PepsiCo Wakes Up and Smells the Cola

Criticized for Taking Eye Off Ball and Focusing on Healthy Foods, Company Plans Summer Ad Splash

WSJ, June 28, 2011
PepsiCo Inc. (NYSE: PEP - News) is turning its attention back to Pepsi.

The snack-food and beverage giant is launching the first new advertising campaign for its flagship Pepsi-Cola in three years—offering one of the most visible signs PepsiCo is throwing new weight behind its biggest brand after it sank to No. 3 in U.S. soda sales last year, trailing not only Coke but Diet Coke.

Ceding the top two spots to rival Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO - News) marked a huge embarrassment in a cola war that traces its roots to the 19th century.

With summer in full swing, many Pepsi bottlers, who rely on soda for much of their profit, are anxious for the campaign to get off the ground.

[More from WSJ.com: PepsiCo Chief Defends Her Strategy to Promote 'Good for You' Foods]
"Would I have liked to have it 30 days ago? Yes," said Keith Reimer, chief executive of Pepsi Bottling Ventures LLC, who said he is excited PepsiCo is putting more money again behind cola.

Just last week PepsiCo was still racing to ready the "Summer Time Is Pepsi Time'' campaign, according to people close to the company. Adding to the scramble was the departure of PepsiCo's chief marketing officer for U.S. beverages, who resigned earlier this month, the latest of more than 15 marketing executives to leave PepsiCo's beverage group in recent years.

When industry market share numbers came out in March, showing Pepsi-Cola slipped to No. 3, analysts quickly accused PepsiCo—and Chairman and Chief Executive Indra Nooyi—of taking their eyes off the company's biggest brand.

Now, PepsiCo says it plans to spend about 30% more this year on TV advertising for its North American beverages, with soda a big focus. In addition to the summer ad campaign, Pepsi will be hawked on Simon Cowell's "X Factor'' in a $60 million sponsorship deal starting this fall. The company also recently launched new TV ads for Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max, two smaller-selling colas.

[More from WSJ.com: Dodgers Slide Into Chapter 11]
Hailed as a strategic visionary since taking PepsiCo's reins nearly five years ago, Mrs. Nooyi is facing doubts from investors and industry insiders concerned that her push into healthier brands have distracted the company from some core products. Emphasizing fruit juice, oatmeal and Gatorade, she has set an ambitious goal of more than doubling revenue of nutritious products to $30 billion by 2020 while cultivating a corporate image tuned in to health and global social responsibility. Late last year, PepsiCo agreed to pay $3.8 billion to acquire a 66% share in Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods OJC, a leading Russian dairy-products maker.

"Is she ashamed of selling carbonated sugar water?" said Pat Weinstein, owner of Seattle-based Weinstein Beverage Co., an independent Pepsi bottler. "That's a question that is raised often by the most concerned of the independent bottlers."

U.S. sales of Pepsi-Cola and Diet Pepsi fell 4.8% and 5.2% in 2010, according to Beverage Digest, a trade publication and data service. Coca-Cola and Diet Coke sales also slipped, though more modestly, 0.5% and 1%, respectively.

Products that PepsiCo calls "good for you'' still make up only about 20% of revenue. The bulk still comes from drinks and snacks the company dubs "fun for you,'' including Lay's potato chips, Doritos corn chips and Pepsi-Cola, by far the company's single biggest seller with about $20 billion in annual retail sales globally. Some investors and PepsiCo bottlers say that Mrs. Nooyi has played down those products — the drivers of the company's current profit— in her push to emphasize PepsiCo's health initiatives.

[More from WSJ.com: Firms Loosen Grip on Cash]
Frito-Lay North America, PepsiCo's biggest profit engine, is battling rising commodity costs and PepsiCo's health and wellness portfolio is having its own set of problems. Over the past five years, PepsiCo's Tropicana fruit juices have been losing market share to Coke's Simply juice brand, while Coke's Powerade continues to chip away at Gatorade's dominance.
The company scaled back its earnings growth forecast earlier this year, blaming commodity prices and the global economic woes. It now expects earnings per share to rise by a high single-digit percentage annually rather than by the low double digits.

