Wise Ideas

Peeps Show

After yesterday's incredibly depressing post about taxes and the recession, I figured I'd better pull myself out of the pity pit and leave things light this Friday.  Especially since next week is spring break at our house. (Nevermind that I turn the big Five-0 over the break....there's that pity pit again!)

This time of year, a good Peeps Show never fails to cheer me up.  The Chicago Tribune website is hosting it's annual Peeps on Parade diorama contest, where peeple who seem to have plenty of time on their hands, upload pictures of Peeps in amusing scenarios.

Among this year's entrants:  FrankenPeep, Hail to the Peep (which incredibly did NOT use the new Chocolate Mousse Peeps to portray the Peep in Chief), Andy Warhol's "16 Peeps," Magnum Peep-I, and of course, in tribute to the ex-Governor, Illinois Peepin' Politics.  

The peep-abilities are endless.  Enjoy your weekend. 

Ahhhh, Nuts!

What is it with nuts, anyway?

First salmonella-laced peanut products -- now pistachios.  It seems the Food & Drug Administration finally learned a lesson from its deadly peanut mistake, and is warning the public about tainted pistachios from a California plant BEFORE anyone gets sick or dies.

As Newsday reports, "the rarely used tactic - announcing a recall before illnesses strike - was meant to put the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 'ahead of the curve,' said the agency's commissioner for foods, Dr. David Acheson."  Call me naive, but it seems to me that such a "rarely used tactic" which saves lives ought to be standard operating procedure.

However, while announcing a recall before anyone gets sick is pre-emptive and cautious - it will also prove more costly and potentially damaging for clean growers, processors, and other down-the-line businesses, which the LATimes says are "shell-shocked" by the recall, which will "almost certainly be a blow to (California's) $539-million pistachio industry."

But why wait for this pistachio thing to blow up into another peanut, tomato or spinach nightmare?  Reports this morning are that Frito-Lay is recalling its salted pistachios, as is Kraft (Planters brand pistachios as well as some Trail Mixes) and Kroger Markets.  No doubt you can expect that list to grow this week.

But pistachios and peanuts aren't the only nuts impacted.  "Consumers don't have the time to pick apart which nuts or nut products are affected by recalls," says AdAge.  "Most people will eschew the category altogether." 

It seems to be an all-or-none gamble here.  Don't report contamination - people get sick and die.  Report early, and kill an industry for an entire season.  Is there any in between?  

Again, the entire federal process of food inspections, testing and contaminate reporting has been called into question.  And again, the potential solution to these on-going food issues point to wholesale changes within the FDA, or even creation of an agency devoted entirely to keeping our food chain safe.

When might it be safe to go back into the nut aisle?  Unfortunately, that's another important bit of information the FDA doesn't tell people either. 

Sugar Shock

I'd just polished off a box of Girl Scout cookies (NOT joking) when I read the front page story of the NYTimes this week about how Americans these days are comforting themselves with candy.  Lots of it.

While many industries are struggling, "all is well in Candy Land," as Jamie Hallman, owner of the Sweetdish candy store in the Marina district of San Francisco, tells the Times.   And it's not just the neighborhood candy shops that are selling Tootsie Rolls, Necco wafers and gummy bears like they're going out of style.  Cadbury saw a 30 percent jump in profits last year.  Nestle's grew nearly 11-percent.  And Hershey was up 8.5 percent in the 4th quarter.  

Looks like whatever ground we've gained - and weight we've lost - over the past decade in battling this country's obesity epidemic will be entirely wiped away by the financial crises. 

Because even though the Times quotes a Weight Watchers facilitator as saying her clients are talking a lot more recently about candy consumption, and shares in the company are up following a 4th quarter earnings report that was cheerier than expected --- enrollment and attendance at Weight Watchers is down because it is a discretionary expense that people are cutting out of their budgets.

Are we destined to poor and fat at the same time?  It's almost too depressing to think about.  I need another box of Girl Scout Cookies.....

