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Pushing water uphill
Snack attack depends on taste
Holland & Barrett to get Ahold’s De Tuinen chain
ConAgra sells Bumble Bee Seafoods to managers
Stop eating and start sweating
Brain food?
US kicks tobacco habit
UK government may ignore public on GM
Local is lovely
People
NPD/Innovation
Pushing
water uphill
Reports that consumers return to
old favourites once their curiosity is satisfied suggest that soft drink
makers face a tough job creating new brand leaders.
Vanilla Coke and Mountain Dew Code
Red, the industry's biggest new products of recent times, have seen their
sales slide after brilliant debuts. Industry journal Beverage Digest reports
that sales of Mountain Dew Code Red are off 40% for the first quarter of
2003, and that Vanilla Coke’s share of the supermarkets and convenience
stores channels is down by 30%.
The truth seems to be that
consumers have gone off carbonated soft drinks in the long term,
preferring still drinks and waters. CSD makers also face rising resistance
to their sugary fluids in schools and other markets as a result of the
obesity issue.
Most big new launches have been
brand extensions. But this appears only to have slowed the decline in CSDs,
not reversed it. "For years, there has been little change in which
carbonated brands comprise the top 10," said John Sicher, editor and
publisher of Beverage Digest. "The creation of new
mega-brands, or even big brands, with staying power has been a huge
challenge."
As a result, CSD makers are
spraying the market with new brands, tastes, packaging and features. And
praying.
Snack
attack depends on taste
Even health-oriented consumers are
more likely to purchase a snack high in fat if they think it tastes good,
according to a study by US marketing academics.
The study, published in the winter
issue of Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, focused on
consumer perceptions of low-fat variations of existing snack products. The
researchers examined the joint effects on consumers of three factors:
brand familiarity, retail shelf display and consumer goal orientation.
"Most consumers don't
associate potato chips, cheese puffs and cookies with the phrase 'low
fat,'" say the authors. "So when a firm launches a low-fat
version of its existing snacks it is marketing it based on an 'atypical'
attribute. This is good news for major brands that dominate the market.
They should be able to launch line extensions based on atypical attributes
without worrying about pre-existing brand associations."
M&A
Holland
& Barrett to get Ahold’s De Tuinen chain
Holland & Barrett, the UK
subsidiary of US-based diet supplement retailer NBTY, is to take over
Dutch retailer Ahold’s natural products retail unit De Tuinen for around
16 million euros in cash.
De Tuinen’s 41 stores and 25
franchise stores will transfer to Holland & Barrett Europe, but
operate under it own name for the time being. NBTY controls about 1,000
stores in the US, UK and Ireland.
ConAgra
sells Bumble Bee Seafoods to managers
The hard times faced by the fishing
industry came into sharp focus again as US food group ConAgra yesterday
sold its $500 million Bumble Bee Seafoods tuna subsidiary to its managers
and private equity firm Centre Partners Management.
They take over all assets of the
US’s number two tuna processor, including 3,000 staff and the Bumble
Bee, Orleans,
Health
Stop
eating and start sweating
That’s the advice from the
International Food Information Centre, which has come up with diet and
exercise advice for all of those of us who are overweight or obese, and
that’s two out of three.
IFIC’s journal, Food Insight,
says this month that overweight is caused by just one thing – eating
more calories than you burn. To lose a kilogram you need to burn around
7,500 calories. Or eat less. Here are some tips to use or lose 100
calories.
Food Swap
250 ml regular soft drink for a diet soft drink. Drink two cups of
fat-free milk instead of two cups of whole milk. Use ne teaspoon of
mustard or ketchup or one tablespoon of fat-free mayonnaise in place of a
tablespoon of regular mayonnaise. Split a small bag of crisps with a
friend. Slice a typical piece of apple pie about one-third smaller.
Exercise
(based on a 82.5 kg person) Pedal an exercise bike for 13 minutes.
Practice some fast dance steps for 16 minutes. Work in the garden for 18
minutes. Walk briskly for 22 minutes (5.6 kph). Clean the house for 25
minutes.
Food and foot combos
Eat five fewer potato crisps and walk for six minutes. Eat one-quarter cup
less spaghetti with tomato sauce and walk for 11 minutes. Top toast with
two teaspoons of apple butter instead of 2 teaspoons of butter and walk
for 11 minutes. Serve three tablespoons less of mashed potatoes and walk
for 13 minutes. Skip two half & half coffee creamers in coffee and
walk for 15 minutes.
Easy, isn’t it?
For those who find it all too much,
another source of enquiry may offer hope. Nature Medicine’s June
issue reports that researchers may have found a brain mechanism that
reduces food intake and affects the availability of blood glucose. This
opens the door to new ways of thinking about obesity and type II diabetes.
In experiments with mice, they
examined how neurons in the hypothalamus respond to increased
concentrations of long-chain fatty acids by decreasing glucose production
in the liver and relying on fats, rather than carbohydrates, as a source
of fuel.