Critics also say PepsiCo isn't the salesman it used to be, pointing to marketing missteps such as a noisy compostable SunChips bag that led to a rapid sales fall-off and a makeover of Tropicana orange juice that had to be ditched.

In an interview, Mrs. Nooyi acknowledged that she may have spent a disproportionate amount of time talking about healthier products, but said it's part of a "deliberate strategy" to diversify the portfolio. Consumers increasingly want healthier foods and beverages, she said, and PepsiCo has to satisfy critics about health concerns.

"I look at our numbers and I feel very, very good about the trajectory of the company," she said.
In late 2008, Mrs. Nooyi turned her attention to North American beverages and a costly overhaul of all brands, as she said they were looking "tired on the shelf." Under the direction of her lieutenant, Massimo d'Amore, now the company's global beverage chief, PepsiCo launched new campaigns and graphics for all the big beverage brands and new packaging for more than 1,200 individual products, an unusually ambitious redesign.

Ad dollars for soda, however, were on the wane. As recently as 2005, PepsiCo spent $348 million on soda ads in the U.S., almost as much as Coke, which spent $377 million. But by last year, the company had more than halved its spending to $153 million, while Coca-Cola spent $253 million, according to Nielsen Co., which tracks advertising. While Coke also lost market share, to private-label brands and other players like Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. (NYSE: DPS - News), Pepsi's market share declines outpaced Coke's.

Pepsi skipped soda ads on the 2010 Super Bowl for the first time in 24 years, putting the millions of dollars it might have spent on those ads toward a $20 million online charity competition called the Refresh Project. The Refresh Project garnered 80 million online votes for charitable projects, but also ended up dominated by alliances and did little to sell sodas.
Despite their industry-wide slide, colas make up more than half of U.S. soda volumes and soda still represents a quarter of ready-to-drink beverages, dwarfing all other drinks sold, according to Beverage Digest.

Jim Tierney, chief investment officer at W.P. Stewart, says PepsiCo focused too much on redesigning Pepsi's logo and the Refresh Project instead of spending money on more traditional advertising.

"You just can't go dark on brands and expect them to hold their value,'' said Mr. Tierney, who is a bigger fan of the company's snack business.

This year, PepsiCo raised its advertising expenditure on beverages by 30%, with a renewed focus on cola. The new attention to beverages is paying some dividends. North American beverage sales volume rose 2% in the first quarter of 2011 from a year earlier, boosted by a 20% surge in Gatorade, rebounding from declines in 2008 and 2009. While cola lags, Mtn Dew and Diet Mtn Dew were among only a few big brand sodas whose sales grew last year.
Still, the overhaul remains a work in progress. U.S. beverage marketing chief Jill Beraud, recruited in 2008, departed earlier in the month, frustrated over having her hands tied in marketing decisions, according to some people close to the company. Ms. Beraud declined to comment.

Ms. Beraud's resignation came amid abroader reorganization that creates global marketing positions for key beverage brands. Mr. d'Amore said the changes will strengthen PepsiCo, even though he's "very sorry'' that Ms. Beraud left. Brad Jakeman, a video-game marketing executive, will head global marketing for the Pepsi brand.

Meanwhile, Mr. d'Amore said Pepsi is listening to its independent bottler groups. The company dialed back plans to launch a new low-cal cola this summer called Pepsi Next, after bottlers argued during meetings this spring that the focus should be on Pepsi-Cola. Rather than a national rollout, the company plans to test Pepsi Next only in Iowa and Wisconsin this summer.
"They have seen many more summers than I have,'' Mr. d'Amore said of the bottlers.
Write to Valerie Bauerlein at valerie.bauerlein@wsj.com and Mike Esterl at mike.esterl@wsj.com

New Report: Appetite for Change

In just the last few weeks, one of the worst E. coli outbreaks in history has killed 37 people and made more than 2,600 ill, academics concluded that climate change will have more negative consequences for agriculture than expected, and the UN’s Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization released a guide warning “world farming needs a ‘major shift’ to more sustainable practices as intensive crop production since the 1960s has degraded soils, depleted ground water and caused pest outbreaks.”