A Bumper Crop of Green Thumbs

Today's green story, in tribute to St. Patty's Day, is about the resurgence in Victory Gardens throughout the country. 

According to National Gardening Association projections, the number of homes with vegetable gardens is expected to grow 40 percent this year, as reported by USA Today.  Sales at Burpee, the world's largest seed company, are expected to jump as much as 25 percent.  "We haven't seen this kind of spike in 30 years, "Bruce Butterfield, research director at the National Gardening Association tells USA Today.

The term "Victory Garden" is a holdover from World War II, when people in Europe and the US started growing their own food in their backyards due to actual shortages.   As Wikipedia remarks, "In addition to indirectly aiding the war effort these gardens were also considered a civil morale booster" — in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown. Making victory gardens became a part of daily life on the home front."

At least, until we got fat, happy and lazy again. 

But now, people are going back to basics, even if they know nothing about those basics.  As the Seattle Times reports, a small seed store in Ellensburg, Washington, aptly named Irish Eyes Garden Seeds, says it's getting 100 phone calls a day from people who are starting their own backyard veggie gardens.  "We had one person ask us which way the seed goes in the ground," one of its employees tells The Times.

So on this St. Patrick's Day, here's to the new backyard greening of America. 

Recipe for a Financial Melt(down)

This week's sign that the financial apocalypse is upon us:  there's a ham sandwich on the cover of Gourmet Magazine.  Granted, it's on some high falutin' toasted bread.  But it's a ham sandwich none-the-less. 

Admittedly, if it weren't for a business piece in Sunday's New York Times, I wouldn't have known about this economic downgrading of Gourmet's culinary cover stories because, as a mom with two kids, fancy foodie mags aren't exactly the place where I pick up quick family meal tips. 

"After covering eating trends that have included haute pub food, exotic fruits like yuzu, and restaurants that dehydrated, foamed and froze everything from meat to dessert, upscale food magazines are writing about an even more unexpected topic: cheap home eating," writes The Times, as it describes the new cost-conscious recipes and menus Gourmet, Bon Appetite and Food and Wine are suddenly fascinated with. 

"This is an incredible opportunity,” Gourmet's chief editor Ruth Reichl tells The Times, putting an Obama-esque spin on the situation.  “People need help learning to cook again, and they need advice on less-expensive ingredients, and we’re trying to give it to them.”

"People need help learning to cook again.?"  You mean to tell me that Gourmet's readers never really cooked....but just looked at the pictures and then went out to eat?

Believe me, I'm not trying to kick Gourmet and its foodie mag competition when they're down.  It's just that recessions have a way of evening up America's social class structure, and all of a sudden Gourmet's upper class readership is joining us middle class folks in the kitchen eating left-overs and shopping on a budget, "activities" which Sunset, Good Housekeeping and other mid-range magazines have been covering for years.  Heck, even today's NYTImes Dining page reports that the lowly cube steak, a weekly staple when I was growing up, "is suddenly one of the hottest cuts of beef in the country."

What's going to be interesting in the coming months, is watching Gourmet and Bon Appetite battle Redbook and Good Housekeeping for the casserole crowd. 

Jane Freiman, a group manager-kitchens at Campbell Soup, tells Advertising Age that consumers in a recent study said they prepare casseroles between three and five times a week, and that "casserole-crazy consumers are being nudged along by the likes of Campbell and Kraft Food," which are featuring lots of casserole recipes on their websites.

Will Gourmet ever feature a casserole recipe using Campbell's mushroom soup?  That will be next month's sign that the financial apocalypse is upon us. 

It's Not ALL About the Coffee

There's been a ton of talk in the business pages about Dunkin' Donuts versus Starbucks and the battle for America's coffee drinkers. 

