs have not been posted yet, but I suspect they will go lower than September—pork prices tend to peak in August, and decline through November. McDonalds, at least in recent years, has only introduced the sandwich right during this fall price decline (indeed, there is even a phenomenon called the Pork Cycle, which economists have used to explain the regular dips in the price of livestock, especially pigs. In fact, in a 1991 paper on the topic by Jean-Paul Chavas and Matthew Holt, the economists fret that “if a predictable price cycle exists, then producers responding in a countercyclical fashion could earn larger than ‘normal’ profits over time... because predictable price movements would... influence production decisions.” At the same time, they note that this behavior would eventually stabilize the price, wiping out the pork cycle in the process).
Looking further back into pork price history, we can see some interesting trends that corroborate with some McRib history. When McDonald’s first introduced the product, they kept it nationwide until 1985, citing poor sales numbers as the reason for removing it from the menu. Between 1982 and 1985 pork prices were significantly lower than prices in 1981 and 1986, when pork would reach highs of $17 per pound; during the product’s first run, pork prices were fluctuating between roughly $9 and $13 per pound—until they spiked around when McDonald’s got rid of it. Take a look at 30 years of pork prices here and see for yourself. Also note that sharp dip in 1994—McDonald’s reintroduced the sandwich that year, too. Though notably, they didn’t do so in 1998.
(I’m sure all the sharp little David Humes among us are now chomping at the bit—and you’re right to do so! This proves nothing. It is just correlation—and the sandwich doesn’t always appear when pork prices are low. In fact, the recent data could prove that McDonald’s actually drives pork prices artificially high in the summers before introducing the sandwich—look at 2009’s flat summer prices. Could that be, in part, because there was no McRib? On the other hand, food prices were flat across the board in 2009 so probably not. So, no, this correlation proves nothing, but it is noteworthy.)
Because we don’t know the buying patterns—some sources say McDonald's likely locked in their pork purchases in advance, while others say that McRib announcements can move lean hog futures up in price, which would suggest that buying continues for some time—and we can’t seem to agree on what the McRib is made of—some sources say pork shoulder, others say a slurry of offal—it’s hard to really make any real conclusions here.
The one thing we can say, knowing what we know about the scale of the business, is that McDonald’s would be wise to only introduce the sandwich (MSRP: $2.99) when the pork climate is favorable. With McDonald’s buying millions of pounds of the stuff, a 20 cent dip in the per pound price could make all the difference in the world. McDonald’s has to keep the price of the McRib somewhat constant because it is a product, not a sandwich, and McDonald’s is a supply chain, not a chain of restaurants. Unlike a normal restaurant (or even a small chain), which has flexibility with pricing and can respond to upticks in the price of commodities by passing these costs down to the consumer, McDonald’s has to offer the same exact product for roughly the same price all over the nation: their products must be both standardized and cheap. [More]

This strange sandwich provokes strange reactions in consumers. But it's most lasting effect may be the piling on consequence of yets another restaurant/grocery offering that should not be examined in detail.

For my mind, this is simply an example of a culture that values quantity over nutrition in food. And one with an abnormally high sweetness demand. McRibs are probably little worse than other fast-food offerings, and as for eating offal, that too is simply a cultural and economic affectation. Protein is protein, and if you don't like the idea of "variety meats", the McRib is simply one way to avoid knowing you're eating them.

This Bud's for you...  

Not me. I can't stand the stuff. But my feelings pale in comparison to this critic:

I don’t drink Budweiser and never have. I’ve tasted it three times (a total of about 3 ounces), first while at the University of Maryland, once again in Myrtle Beach, SC, in 1984, and then again in Seattle, in 2005, at the urging of their distributor’s rep, who - correctly - observed that tasting a thing  21 years ago wasn’t giving it a fair shake. It tasted exactly the same: like a wet piece of the cardboard that comes in new dress shirts – and that’s not an original observation. I first read it on the website of the world’s foremost beer critic, Britain’s Michael Jackson. He had almost nothing positive to say about Bud. I don’t either.
Budweiser has always been far more about marketing than beer. The founder of Anheuser Busch, Adolphus Busch, refused to drink his own brew, calling it “that slop” (he was German, of course, so it came out “dot schlop”) and stuck to wine. AB first made its massive incursion into every American beer market not because Americans were clamoring for the fantastic beer but because the uber-financed new St. Louis brewery actually paid the rent for tavern owners who agreed to sell Bud and kick out all their competitors. (The source for all this – principally, along with a ton of my own research – is an article from Chicago journalist and author Edward McCleland, writing in Salon.com, which you can read here.) When AB was just  moving into its ascendance, there were over 100 small breweries making virtually the same beer as Bud, the mild, aggressively-inoffensive, watery Pilsner, a style that originated in Czechoslavakia as a ladies’ beer; a wimpy alternative for the delicate palates of proper Czech ladies who couldn’t stand the big German Alts and Lagers or the muscular Belgian ales. [More fun reading for Bud-haters]