They found that inhibiting a
critical enzyme in cells of the hypothalamus diminished markedly food
intake and glucose production. The intricate mechanisms involved suggest
that a complex interplay between glucose and fatty acids may help regulate
body weight. Because type II diabetes results from problems in glucose
metabolism, the finding suggest that drugs that target brain circuits
could be useful in fighting both obesity and type II diabetes.
Trade
US
kicks tobacco habit
US health and human services
secretary Tommy Thompson said the Bush administration will support an
international treaty to reduce the global health toll from tobacco.
Support for the Framework
Convention on Tobacco Control at the World Health Organisation (WHO)
assembly today reverses the American stand. The treaty bans cigarette
advertising, unless deemed unconstitutional, and it calls for bigger and
more visible health warnings on cigarette packs. It also supports higher
taxes on tobaccco and contradicts a recent British Medical Journal
article that secondhand smoke is not a public health threat. The WHO says
smoking kills five million people each year and predicts that this will
double by 2025.
Once adopted, 40 countries must
ratify the accord before it takes effect.
GM
UK
government may ignore public on GM
 British environment minister
Michael Meacher told a BBC radio programme that it may be illegal to ban
genetically modified (GM) crops unless there is incontestable evidence
that they harm people or the environment.
Meacher’s comments come in the
light of a US request to the World Trade Organisation to overturn a
European Union moratorium on the import and cultivation of GM crops and
foods that is due to expire this year. It also undermines a month-long
public debate on GM in Britain that kicks off on 3 June.
Environmental activist group
Friends of the Earth reacted angrily to Meacher’s comments. It’s GM
spokesman Pete Riley said "The public has made it perfectly clear
that they do not want to eat GM food. Allowing GM crops to be grown
commercially would threaten our food, farming and environment with GM
pollution, and take away people's right to say no to GMOs."
Meacher’s comments also ignore
concerns at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a US food industry
trade body, that GM crops grown for drugs may contaminate crops destined
for food products.
This year several English counties
have banned GM crops and most recently the National Trust, one of the
biggest public landowners in the country, banned tenant farmers from
growing GM crops on its land.
Food
Local
is lovely
Freshly harvested foods grown by
local farmers are becoming increasingly popular. But that doesn’t mean
cash rich time poor consumers are giving up their Salad Nicoise and
Melanze Parmiggiano.
Recent reports on radio and in the
press suggest many consumers are worried about the quality control
exercised by farmers who may be thousands of miles from their kitchens.
They are also increasingly aware of the environmental cost of transporting
exotic foods to local factories and shops.
While consumers like the taste of
fresh vegetables and the sense of community that supporting local farmers
brings, farmers like the (invariably) higher price and stable market for
their produce. Paranoid shoppers perhaps find it more important that they
can ask (and check) about production conditions. And buying locally makes
cents; research from the New Economics Foundation in London shows that
GBP10 spent at a local food business is worth GBP25 to the local community
compared to GBP14 if it is spent at a supermarket. In other words, money
spent on local produce stays in the community.
A recent report from the US based
Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture found that "fresh"
food in the US travels between 1,500 to 2,500 miles (2,400 to 4,000 km)
from farm to fork, 25% farther than in 1980. Romaine lettuce typically
travels 2,055 miles from farm to store, celery 1,788 miles, onions 1,675
miles and tomatoes 1,369 miles. Grapes travel farthest, 2,143 miles, says
the study.
Time delays, which reduce the
nutritional content of food, also encourage the shift to buying locally.
It takes a week for food to travel from a field on one US coast to a store
on the other. Food imports can take a month or more to reach consumers’
kitchens. And this may take longer under the Food & Drug
Administration’s new anti-bioterrorism rules.
According to the US Department of
Agriculture, there were 1,755 farmers’ markets in 1994, and this rose to
3,137 by 2002. In Britain the number jumped from one in 1997 to 450 by
2002, according to the National Farmers Union.
Some farmers are supported more
directly by consumers. This might take the form of a fixed weekly payment
for a weekly delivery of produce. This might be supplemented or discounted
by the consumer working on the farm to weed and pick produce a couple of
times a year.
Nice little earner
British farmers now earn more than
£166 million a year from farmers’ markets - two and a half times that
of just two years ago, according to research published by the UK’s
National Farmers Union in September 2002.
It shows that farmers’ markets, which started in 1997 with a single
market in Bath, are thriving in virtually every part of the country. Key
findings include
-
The number of farmers' markets
has more than doubled in the last two years from 200 to 450.
-
More than 60% are expanding.
-
There are 15 million individual
visitors and at 60% of markets most customers are regulars.
-
80% of neighbouring businesses
saw a growth in trade once a market set up nearby.
People
 Dr Katherine Swanson, director of
global product safety at US food firm General Mills, the NFPA Food Safety
Award for 2003 in recognition of her dedication and many contributions to
improving food safety. She will receive the award at the annual meeting of
the International Association for Food Protection in New Orleans, which
runs from 10-13 August 10-13.
Swanson, a microbiologist, is
credited with the expert application of Hazard Analysis and Critical
Control Point (HACCP) and other approaches for managing microbial hazards
in food processing. |
