Giant Eagle Poised To Land In Cincinnati?

An article that appeared Thursday on TribLive stated that the real estate developer for Giant Eagle's grocery stores has sold a third of it's stock to an investment firm in a $294 million deal.  Such a deal opens up large amounts of cash which may be used for expansion... possibly into SouthWestern Ohio.

For those unaware, Giant Eagle is a regional grocery chain based in Pittsburgh, and currently has over 200 locations in Western PA and in Ohio as far South as Grove City.

Compared to Kroger, Giant Eagle has a more modern, youthful appeal and a very inviting store layout.  The Market District store(comparable to Kroger's super rare Fresh Fare concept) in the Upper Arlington neighborhood of Columbus offers a vast array of hot prepared foods, exotic meats, a station to make your own nut butter, and a stage for cooking demonstrations.  It blows the competition out of the water and is so nice, you could eat there for dinner with all the available seating.

In the past, Giant Eagle's CEO Laura Shapira Karet has said that the companies expansion strategy would be focused on building stores within its established geographic footprint, but that was well over a year ago.  Giant Eagle is pretty well saturated within Columbus, and Cleveland, leaving the Southern half of Ohio as the most logical step.

I know the perfect place for them.

The Kenwood Collection.

The Kenwood Collection used to be called Kenwood Town Place before there were issues with contractors being stiffed, which led to years of a rusty I-Beam eye-sore, which led to a foreclosure  and now... new developers with a new name.

This property sits on the edge of the massive Kenwood Town Center, featuring H & M, Apple, Oakley, Nordstom, and many other high end shops and restaurants.  This mall is never really slow, as the surrounding neighborhoods of Indian Hills, Silverton, and Montgomery feed it with throngs of affluent suburbanites.

The former Kenwood Town Place was the location of The Kroger Co's Fresh Fare concept, which featured greater meat, deli, and seafood selections as well as a wine tasting section and better prepared meal options.  Kroger pulled out citing low foot traffic, which if true, would have no doubt been due to the lack of progress made on the rest of the property.

The mall that shares land with the Kenwood Collection is currently being remodeled, and will no doubt bring more interest into the already busy mall.  People also visit retailers like The Container Store and Crate & Barrel that stuck with the Town Place project through the low times and will no doubt be a great compliment to whatever fills Kroger Fresh Fare's large square footage.

So all the high end, refreshed mall and the high end, back-on-track mixed use development is missing is Giant Eagle.

I'll admit that this may come off as biased and that's because it is.  I really want to see Giant Eagle come to Cincinnati.  The store is a refreshing change of pace from what you get from Kroger.  Also, Giant Eagles fuel rewards program is at least twice as good as Kroger's.  

While Kroger gives you 100 points for every $100 spent, equaling 10 cents off per gallon, Giant Eagle gives 10 cents off for every $50 spent. So not only are the rewards more straight forward, but you get twice as many.  Also, Giant Eagle offers a fuel perk bounty on certain sale items.  'Buy 4 boxes of cereal, get an extra 15 cents off'.  Where a big spender at Kroger can get a 40 cent discount in a month, you can easily get 3 times as many. Even better, and perhaps the best part is that Giant Eagle's fuel perks accumulate in a rolling 60 or 90 day period; whereas points don't combine between one month and the next at Kroger.

Naysayers will say that Kroger is too strong in Cincinnati, but I would say to them: 1. we already have Meijer, Walmart, Target(some have groceries now), Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Fresh, and Remke-Bigg's and 2. Giant Eagle does well in Columbus, a town lousy with Kroger locations.  So that doesn't matter.  Also The Kenwood Collection is located on I-71, making distribution a couple hours away from Grove City(the next closest location). 

Of course, I'm sure the folks who make expansion decisions for Giant Eagle will want to send multiple shipments of goods 100 miles further to service more than one location.  It's cool, I already have the 2nd location scouted.  As a currently unemployed person, I would be willing to offer my thoughts as a consultant to Giant Eagle at a competitive rate... 


PS... I'm poor.  This is a hard thing to say since most of my readers are fiercely self-reliant, 'up by the boot-straps types', but I was wondering if anyone noticed the PayPal Donate button on my blog?  I'm currently in between jobs and I'm getting behind enough to the point where I don't know how much longer I can stay in my meager apt.  

I'm not asking to be completely subsidized, I'm just asking that those who can, donate.  For my part, I will continue to look for work while posting more than I have been in the past.  I grew up on a hog farm with an outdoor toilet and a wood burning furnace, so hard work is something I grew up on. So while it's easy to grunt, 'Get a job!' and 'Get off yer ass!', please understand I am not a lazy person and I wouldn't so shamelessly promote the donate button if it wasn't getting serious. 