While I do not stand with the "Over-regulation Hysterics" (more on this in my next TP column), I will grudgingly grant that beer distribution laws have to stand as one the absolute examples of bad, awful, economically perverse regulation. And it's hurting our beer choices just when things are looking up for suds-fans.

The measure is intended to limit the ability of brewers to own wholesale distributorships and restaurants. As explained by Open Market, its primary backer is MillerCoors, which claims to be trying to ward off an attempt by their main competitor, AB/InBev (Anheuser-Busch), to buy up beer distributors and squeeze out other companies’ products. But the state’s microbreweries may be the real victims of the provision.
“Wisconsin’s craft brewers are getting caught in some cross fire between MillerCoors and Anheuser Busch,” the Blue Cheddar Blog explains. If this thing goes forward, it will be much more difficult to start a new small beer brewing business with room to grow in one of the states that loves beer the most.”
“This motion was sold to the legislators by Miller/Coors and the Wisconsin Beer Distributors Association on the premise that it would protect Wisconsin from a hostile AB/InBev take over of many current Wisconsin wholesalers,” the blog continues. “This is simply a farce. Since InBev took over AB, they have had 16 opportunities to buy wholesalers and have passed 16 times. Here is the real truth….Miller/Coors and the WBDA are threatened by the growth that is happening in the craft beer industry. Craft is the only segment of beer that is growing, and it is growing by double digits.”
Wisconsin’s craft brewers, who were not consulted while the measure was being framed, account for only about 5% of sales, but their share is increasing. “Everything in this bill is designed to make it harder for small craft brewers to grow,” complained Deb Carey, a co-owner of New Glarus Brewing. “It is a slimy piece of legislation.”
“We are losing assets and we are losing control over our products,” Carey added. “This debate boils down to the fact that the wholesalers do not want a drop of beer going to market in Wisconsin without them making their 30 percent profit from it. That’s it.” [More]

You read that right - the largest chunk of profit in the lager-chain is distribution! Really makes sense, doesn't it?

Whole Foods is not aging well...  

It turns out that Sam Walton knew something about America's relationship with food. Namely, it is mostly about money. While Whole Foods has certainly impacted the food retailing industry, I think they are learning that changing how we choose our diet will be a long, and not necessarily rewarding journey.

Since the letter was published on Sunday, Gawker, which originally published the letter (and you can read in full here), asked other Whole Foods staff to email it about their experiences working for the retailer.
While there were a few people supporting Whole Foods' philosophies, the number of people who have come out to criticise the retailer and the strength of their vitriol was surprising. There was so much of it that Gawker broke it down into two posts.
One response said the original letter did not go far enough - and that supervisors refuse to let subordinates go to the bathroom, sometimes for as long as 30-40 minutes.
Another said that food in the prepared foods section was made using expired cheese and the edible but expired meat that had been taken off the shelves.
"I am a former chef, so the whole Prepared Foods department is rather scary. Employee rule is NEVER eat off that hot bar unless you microwave the hell out of it to kill any bacteria. A plate at the hot bar pretty much means the trots later," claimed one former staff member.
Retailers like Whole Foods, which pin their businesses on their philosophies, must find situations like this one particularly worrying, to say the least. Particularly considering this one letter has opened the flood gates for former staff to not only back up the original claims, but turn it into a free-for-all, putting all of its activities under scrutiny.
Much like Disney World, which is all sunshine and fairy dust to consumers, but could be any industrial park in America once you go behind the scenes, perhaps it may only be a case of employees being disappointed by the chasm between a company's consumer perception and the needs of a corporation. [More]

The prime movers in the food retail industry look to me (a distant layman's perspective) to be 1) healthy choices more expensive than salty/sugary foods; 2) meat that will soon be a luxury item for most even in developed countries; and 3) a rapid deterioration in consumer food-handling and food-preparation skills (i.e. cooking).