Industry and food system experts interviewed for SustainAbility’s latest report, Appetite for Change, read trends such as these and conclude that the food industry is failing. Our experts sounded loud and clear that there is widespread awareness of the key challenges faced by the food system, but that there is a startling lack of consensus on the path forward. Food industry leader Marks & Spencer says of itself that it “has only done 10% of what it needs to become sustainable.” While it and other companies can point to many sustainability achievements, they acknowledge too the difficulty of finding ways to reach their more ambitious sustainability goals at sufficient pace and scale.

Imagining and creating a sustainable food system will require new kinds of leadership from those with appetite for change. Key attributes of the type of leadership necessary include:

·       Redefined Vision, encompassing sometimes unfamiliar or unconventional concepts like fair shares, closed loops, ‘un-innovating’ or simplification, and new notions of productivity.
·       Application of Systemic Approaches, capable of building networks and fostering mosaics as well as developing more inclusive approaches to agriculture.
·       Use of Information Technology, which will make more robust the web of interactions and knowledge sharing mechanisms necessary to support a sustainable food system.
·       Better understanding of Societal Needs, in order to re-value food, and to understand and then transform food-related policy and politics.

To date, the best models for systemic change have been developed outside the corporate sphere – through entrepreneurs and at smaller, more local levels. Calls from the policy sphere, and from the UN Human Rights Council (PDF) and UN FAO, likewise are challenging the status quo. Is industry up for the challenge?

Download the report to learn more about how industry can begin the transformation. To speak with us about how your company can lead and/or prepare for this shift, contact biringer@sustainability.com.

--------------------------------------------------
Stefaan G. Verhulst
Chief of Research
Markle Foundation
10 Rockefeller Plaza, Floor 16
New York, NY 10020-1903
Tel. 212 713 7630
http://www.markle.org
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

The Food-Stamp Crime Wave

The number of food-stamp recipients has soared to 44 million from 26 million in 2007. Not surprisingly, fraud and abuse are rampant.

By James Bovard WSJ  June 23, 2011

Millionaires are now legally entitled to collect food stamps as long as they have little or no monthly income. Thirty-five states have abolished asset tests for most food-stamp recipients. These and similar "paperwork reduction" reforms advocated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) are turning the food-stamp program into a magnet for abuses and absurdities.

The Obama administration is far more enthusiastic about boosting food-stamp enrollment than about preventing fraud. Thanks in part to vigorous federally funded campaigns by nonprofit groups, the government's AmericaCorps service program, and other organizations urging people to accept government handouts, the number of food-stamp recipients has soared to 44 million from 26 million in 2007, and costs have more than doubled to $77 billion from $33 billion.

The USDA's Food and Nutrition Service now has only 40 inspectors to oversee almost 200,000 merchants that accept food stamps nationwide. The Government Accountability Office reported last summer that retailers who traffic illegally in food stamps by redeeming stamps for cash or alcohol or other prohibited items "are less likely to face criminal penalties or prosecution" than in earlier years.

Lax attitudes toward fraud are spurring swindles across the nation:
• Earlier this month, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed that Wisconsin food-stamp recipients routinely sell their benefit cards on Facebook. The investigation also found that "nearly 2,000 recipients claimed they lost their card six or more times in 2010 and requested replacements." USDA rules require that lost cards be speedily replaced. The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute concluded: "Prosecutors have simply stopped prosecuting the vast majority of [food-stamp] fraud cases in virtually all counties, including the one with the most recipients, Milwaukee."

• Troy Hutson, the chief of Washington state's food-stamp program, resigned in April after a Seattle television station revealed that some food-stamp recipients were selling their cards on Craigslist or brazenly cashing them out on street corners (for 50 cents on the dollar) and using the proceeds for illegal drugs and prostitution. Washington state Sen. Mike Carrell complained: "Dozens of workers at DSHS [the Department of Social and Health Services] have reported numerous unpunished cases of fraud to me. They have told me that DSHS management has allowed these things to happen, and in some cases actively restricted fraud investigations."