Hopefully, something good will come my way quickly, but until then, hope isn't paying the rent.  Thank you in advance for any donations, and to those who can't or won't donate, I still appreciate you taking the time to read this.

Sam

Slow Food.

Slow Food USA is having some sort of problem, according to the article I read in Chow.  I think their problems are a little more... existential in nature.

The problem here is that the group itself is formed under a false premise.  Organic/natural foods aren't intrinsically better than conventional or 'mass produced' food.  You can think it tastes better as a sort of placebo effect, but nutritionally, an organic/natural version of a conventional food is the same.  Asking people in this country to pay more for their food is pretty insulting and shows a complete lack of understanding about economic development. 

Much of why we spend so little on food is because we have so much more money and spend it on other things, so as a percentage, we spend less on the food.  There's not a lot of people buying Xbox 360's and cars and flat screen tv's in Sub-Saharan Africa.  And many people there grow their own food, not because they're hip and socially conscious, but because they'd starve otherwise.  As subsistence level farmers, they HAVE to decide how much food they need to sell instead of eat.  Their incomes are practically non-existent.

Like most foodies, the Slow Food movement meant well, but were misguided, misinformed, and generally uneducated about food.  So what they did was substitute their opinions and feelings in place of facts and then built an institution around them.  To shore up that institution, they needed enemies and that's where corporations came in.  Most foodies are anti-corporatist, so for them, it was easy to direct vitriol and hatred to any 'big' entity.

Thoughts, feelings, accusations, paranoia, and conspiracy theories support the cause, not science.  They see science as part of the 'big' machine that exist only as Yes Men.  The problem with this is that any serious critique of a foodie movement like Slow Food shows that that they simply make oversimplified, and unsubstantiated good vs evil populist claims about food.

Peak Organic

I was reading farmnwife's blog(@farmnwife on Twitter) and left a lengthy comment, as I tend to do at times.  I decided to post most of that comment since it was something I haven't really talked about here in any great detail.  No big drawn out intro, so if you're confused, leave a comment on here or find me on Twitter @samvance...

There is an economic tipping point that is in organic's future which will doom it, that I never hear anyone mention.  Basically, organic food started out costing about 75% more than conventional and as it became more popular, the prices dropped to about 40-50% more.  As more people use organic, the price will continue to drop until the price equals that of conventional foods.  Normally, this is where a business can finally start to compete and dominate the market, but we have to remember that organic is a more labor intensive choice to create a premium product.  Meaning that farmers really only grow it because it's more profitable. At the point where it costs more for the farmer to grow than conventional(meaning that they see less profit than conventional), they will stop growing organic and switch back to conventional.

This is the reason American beverage bottlers use HFCS primarily and Mexican beverage bottlers use cane sugar... not because of a difference on philosophy, but because HFCS is cheaper than cane sugar in this country due to some trade restrictions we put on Brazilian sugar.  Mexico doesn't have such restrictions, and thus, has cheaper sugar.

I'm not pro or anti-HFCS, I'm just using that as an analogy to explain what will eventually happen to organic food.

Broken?

 

I've been hearing a lot about our broken food system lately and haven't responded because I've been a little confused over the panic.   

It seems at the very least to be hyperbolic, and at most, a counterproductive and misinformed characterization of something somebody never actually understood in the first place.  Here is every article on 'Our Broken Food System': 

This one issue is happening.  This other person had this horrible or unfortunate thing happen. Our food system is clearly broken...

Major supermarket chains moved out of Detroit(gee, I can't imagine why...).  You can't get fresh tomatoes in this one place.  People still get food poisoning and people still die from it. We have fat people!  Did you hear me?? They're faaaaat!  Our food system is clearly broken.

I've had quite a bit of car trouble in the past year, but I don't flatly declare that automobiles are inherently designed wrong.  The thing is that people have their pet cause and that cause must compete with someone else's wacky theory, so they all must hitch their wagons to the 'Our Food System Is Clearly Broken' meme in order to make their pet cause seem relevant.

Our food system is not broken, but there is certainly room for improvement. Let's start with the issues I named; lack of access(food deserts), food safety, and obesity.