You've heard the story:  Starbucks over-expanded, the recession bit into everyone's latte budgets and Dunkin' Donuts was right there - poised to poach former Starbucks customers who had soured on the whole venti mochachino thing.  This has lead many a business writer to speculate that Dunkin's new better-tasting coffee can be credited (along with its lower prices) for the chain's recent rise in fortune. 

But I think two crucial elements of Dunkin' success have been over looked....elements which I saw plain as day as we drove up and down New Jersey over the President's Day holiday visiting family.  

ONE:  Dunkin' Donuts has taken great advantage of businesses going bust in small but centrally located strip malls off main highway and bi-ways -- and is opening up numerous new locations in an extremely cost-effective manner.  And.....

TWO:  They are ALL equipped with DRIVE-THRU windows!  

As my brother-in-law keenly noted, every time he has gone to a Dunkin' Donuts in his New Jersey area, he has noticed that the drivers of all the cars lined-up at the drive-thru window are moms with kids strapped into the back seat. 

It's the convenience -- not the coffee -- that's driving America's top consumers (moms) to Dunkin' Donuts!

In my limited travels around the country, I can count on one hand the number of Starbucks with drive-thru windows.  In just one long weekend in New Jersey -- I couldn't even keep track of all the Dunkin' Donuts, which I saw about every three or four blocks or so.  

Now I can't say the same thing about traveling through California, which in my area still has more Starbucks per square mile than Dunkin' Donuts.  Starbucks invested in the model of a store on every corner in the cities and suburbs.  But it's a model that's gone south as fast as the economy.

But if Starbucks is looking to save itself, perhaps it should focus less on its coffee and food offerings -- and more on just getting customers in the door. 

Or at least up to its windows, as the case may be. 

Of Peanuts, Pills and Who's Keeping Us Safe (not so much....)

What do peanut products and pills have in common - besides the fact that both are ingested?  Not much. 

However, despite the fact that food and drugs are entirely separate beasts, and that oversight of either one is a massive, complicated, intricate and extremely crucial public health and safety job - we continue to trust just one government agency to handle both.

"Trust" however, might be a bad way to describe it.  The current peanut crises that has now claimed 9 lives, sickened 600 people and resulted in the recall of nearly 2,000 food products, is just the latest nationwide health scare to beset the overwhelmed federal Food and Drug Administration.  

The FDA's ability to keep our food supply safe in recent years has been about as effective as Congress's attempt yesterday to grill Mr. Peanut Corp. of America about how his tainted company contaminated our food chain.  In a discussion on the Room For Debate blog at NYTimes.com, Former FDA commissioner David Kessler says bluntly that "the tools and resources that the agency has at its disposal are so limited that it’s no surprise that problems go undetected."

But it hasn't just been the FDA's tardiness in tracking tainted food products to their source -- but also its reluctance - politically-motivated and otherwise - to press the drug industry on issues that put millions at risk, as occurred a few years back with the painkiller Vioxx.

"The agency is at a tipping point," William Hubbard, an FDA administrator for 14 years tells NPR's All Things Considered.  "The budget is in terrible shape, and the challenges are escalating," (although you could say that about any federal agency these days).

So while the Obama Administrator looks for someone to appoint commissioner of the FDA (a position that is currently unfilled and ranks right up there with U.S. President as "worst job in America"), calls are growing louder to split the FDA into two separate agencies.  Democrat Rosa L. DeLauro of Connecticut is planning to re-introduce a bill to Congress proposing just such a split.  The "Food Safety Modernization Act" would divide the FDA into two distinct agencies—one for food safety, and the other to oversee pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

Standing next to the mother of a boy killed by salmonella-tainted peanut products, DeLauro says "the tragedies are preventable if we have the will to fix the system.  The push for change could not be more urgent."

But change, as we've witnessed, is glacier-like in Washington.  And the cost of splitting a behemouth agency into two smaller, swifter ones?  Unknown.  But the cost of not doing it is becoming more and more evident.