• Thirty percent of the inmates in the Polk County, Iowa, jail were collecting food stamps that were being sent to their non-jail mailing addresses in 2009. But Iowa could not prosecute them for fraud because the state's food-stamp form failed to ask applicants whether they were heading for the slammer. Roger Munns, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Human Services, told the Des Moines Register last year that asking such questions could make food-stamp applications "unwieldy." (Many states do make such inquiries.)

Looser federal rules are spurring a bureaucratic crime wave. Last December, two veteran employees for New York City's Human Resources Administration were busted for concocting 1,500 fake food-stamp cases that netted them $8 million. Nine Milwaukee, Wis., staffers plundered almost $300,000 from the program during the last five years, and a Louisiana state bureaucrat pleaded guilty last year for her role in a scam that snared more than $50,000 in fraudulent food-stamp benefits.

The Obama administration is responding by cracking down on state governments' antifraud measures. The administration is seeking to compel California, New York and Texas to cease requiring food-stamp applicants to provide finger images.

• The food-stamp poster boy of 2011 is 59-year-old Leroy Fick. After Mr. Fick won a $2 million lottery jackpot, the Michigan Department of Human Services ruled he could continue receiving food stamps. The Detroit News explained: "If Fick had chosen to accept monthly payments of his jackpot, the winnings would be considered income, according to the DHS. But by choosing to accept a lump sum payment, the winnings were considered 'assets' and aren't counted in determining food stamp eligibility."

Decades after liberals derided Ronald Reagan's reference to a Cadillac-driving "welfare queen," Obama administration policies could easily permit Trust Fund Babies driving Rolls Royces to get free food courtesy of Uncle Sam.

• Perhaps the biggest fraud of all is the notion, which the USDA has been touting lately, that the food-stamp program is a nutrition program. (The program's name was formally changed in the 2008 farm bill to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—SNAP—to make it sound more wholesome and attractive.) What is really does is boost caloric intake, which is why numerous studies (including a 2009 Ohio State University report) link food stamps to the worsening obesity epidemic among low-income Americans.

The USDA has vetoed all proposals from local or state governments to prevent food stamps from being used for junk food. With the feds' approval, food stamps are increasingly being redeemed at fast-food restaurants—one of the primary culprits in ballooning American bellies.

But the Obama administration doesn't deserve all the blame. Food-stamp enrollment surged before Mr. Obama took office. The number of food-stamp recipients on George W. Bush's watch rose by more than 50%, even before the recession hit in 2007. As Slate reporter Annie Lowrey wrote for the online magazine last December, President Bush and his food-stamp chief Eric Bost "went on a quiet crusade to expand eligibility, increase enrollment, and reduce stigma around nutrition aid."

H.L. Mencken quipped that the New Deal divided America into "those who work for a living and those who vote for a living." The explosion in the number of food-stamp recipients tilts the political playing field in favor of big government. The more people who become government dependents, the more likely that democracy will become a conspiracy against self-reliance.
Mr. Bovard, the author of "Attention Deficit Democracy" (Palgrave, 2006), is working on a memoir.

AMA wants further study on taxing sugar-sweetened soft drinks

By Bruce Japsen LA Times June 21, 2011

Despite growing support among the public and some doctors, the American Medical Association Tuesday afternoon backed away from supporting taxes on sugar-sweetened soft drinks, saying the idea needs more study.

The AMA's policy-making House of Delegates this week debated the idea of supporting state and local taxation of "beverages with added sweeteners" as a way of combating the nation's obesity epidemic while better educating the public.

But some doctors in the AMA said the group might want to broaden the idea to include advocating for taxes on juices, high caloric drinks, artificial sweeteners and sugars. Delegates said more study is needed on a host of sweeteners before the group can make an educated advocacy stance.

But several doctors said they were unlikely to support any taxes on sweetened beverages, saying they didn't favor "sin taxes" and opposed taxation as a way to influence consumer behavior.

"If you tax the sugar in drinks, where does it stop," a physician delegate from Indiana said Sunday.