Yes, Grocery stores have left Detroit, but do you blame them?  It's a business and not a charitable organization, despite what you would be led to believe after watching Extreme Couponers.  There is a ton of overhead in running a grocery and you need a diverse group of customers to sell through the stock on the shelves while minimizing what they call 'shrink', which is waste from spoiled unsold, or out of date items.  This is a community problem, though, and not a sign of some foodocalypse.  What you should be seeing there are community gardens and farmer's markets popping up to fill the demand, if there is a demand.  Of course, they may have to deeply discount their overpriced food, but you'll never hear the foodies complain about that... it's always the big ominous corporations that gauge the common man.

Consumers also tend to get what they demand.  It's not unheard of for convenience stores to carry ripe fruits, some ripe veggies, and fresh frozen veggies or canned veggies.  That probably isn't good enough for modern Food Hysterics that believe organic food has greater nutritional value, but these are poor people, and they can't afford your snooty, over-priced food anyway.  It may be a challenge, but it is technically possible to get complete nutrition from 'C' stores and quick service restaurants.  As the city recovers and businesses start to return, so will grocery stores.  

 As far as food safety goes, it's been increasing steadily since the mid to late 90's.  We have the safest food supply in the world.  What we are outraged about and base a claim that 'Our Food System Is Clearly Broken' on, is the 1% to 2% that still has issues.  I agree that we should never stop improving in this area, but you are beyond delusional if you think that we will ever be 100% safe.  That is impossible under any system.  Even if you could theoretically guarantee 100% safety of all food that leaves food producers and processors, you still have ourselves to blame for poisoning each other.  We routinely paw at lunch meat in our refrigerators with hands we didn't wash, and the cold environment selects for things like listeria, which causes miscarriages in pregnant women.  We have manly men that insist on eating medium rare hamburgers.  We have raw foodists... and well, I really don't need to say anything more about them.

But hey, Sam, what about the fatness!?!  Look how fat everyone else is.  Hey, here's a fat picture of you I found in a Google image search, enjoy your shame, fatty!  Well, there are quite a bit of fat people in this country and I'm certainly no exception.  This is due to eating too many calories and not exercising enough, creating a caloric imbalance that resulted in steady weight gain over the years.  What it wasn't, was a some vast conspiracy to fatten America by the food industry.  How can I be so sure?   Well, the food industry makes Hot Pockets, but they also make Oatmeal, and veggies.  We have thin people that eat hot pockets and we have fat vegetarians.  You can lose weight eating potatoes, or snack cakes, or even McDonald's.  It's our choices, actions, and genetics that determine our waistline, not some evil cabal among major players within the food industry.

I've heard other arguments claiming that 'Our Food System Is Clearly Broken', like the fact that we don't have a regional food system and the unsustainable number of food miles that our groceries travel.

  Those assertions are either untrue or misleading, depending on the argument.  Take a look at breweries, bakeries, and dairies for example.  Anheuser-Busch has 12 breweries spread across the U.S.  Kroger has more than a dozen creameries and dairies in the U.S. as well as several bakeries.  McKee and Bimbo also have many bakery facilities.  In the meat industry, you find poultry, beef, and pork processors in every part of the U.S.  Regional food?  Yeah, we've got that.

Food miles and our carbon footprint is a legitimate concern, but the issue is distorted by people who barely understand it.  Let's take an honest look at the buy local movement and economics.  Advocates say that by supporting small, local farms, we can better impact the community.  Instead of going to the hypermarket to buy your peppers and tomatoes, you decide to go to your local farmer's market.  You feel the food is better, the economy is better served, and you are doing your part to reduce the carbon footprint.  The farmer you buy your tomatoes and peppers from brings about 30 lbs of each in his pick-up truck, along with his table, tent, and a chair.  He lives nearby, only 12 miles away and gets 12 mpg out of his truck.  You buy $6 worth of veggies and drive home.  Ok, he spends 2 gallons of gas to transport 60lbs of vegetables.  The semi that delivers the produce order to the hypermarket traveled several hundred miles to make the delivery and probably got 6mpg.  

So at first glance, it seems that the semi has made a much bigger impact on the environment, but did it really?  Let's assume the semi brings 1,000lbs of produce for a total round trip of 600 miles and gets 6mpg.  That means that each pound of produce at the hypermarket is responsible for .01 gallons of fuel.  The farmer's produce is responsible for .03 gallons of fuel per pound, or 3 times the amount of fuel per pound.