As Jon Stewart said on The Daily Show this week: "Funding for regulatory agencies?  Please.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have a peanut butter, spinach, tomato and Chinese toy sandwich to finish."

Saving Starbucks, Soul and All

It's been a distressing and depressing week in America, what with the spinning wheel of job cuts.  Round and round it goes --- AstraZeneca, Kodak and Oshkosh now joining other scions of American industry Caterpillar, GM, Pfizer, Home Depot and Sprint with massive workforce reductions.  And where it stops, nobody knows. 

It certainly isn't stopping at your neighborhood Starbucks, where jobs continue to leak out faster than you can say "Venti No Whip Mocha, please."  The coffee company, which has been called one of the new economic bellweathers of our times, announced another 7,000 job cuts this week and 300 more store closings.  Americans are well past "The Sipping Point": most of us stopped buying $5 lattes long ago. 

But this is something deeper. 

A year ago, when Starbucks founder Howard Schultz took back the reigns of his company and started swinging the cost-cutting ax, he said his mission was to save the "soul of Starbucks," return it to its roots.  But at this point, it's less about soul and more about saving the business - period.  When announcing this week's painful new reductions, Schultz's memo to employees ended with the following plea: 

"The decisions we make are about preserving the future of Starbucks. And I can promise you that I and the leadership team will do all that we can to put us in a position to emerge strong on the other side of this crisis, and stay true to our values and culture."

Perhaps Starbucks needs to stop and think about the coffee culture it created, and begin something of a retraining program with its core customers and a retooling of its business model.  Instead of brewing decaf on demand in the afternoons and evenings.....close the store.  I'm sure customers would find someplace else to go -- like home or the library.

Using operating hour reductions instead of store closures and mass layoffs, Starbucks would not only save money on its own bottom line, but also save some sorely needed jobs and keep stores from being boarded up in some increasingly economically challenged neighborhoods.

Also, maybe bag the whole Starbucks Entertainment thing, as well as the in-store merchandising.  And while you're at it, how about nixing those "Black Apron Exclusive" rare coffees.  The majority of your customers walk into a store, order a coffee off the board, sit awhile, then leave.  They are NOT shopping for music, books, or more coffee makers and cups to clutter their cupboards. 

Simplistic solution?  Probably, especially for a publicly held company which reports to a board of directors.  But maybe those corporate types should be thinking beyond the boardroom and weigh the impact job-centric cost-cutting measures have on the country as a whole.  Because while mass layoffs and closures may immediately help the bottom lines of the biggest companies in the nation --- in the big picture these job cuts are delivering fatal blows to an already staggering economy which no one seems sure how to save.

If Howard Schultz really wants to save Starbucks, perhaps he should think out-of-the-box and start saving consumer confidence and the economy by saving some jobs and stores.  It would not only be perceived as a positive move by an economic bellweather business, but would also be good for Starbuck's soul.

And maybe, just maybe, a grateful nation would thank them by buying a few more $5 lattes.

 

A Little Mercury with that Tainted Peanut Butter?

If the massive peanut butter recall expansion isn't enough to turn your stomach (as you can read from my old friend Lisa Stark at ABC News), I've got another food nightmare for you.  It seems federal food safety officials have been part of a conspiracy of Piven-esque proportion - one that potentially impacts the health of every American and plenty of non-Americans too.

As the Washington Post reports, two new, respected research studies have found that high fructose corn syrup contains mercury in nearly half of all tested samples --- including "nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient."

And if that doesn't scare you, this will:  environmental reports like this one from Grist.com, say that the FDA knew that traces of this toxic substance have been floating around in our food supply since 2005, but chose to sweep this damning information under its increasingly dirty rug.

In case you happen to be among the shrinking percentage of moms who don't read food labels, high fructose corn syrup is the preferred sugar substitute in this country's processed food industry.  It's found in tons of snack foods, candies, soda, juices, jellies and even yogurt. HFCS has been partly blamed by experts for this country's obesity and diabetes epidemic -- despite what the Corn Refiners Association would have you think in its recent - and incredibly inane - PR blitz to change it's image.  

