Friday, June 17

 
Food Marketers' Self-Regulation a Failure?

This article from AdAge.com reviews complaints by the citizen group Center for Informed Choices, which wants the Federal Trade Commission to get tough on food marketers.

The group's comments come a few weeks before the FTC's first two-day workshop investigating causes of childhood obesity.

It's the old debate -- who's responsible for fat kids? I can assert as the parent of a 10-year-old, who mixes both sedentary play and vigorous physical activity, that the responsibility starts with the parents, who have the final say over what goes into the grocery cart.

In this debate, though, the parents seem to be silent while the war rages between two camps who aren't really invested in the target audience, the kids.

Like so many public debates today, this argument has no final answer because the two sides are arguing different cases. The childhood-obesity people criticize food marketers and manufacturers for "pushing" junk food on kids, but the marketers and manufacturers are looking at what will sell. Each side answers to a different audience.

The last time I checked, food manufacturers were not making kid-friendly products out of the goodness of their hearts but because they know kids will buy, or ask to have their parents buy, those foods. Is that bad? Only if the parents are irresponsible enough to buy their kids anything they demand without regard to diet or healthful qualities.

Parents should demand that food manufacturers clean up their acts, limit the amount of added sugar, salt and fat. But will they stop buying what's out there? Probably not.

How successful has the apple-dipper side item been for McDonald's? Purists would argue it's not much better than french fries because the dipper is almost all sugar. I prefer to look at it as a way to get kids to eat apples.

Parents need to support efforts, however meager, by mainstream food marketers to present more healthful foods, and to seek out smaller manufacturers who do produce higher-quality foods. Or they could start doing more of their own baking, cooking and snack-making.

But the debate will go on. The advocates and the manufactuers will continue to issue self-serving proclamations, charges and counter-charges, and parents will keep buying their kids Happy Meals and Big Kid Meals.
posted by Unknown 7:47 AM

Monday, June 13

 
Birthplace of the Frango Mint

Here's one question that didn't get asked in this story about Knechtel Laboratories, a Skokie, Ill.-based candy and flavor lab that apparently developed the recipe and manufacturing process for my all-time favorite chocolate candy: the Frango Mint, sold exclusively by Marshall Field's.

Field's outsourced the candy manufacturing several years ago (one of many unwise decisions made when it was owned by Target/Dayton-Hudson).

Along the way, I am convinced that something has changed in the recipe. It's not as full-flavored. Or, the mouthfeel is different. Or something. But it's different.

Still good. But not as good as before when you could watch people making the little double-chocolate mints at the State Street store.

Even if you don't have a strong attachment to any of the candies, cereals or other treats Knechtel has concocted over the years, this is still an interesting story. Could have used a few more common-people details, but it did run on the biz page, not the Food page.
posted by Unknown 7:24 PM

Wednesday, June 1

 
Finally! A Shout Out for Farm Women!

And don't call them farm wives, either, although some might feel they are married to their farms.

The New York Times reg.req. today profiles some of the growing population of women who head farms. It's billed as being "across the United States," but of course most of those profiled run small specialty veg. or herb gardens, not 500-head dairy farms in Wisconsin or cattle ranches in California, but any recognition is useful. And the photos are not all of glamorous, stick-thin women bearing magazine-quality baskets of produce. (Yes, my bias is showing!)

I like this story most because I am the daughter of a farm woman and may become one myself someday. Hooray for hayseeds!
posted by Unknown 8:38 AM