Now let's take a look at the economic impact.  In the community, the local market pays more because the money goes directly to the farmer, but is that really a greater economic benefit? Stay with me here... ok?  When you buy your produce at the farmer's market, you support the local gas station, shops where the farmer buys his stuff, and the help he may or may not pay.  When you buy from the hypermarket you support, the store employees, waste management services, utilities that the grocery uses, the driver that delivered the produce, the truck stop he fueled up at, the distribution center he picked the goods up from, the distribution center employees, the growers that sell to the produce buyer, the grower's local grocer, gas station, staff, places he/she shops, etc.  While the farmer's market certainly concentrates the funds from your purchase, the broader system supports many more jobs much more efficiently.

We have challenges every day when dealing with food.  We need solid regulations as well as a well staffed regulatory agency to ensure safety and to make sure all the major/minor players are playing by the rules.  We have problems that occur that we must deal with from time to time and long term goals we must work towards.  That in no way means 'Our Food System Is Clearly Broken'.  Don't buy into that doomsday speak, because it simply isn't true.

Cory Booker: A Tale of Two Budgets.

I meant to blog about either the lame Pepsi - Yale research fellowship non-controversy or David Zinczenko's scientifically bankrupt Yahoo! articles about the worst foods.

But I see a better opportunity to educate here using one of my Twitter followers now public example.

Some econo-wonks already know about Newark Mayor Cory Booker's budget troubles.  He's tens of millions of dollars in the red with his city's budget and is forced with making deep cuts.

See, the recession meant that people had less taxable income.  Coupled with declining property values and a foreclosure crisis, that means that a large, trying-to-grow city like Newark has much less revenue to work with.  Imagine you get paid hourly and you get your hours cut.  You had planned to use your next check to pay rent, utilities, and groceries, but your check is about 2/3 of what you expected it to be under normal circumstances.  What do you pay... or more importantly, what don't you pay?  That's what Cory Booker faces.

At the same time, Cory has come to terms with another out of control budget.  Cory used to play football, and according to his Facebook post, played at 265lbs.  Football players play very hard and lift weights, so they can normally eat what folks on the farm would call a free ration diet.  Muscle mass acts as a food furnace, craving calories to keep up the bulk.  Many football players have trouble later in life with finding a compromise between the level of activity(weight training and cardio) and caloric intake.  He says that he got down to 230lbs(where he says he wants to be), but ballooned back up to 295 while dealing with his other budget.

Cory Booker is a bold and brave person to post this info online to a cruel and unforgiving internet.  He stands at a vulnerable point in his weight loss, because he will hear advice from many people.  But that's the problem with that internet, isn't it?  It's something I call being Google Educated.  All the knowledge in the world and all the experts in the world are at our fingertips... but so are the crazies.  You can learn about dna or how pasteurization works, but you can also learn about various JFK conspiracy theories or how vaccines are bad for kids.

So I'm writing this for 3 purposes: 1. to write another post, which I haven't done in a while  2. to give tips to Cory in one place rather than annoying him through my Twitter account @samvance and 3. to dispel some myths and misinformation before America's Mayor gets corrupted by them.

#1

It's not what you eat so much as how much you eat i.e. your caloric budget.

Many people who mean well in the obesity fight tend to demonize certain foods.  They say crazy, unscientific things like 'Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize.' or 'stay away from processed foods and preservatives'.  It's the calories, stupid... For example, a Kansas State University nutrition professor lost 27 pounds in 2 months eating mostly snack cakes.  How did he do it?  Calories.

Cory weighs 287 right now according to today's facebook posting.  That means, Cory needs to consume about 3,444 calories with no extra calorie burning activities to maintain that weight.  Since Cory is a male, he takes his current weight and multiplies it by 12(women should multiply by 11) to get a very basic idea of caloric consumption.  If Cory is active, like running or shoveling snow for people, then he would need even more calories to maintain that weight.

Cory can use this knowledge to his advantage, however.  While similar in structure to a monetary budget, the mathematics of a caloric budget are the opposite.  More isn't better in this case.  So what can Cory do right now?  Two things; monitor and set a goal.  Luckily, Cory has started the process by selecting a target weight - 230 lbs.  

Using the calorie math, we can do a little algebra to determine about how much he needs to get reach his goal.   

His current weight is represented as follows: 287 * 12 = 3,444  

For his goal weight, we use the following: X = 230 * 12  X = 2,760

So if Cory limits his caloric intake to 2,760 calories a day and leads an otherwise sedentary lifestyle, he will eventually get down to 230 lbs.  That's a difference of 684 calories a day.  A pound of fat = 3,500 calories, so theoretically, every 3,500 calories he shorts himself will result in another pound lost.  This will take approximately 5.11 days to lose 1 pound and 291 days to lose the 57 pounds it will take to get to his goal weight with just a sedentary lifestyle.  