But as the study's authors write in their press release, even trace amounts of mercury can be damaging.  "Mercury is toxic in all its forms,”  David Wallinga, a co-author in both studies is quoted as saying in U.S. News and World Report's Fresh Greens blog.  "Given how much high fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the FDA to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply."

I'd say that warning was clear enough.  But considering that he's appealing to the same people who've been hiding this information for years -- I don't have much hope.  The Huffington Post's Leslie Hatfield calls this high fructose time bomb "Our Melamine," referring to China's exploding health crises of melamine-contaminated infant formula and milk products.

The WaPost's Health Blog, The Check-Up, warns not to be too alarmist about the HFCS research, saying "it wasn't absolutely clear where that mercury came from," and that "the studies just measured overall mercury: it didn't distinguish between elemental mercury and the more toxic methylmercury. "

You can take that with a grain of salt, unless you're watching your sodium intake. 

So while you're clearing out your cupboards of all peanut butter and high frutose corn products - I would heartily suggest there be some immediate housecleaning at the FDA and any other food regulatory agency that's knowingly failed to keep our food supply safe. 

To say something mercury-sickened actor Jeremy's Piven's most famous charactor, foul-mouthed Hollywood agent Ari Gold, might say - "This is (bleep)in' unbelievable.  We're all gunna turn into (bleep)in' thermometers."

Peanut Butter Panic

Peanut butter:  the mainstay of the American child's diet, as well as a pervasive component of countless other kid-friendly products.  The only food recall that could possibly instill more fear from parents nationwide is bottled water. 

Yet here we are - in the middle of a massive peanut butter panic made more confusing by the scores of processed foods swept up in the salmonella scare.  "Peanut butter reaches so far into the American diet that a single processing plant in Georgia has spread contaminated peanut butter into cafeterias, cakes, cookies, crackers, candies, cereal and ice cream in at least 43 states," ABC News reports. 

As of today, 485 people have fallen ill from tainted peanut butter products, and six have died. So far, only seven states are not impacted.  But don't expect that to last long.  Federal food safety officials say they expect the investigation to continue, and the recall to grow, over the next several weeks and months. 

The mainstream media has done a good job of getting out word of a massive peanut butter recall -- but because of the complex nature of this recall, there is NO WAY the information being relayed is enough to inform the public whether or not they have a contaminated product in their household.  And frankly, the FDA isn't doing much better.

Go to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website on the outbreak, and you'll get exactly what you'd expect from a government website:  confusion.  Rather than being headlined:  CONTAMINATED PEANUT BUTTER or some simple wording that let's you know you're in the right place, the page is headlined: "Salmonella Typhimurium Outbreak."  And rather than listing recalled products right on the main page, you have to follow several hotlinks to get to the important information you're after.

But the website is only indicative of the bigger problem the government has when it comes to food safety.   In fact, criticism about the feds handling of the entire outbreak is growing just as fast as the outbreak itself, which you can see on this NBC Nightly News report. 

What's also interesting about this particular recall is that companies NOT affected by it are piping up to let people know their products are safe.  Conagra and Hersey issued statements last weekend that their products are NOT part of the recall.  And the Girl Scouts announced that their cookies - about to go on sale nationwide - are safe.  But as AdAge correctly points out -- they risk guilt by association.

"They're saying 'We're going to tell consumers that we're not involved even if we confuse them'," crisis-communications expert Robbie Vorhaus tells AdAge.  I couldn't agree more.  In fact, I'm shocked that these companies are trusting that people are fully paying attention when listening or reading media reports of the outbreak.  It's far more likely that people only half hear reports - and then go spreading the rumor that uneffected products ARE impacted. 

Damned if you do, and damed if you don't.  The danger is spreading, and so is the damage.  It's a situation that's bound to stick to the roofs of our mouths for months.