Taking them in order:

It's really hard to make an economic case against poor food choices.

Most Americans are unable to follow their government’s recommendations for healthy eating, simply because they can’t financially afford to do so, says a study that was recently published in the journal “Health Affairs.”

The updated food pyramid, now called “MyPlate,” encourages higher consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, which are typically more expensive than processed foods. Purchasing food items that provide important nutrients like potassium, dietary fiber, vitamin D and calcium, could add up to $380 annually to consumers’ grocery bills, according to the lead author of the study, Dr. Pablo Monsivais, professor at the Department of Epidemiology and the School of Public Health at the University of Washington.

Only the people who are able to spend considerable amounts of money on food get close to meeting the federal recommendations, the study found. “Given the times we’re in, the government really needs to make [its] dietary guidelines more relevant to Americans,” Dr. Monsivais said. [More]

The remarks I have heard from the protein industry indicate to me that this trend is just beginning. Red meat will become the luxury my parents always deemed it to be, and domestic consumption will slide south.

With most global food prices spiking, there's no mystery where meat prices are predicted to go. Prices for red meat, that American culinary staple, have been climbing as though OPEC had gone into the ranching business. USDA predictions suggest continued high prices for all types of meat throughout the decade. But when it comes to domestic consumption, the traditional hierarchy of America's favorite proteins may be headed for a shift. Chicken wings may achieve lift like never before.

According to the Consumer Price Index meat prices climbed 6.2 percent since January 2010, a rate of increase bested only by gasoline. A reduction in herd sizes and an increase in exports have driven cattle prices up by 25 percent since October, while hog prices have risen a remarkable 50 percent in the same period. [More]

Finally, the shift to buying food instead of ingredients will continue. Cooking will become an arcane, esoteric exercise for the well-to-do. Food preparation seems to be an entertainment option via the food channels, rather than a skill to be enjoyed while mastering.

I'm not sure whether you'll get it in the States but Jamie Oliver has a new show called "Jamie's Ministry of Food". In it he goes to a northern town (Rotherham) on a mission to teach ordinary folks to cook. The lack of basic knowledge among the people that he meets is gobsmacking. One woman isn't sure how to turn her cooker on, another doesn't really know what boiling water looks like. All of them feed their kids on junk food and takeaways. The idea is that he teaches a core group of eight some simple dishes, which they teach to their friends, and so on.
Now these may be extreme examples, but it does seem that we have created large swathes of people who simply don't know how to cook. I'm not talking about gourmet food here, but the kind of stuff that I would consider to be a basic life skill. After all, it's not rocket science.
Back in the seventies, when I was growing up, people had no option but to cook. Takeway/restaurant food was simply too expensive. My mother loathes cooking but still put a home-cooked meal on the table every night. Sure we ate a lot of mince (ground beef) and stuff with pastry but at least it was honest, if not gourmet, fare. We were a fairly typical working-class family.
But somewhere along the line that seems to have changed for a lot of people. What went wrong? [More]

All these trends, while perhaps fleeting, impact our carbohydrate-producing farms in some way. It is a perverse mercy that our economic flundering has made the dollar so cheap we can supply growing markets with meat and keep our livestosck industry afloat.

But in fifty years or so, how will we eat? And more importantly to Whole Foods, where will we shop?

Maybe I will get one...  

I have been critical of "frequent shopper" cards at grocery stores as simple data-mining tools for Big Food.  Jan uses hers religiously and proudly points to "savings" I still struggle to believe.

But the experience of one shopper during the recent turkey recall is forcing a re-think.

I just got a phone call from Kroger, one of my local grocery stores indicating that I may have purchased some of this turkey and should return it with receipt to the store for a full refund. (If only I hadn't eaten it all already).
I have to assume the "Kroger Plus card" I use to save a few bucks on toothpaste and other instore specials kept track of who bought what products, and they were able to alert me that I had purchased some potentially contaminated turkey.
I'm pretty happy that I cooked what I ate thoroughly, as I always do, and have so far avoided illness, but it is pretty neat that my little savings card can be used to help customers avoid illness. Finally I see the value in having one and having it attached to my contact information. [Comment on this post about recall]

[There is a side bonus of not being asked EVERY (rare) time I shop for groceries if I want to get the dang card.]

Another point that may have been undersold on this event is this strain is resistant to multiple antibiotics.

PS: Use a meat thermometer, people!