But we all know from his Twitter feed that he isn't a sedentary person.  This is where the monitoring come's in.  For one or two weeks before beginning this process, I suggest Cory keep a food diary.  I have one on an Excel spreadsheet I can send to him that I got from Dr. Mike Mangino, who taught FST 201: The Science of Food at Ohio State.  The chart should include the portion, nutrients, and caloric content of everything he eats as well as the length of time or distance for any physical activities.  All of these things show how much he energy he really expands.  This is important because he may eat way more than 3400 calories given the amount of activity, so his caloric goals must account for that.  Meaning that 2,760 would be the minimum amount of calories he needs to be at 230.  If he burns an additional 500 or 700 calories a day through walking the neighborhoods, running, and yes, even sitting in meetings, then those calories must be added back in.

This is important so you avoid what I call the Race To Zero, where people try to eat as little as possible instead of the appropriate amount.  This is one reason I object to David Zinczenko's crappy Yahoo! articles about the Worst Foods in America.

#2

Avoid processed foods? What does that even mean?  All foods undergo some level of processing. Ignore it, Cory.  Your concern is calories, protein, carbs, and things like potassium.

#3

Avoid HFCS? No.  Pop is a hindrance because it represents empty calories.  Sugar is sugar, so it doesn't matter if it's cane, HFCS, raw, or pureed guava.  You can have soda and still lose weight, but cutting pop for at least a while is something very easy to trim from your bloated caloric budget.  Drink 1% or skim milk(casein is an efficient protein), orange juice(Vit C, Potassium), or unsweetened iced tea(0 calories).

My tips:

Carb up in the beginning of the day and work in proteins a little at lunch and the rest for dinner.  Cream of Wheat or oatmeal, orange juice, and fruit start you off with energy and don't slow you down.

Snack time!  If you need a snack or two throughout the day, don't forget to count those calories, and try things like dried fruit, almonds, beef jerky, or a yogurt.  Bananas are good too.

Lunch - Some proteins but still mostly carbs. Tuna or chicken salad sandwich. Salad. Unsalted fries.

Dinner - Good time for protein.  Great low-fat options are chicken breast, fish, and turkey.  Lean beef and pork cuts are good, too.  

Not one of the first things people think of at the end of the day, but an omelet gives you all the amino acids your body needs to synthesize new proteins while you sleep and are a great way to add in other things that are rich in nutrients.

Potatoes!  Yes, Cory, potatoes are fine.  A great option for lunch and dinner, potatoes are sodium/fat free and high in fiber and potassium.  Potassium is very important in regulating cell fluids and blood pressure.  The average potato is only 110 so you can eat a lot and feel full.

Don't skip meals.  This creates that crazy strong hunger that causes you to overdo it on the next meal.

Don't deny, manage. It's a simpleton's route to banish foods that you like as if you're some foodaholic.  And you're not the Mayor Of Simpleton, are you? Have a cookie or a slice of cheesecake in moderation, just remember that those calories count.

Don't panic if you go over! If you blow your planned caloric budget for one day, then account for the overage for the rest of the week by shorting the calories a little more.

I hope this helps and doesn't come off as more unneeded, unsolicited advice.  As for the other budget, consult an economist.

Depouillage

Let's get this party started right.  Let's get this party started quickly... right?

I've had two food culture articles occupying tabs in my Firefox browser for a month now.  The first article appears in Newsweek and is written by Lisa Miller.  The other is an article in the Washington Post by Brent Cunningham & Jane Black.

Both articles assume things which are untrue and symptomatic of most American's ignorance about food.  Both articles make it seem that the best food you can get is at Whole Foods or a farmer's market and if you aren't lucky enough to afford that, you're stuck with high calorie, processed crap.  First off... everything is processed.  I know this is semantics, but the people who say this know nothing about how food is handled, so I know there is little room for nuance in their argument.  They really think some food comes out of a machine, but their Whole Foods foods come from some sort of virgin food birth.  It's Jesus after he's been individually quick frozen and packaged in environmentally responsible packaging... you know... like the pilgrims would do.

So they assume that A. everything else is processed and B. processed = bad.  They also assume that their foods are completely balanced and beyond reproach and everyone else's food is packed with calories and chemicals.

Brian Wansink from Cornell has been doing some very intriguing work on what he calls 'Health Halos' that may explain the Foodies ego toward their food and disdain for others.  Health Halo refers to the halo effect that is seen in sensory science.  For example a taste test on vanilla milkshakes may yield uncharacteristically high scores from someone who is a fan of vanilla.  The vanilla fan may give the shake higher marks for mouth feel and creaminess versus a fan of chocolate.  The Health Halo is where people grade food assumed to be of a higher quality or stature as healthier or lower in calories.  He demonstrates this perfectly in an experiment he performs on Showtime's Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Premium organic hypermarkets such as Fresh and Whole Foods exploit the ignorance of the liberal arts and Google Educated foodies that believe everything else causes obesity and disease.  Their ignorance costs them dearly.

In the Newsweek article, a family is said to spend $1,000 a month on their food.  What's more is the parenthetical caveat that states that $1,000 is roughly 20% of their monthly income.  Assuming this is post tax, that means this family makes about $80,000/year.  This is about 60% higher than the 2008 average income of $52,029.  So not only are they getting ripped off(organics are no healthier than conventional), but they get indoctrinated into this misinformation and talk people who are much less fortunate into forking over a much bigger percentage of their take home pay for these groceries.  These groceries then rake in the profits.  According to the Newsweek article(and because I'm too lazy to look this up myself), Whole Foods reportedly increased their profits by a whopping 58% last quarter.

People buy what they afford and if they live from paycheck to paycheck, watching calories takes a backseat to getting the most food for your dollar.  I've yet to make more than $29,000/yr(someone please help me right this wrong and hire me!) and have gone many weeks where I have to stretch my dollars.  I don't miss meals, though, and will readily buy dinner before making a credit card payment.  When my dollar is stretched the most, I buy ramen noodles, canned tuna, rice/pasta chub packs of 83/27 ground beef, whole pork shoulders, eggs, milk, potatoes, and apples/bananas.  Most of these foods are calorically dense.  If I go out to eat during an economic crunch, it'll almost always be a buffet and that will be the only thing I eat that day.  When I have more money, what do I do?  Less buffets, mostly the same types of foods, because I'm a picky eater, but I don't eat like it's the last day on earth. I also buy less groceries more often and will splurge on fancier items(like the Red Pepper Pesto at Giant Eagle).

I don't want to make this an Elite vs. regular Joe thing or a liberal vs. conservative thing, because I know conservatives that also blow their hard earned money on this bullshit.  I also don't want to come down on quality, but people must understand that quality has nothing to do with whether or not something is organic and is more a matter of statistical process control and sourcing better ingredients.  Of course, then we get into the industrial side and that's a whole other ball of wax.

Crap... I promised I was going to make this shorter.  Fuck.

How To Scare Kids And Influence People.

When arguing about food and food policy in this country, children are often used as pawns.  Nobody can stand the thought of anything bad happening to our kids.  This is why baby formula and school lunch food are some of the most heavily regulated things in the food industry.

But that is all about scaring the adults who are concerned for the kids.  To my knowledge, this is the first instance I've seen of scaring the children directly... and it sickens me.

Watch this video:

He's done this 'experiment' time and time again in his home country.  So he's experienced in scaring kids.  He then goes on to say that chicken nuggets are not made this way in the United States... just before he tells kids how the chicken nuggets they love are made.  Did you catch that?  In the intro for the segment, he admits he is lying to little kids.

Now body language is very important when interacting with kids.  Be aggressive or frown at the right moment and you make the impression that what you're doing is bad/wrong/disgusting. Look at what he does at about the 1:30 mark where, after explaining that everything else on the chicken was good and has value, he then asks the kids, 'You want to eat some?' as he waves the raw chicken at their faces.  Substitute the chicken with liver, asparagus, beans, cottage cheese, or triple cream brie while making those motions and you'll get the same reaction.

A couple things:

To me, this is no different than indoctrinating kids with... religion, racism, hatred, violence...ignorance.  He leads them with emotional cues and body language.  Amazingly, the kids still said they would eat it.

He took the very poorly deboned carcass(still lots of breast meat left on), cut it up and said it was horrible.  Are you telling us, Mr. Oliver, that you never make chicken stock?  You don't submerge those 'nasty bits' under a pot of cold water and slowly bring it to a simmer for several hours, reducing the liquid and extracting the flavor?  Hmm.  Interesting.  I only went to Johnson & Wales for a trimester and it's the first thing you learn in stocks and sauces.  Also, are we saying that using the meat on the bone is bad and throwing the ugly meat away is good?

Why not teach the kids how to make their own chicken nuggets or chicken fingers?  Why not teach them safe knife handling skills?  Why not explain what calories are and how our bodies deal with excess calories?  Why not do any of that instead of trying to scare children and adults?

It isn't the food, it's the quantity.  By dumping a bunch of prepackaged goodies on some fat woman's table and making her cry, are you really more effective than showing her how to use Excel to track and add the nutrients and calories of the food she eats?  Is it better than showing her how to shop for ingrediants that are cheap, nutrient dense, and last the week?  Is it better than showing her basic recipes, techniques, and tips to help her plan meals she never thought she had time for?

This show seems to be all about scaring kids and influencing people.  Jamie Oliver and his producers may mean well, but they go about it in the worst way possible.  Exploiting a region of people, a body type, and children is a high ratings, high trauma approach that will either create more misguided activists, or shame those people and make their situations even worse.

My Response To The NYT Slow Food Article...

Click on the blog title to see the NYT article I am responding to...

Spam is merely SPiced hAM and consists of shoulder and ham cuts of pork mixed in a salt solution and pressed into shape.  Your dogs never ate so good [to the commenter on the NYT article page that said she wouldn't even feed Spam to her dog].

Much of the cynicism about the food industry and food science in particular, stems from scientific illiteracy that plagues our country.  This is why many of you believe whatever the Food Hysterics at Whole Foods tell you and it's why you read the books of a journalism professor and take them as fact.  Much of the college educated population have Liberal Arts degrees.  Nothing wrong with that, but the problem is that you go reading about science, the same way you went about learning the humanities.  Science is a little different.  Science requires background knowledge, patience, testing, and listening to credible sources.  Much of Liberal Arts is intangible; abstract ideas and philosophies... opinions.  Science is mostly concrete and in the cases where it is abstract, the basic ideas are testable.

I think this difference in education helps explain why people believe the things they do about food.  People don't have the background knowledge of toxicity or they haven't worked with numbers enough to understand the difference between a trace amount of something(BPA for example) and the amounts it really takes of the substance to cause illness.  This is also why people believe in homeopathy and shield their kids from receiving vaccinations.

Food today is safer than it has ever been.  Foodborne illnesses have been declining steadily every year since the implementation of HACCP principles in the mid 90's.  But still, people say that the food industry is poisoning kids.  People site discredited studies about food from everyone but food scientists, so you see the modern mythologies of HFCS and Food Dyes take hold.

I have a food science and technology degree and I get people who very 'matter of factly' tell me things that are dead wrong all the time.  Hot dogs contain meat/fat/nitrates & nitrites(for color and safety), not lips and asses.  Organic food has the exact same nutrients as conventional.  All meat and milk has  some hormones in it naturally.  All meat is antibiotic free so long as farmers follow the proper withdrawal periods.  Pesticide residues are very small and would require the consumption of hundreds of pounds of fruit/veggies in a day to get sick from them.

Nobody wants to listen, though.

For whatever reason, the Food Hysterics take comfort in their ignorance and they take comfort believing that all corporations are evil and want them dead.  The truth is that corporations benefit greatly from producing safe food and the larger companies have the means to implement safety controls and advanced testing that small operations can't compete with.

But nobody want's to believe that.

Of course, you are all entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.

Facts:  The old days were not any fun for the farmers.

Farmers needed more kids since the work was so labor intensive.  It took massive effort to pull weeds on large fields or to constantly move livestock from pasture to pasture and from creek to creek.  A return to this type of farming means you need more people per acre working the land.

You also need more land.  Yields 100 years ago were much smaller than today, so a return to that agriculture will require 2 to 3 times the land.  The late Norman Borlaug figured that converting the world to organic farming would only produce enough food for roughly half of the population.  Any volunteers to never eat again?

Educate yourself.  Find a food scientist.  Ohio State, Michigan, Cornell, UC Davis, and Wisconsin all have top notch food science departments.  Talk to the faculty, email them.  Pay attention to the sources of information.  Even doctors are unqualified to discuss matters of food science... as are environmental scientists.  Get your information from peer reviewed journals and pay attention to things like sample sizes.  Email a food scientist when you don't understand something instead of becoming cynical or inventing conspiracy theories.

And if all else fails, you can ask me.  I'm on Twitter @samvance and I have a blog edibleintelligence.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading.

Bad Arnold & The School Lunch Examiner.

First blog of July and I have several mini-topics to go over.  I think this might be a better format, as the longer blogs I'm known for might be off-putting to people wanting some quick serve information.  It's ironic, because I was taught to be succinct in my writing and I'm a staunch opponent of length requirements in writing assignments.

First thing... Examiner.

I applied to write posts for the Examiner so I could at least make a little of what Adam Carolla calls WAM(walking around money).  Blogger has ad programs, but I've earned a whopping $6 in a year.  So I applied and submitted a writing sample, which I had to edit extensively because they didn't like anything written in first person.  It's such an old school, pre-blogging, pre-op-ed style.  It's like being asked to use a typewriter.  I submitted, I waited, I got fucking rejected.  Not bitter...nope, not at all.  How could I possibly compete with the award winning writing of the Examiner Food writers discussing the most ironic, bitter micro-brews, or some crazy lady talking about how Mountain Dew is destroying America...

IFT 2010 in Chicago has begun.  Have fun and mingle lots my friends.  For those that don't know, IFT is the Institute of Food Technologists, which is a professional organization for food science and food industry pro's.  IFT is a great resource if you have questions about food science and you can find them on Twitter @IFT

I need a career, folks.  I keep trying and I keep getting denied.  I have talents that are going to waste.  I can write, speak, present, sell, collaborate, investigate, or manage things for your organization.  I am very relocatable and willing to travel 100% for my job.  I'll work trade shows and live out of a suitcase if that is what you need.  If you are in need of a good addition for your team, please contact me on Twitter @samvance 

The House Committee on Education and Labor is holding hearings about the School Lunch Program today.  They want an $8 Billion budget for school lunches.  I'm not sure if this is the proposed budget or an addition to the budget, especially frustrating since I was just searching for the info on the committee website.

They seem to be having 2 hearings today.  One hearing is about how this bill(H.R. 5504) will help tackle childhood obesity and the other is about how we it will help end child hunger... What?  A couple things about this: The bill doesn't directly address obesity.  The bill makes it easier to use local farms and I think it updates the nutrition requirements based on professional recommendations.  By law, the school lunch program must provide no less than 30% of the nutrition and caloric value that a child needs in a day.  This is assuming the kid eats 3 meals a day.  

The way to battle obesity is to reduce calories, not increase the nutritional density of a food.  This bill can do little to that end because the kid eats whatever when he/she gets home from school.  Also, you can't force the kids to eat the food you make.  So what is the increase in spending?  I know some of the spending is a 6 cent increase in the school lunch reimbursement rate, but that doesn't account for all of it.  More of the money comes from increasing the number of kids that qualify for free and reduced lunches, but again, that doesn't account for all the money.  The rest is in buying more expensive food.  

This is directly related to the local farm provisions.  You see, 'local' farms charge a premium for the food and take advantage of your fear and anxiety over processed foods and corporations.  This creates a sort of halo effect for these operations, where consumers falsely conclude that local food is more nutritive and safer.  It isn't.  In fact, Dole and Del Monte have greater resources for ensuring that fruits and vegetables are safe.  Small operations can't afford these resources and don't intend to invest in them.  The whole reason they market themselves as local is so they can charge a premium on that food.  A large operation has to invest to protect itself against recalls and lawsuits.  Also, these operations are usually highly automated, meaning there are less people touching and contaminating the product.

I really think this just comes down to foodies and food hysterics being anti-corporate, anti-science, and pro-presentation.  They really don't like the way school food looks, which isn't the point of it.  I could make these foodies a school lunch that was more fattening and has more calories and they would choose it over the current school lunch.  Actually, Cornell has done research where they take fast food and reconfigure it to look like fine dining and participants had substantially higher opinions about that food and how many calories they thought it had versus the exact same fast food they just sampled.  This bill has a couple good things in it, but for the most part it's style over substance.

Arnold Foods makes a wide assortment of higher end breads.  They usually enjoy shelf placement right alongside Sara Lee and Pepperidge Farm.  I was shopping at the Bigg's Hypermarket in Hyde Park (Cincinnati) and noticed and unusual quality defect in a package of their sesame seed sandwich buns.

Can you tell which package doesn't look right?

The package on the left is barely done and has no color.  I am amazed that nobody working on the line or in QA for Arnold caught this.  The bottom of the package is soggy and a little doughy.  The process for these buns is pretty straight forward.  Dough is batched and loaded into a hopper where it is portioned, shaped, and sent through a proofing room.  Then the dough heads through an oven on a belt.  Most likely, the belt speed, oven temp was adjusted and a few of the buns were in the oven when the belt speed was too fast or the oven temp was too low.  This should have been picked up by QA though.

Bad Buns.

Good Buns.

FYI - I did take the bad buns to Bigg's customer service counter and explain what the issue was and told her the grocery manager could probably get a credit for them.