The AMA has been debating dozens of issues, including health reform, payment issues and issues it wants to add to its lobbying agenda. The meeting at the Hyatt Regency Chicago ends Tuesday.

bjapsen@tribune.com

Reproductive Health And The Industrialized Food System: A Point Of Intervention For Health Policy

Patrice Sutton, David Walling, Joanne Perron, Michelle Gottlieb, Lucia Sayre and Tracey Woodruff

What food is produced, and how, can have a critical impact on human nutrition and the environment, which in turn are key drivers of healthy human reproduction and development. The US food production system yields a large volume of food that is relatively low in cost for consumers but is often high in calories and low in nutritional value.

In this article we examine the evidence that intensive use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, hormones, antibiotics, and fossil fuel in food production, as well as chemicals in food packaging, are potentially harmful to human reproductive and developmental health. We conclude that policies to advance a healthy food system are necessary to prevent adverse reproductive health effects and avoid associated health costs among current and future generations.

These policies include changes to the Farm Bill and the Toxic Substances Control Act, and greater involvement by the health care sector in supporting and sourcing food from urban agriculture programs, farmers’ markets, and local food outlets, as well as increasing understanding by clinicians of the links between reproductive health and industrialized food production.

Food Is the Real Thing

Mayor Bloomberg is right: taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize soda.

9 June 2011

Last fall, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to cut soda and other sugar- and corn-sweetened drinks from the list of “foods” that New Yorkers can buy with federal food-stamp benefits. Lobbyists, from soda makers to grocery stores to minority advocates, have fought the proposal. They say that any restriction would represent an attack both on business and on personal freedom for the poor. That argument is flimsy. As food prices rise, and as the federal government cuts back spending, the mayor’s attempt to safeguard the taxpayer dollar is fiscally and socially sound.

Back in October, the mayor asked the USDA to authorize a two-year experimental program for New York City. As Bloomberg envisions it, the city would work with food-stamps recipients during that time to see if food-aid beneficiaries changed their food purchases, and, if so, if foregoing soda helped families improve their health. The city noted that federal regulators have the authority to authorize such pilot initiatives, to find out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to spending taxpayer money (Congressional Republicans advocate more such experimentation, for instance, with Medicaid).

But as the USDA mulls over the idea, the pro-soda forces have pushed back. The American Beverage Association, partly funded by Coke and Pepsi, has branded the initiative as an attack on individual choice. “Once you start going into grocery carts, deciding what people can or cannot buy, where do you stop?” senior vice president Kevin W. Keane said in April, according to a New York Times story. Lobbyists say that a new restriction would put a burden on stores, whose clerks would have to separate soda from other products. Elected officials from the Congressional Black Caucus, an arm of which also receives money from soda lobbyists, say that the proposed arrangement would stigmatize poor people.

Bloomberg isn’t telling people what they can and cannot eat or drink, however. He’s simply ensuring that scarce taxpayer dollars earmarked for a program whose official name is “the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” go, reasonably enough, toward assisting families for just that purpose. Taking such care with federal taxpayers’ money becomes more important as more people need government help to buy groceries. As of March, 1.8 million New Yorkers depended on food stamps, a 50 percent jump from the 1.2 million city residents who received the benefits three years ago. This demand, mirrored nationwide, strains the federal budget—and so Washington must make sure that the money is spent wisely.

The same principle holds for each individual family. In the past year, food prices have risen by 3.9 percent. Since most families’ food-stamp benefits don’t cover a family’s grocery bill, every taxpayer dollar that a parent spends on cola—that’s $100 million a year in New York—is a taxpayer dollar that he or she is not spending on milk, chicken, or lettuce. You don’t have to be an anti-soda nanny to see something wrong with that.

Sure, one can argue about the nutritional merits of lots of food-stamp eligible foods, including candy bars and the like. But soda is way over on the wrong side of the nutrition line. It shouldn’t take the place of healthy foods in the grocery carts of parents with no extra money to spare. Water, after all, is free.

In fact, the mayor’s plan would help New Yorkers exercise personal freedom in making better decisions for their families. By erroneously including soda in a nutritional program, the USDA currently gives parents and others bad information, which, as always, harms personal choice. If the government stops calling soda “nutritious” and stops subsidizing it, parents, armed with that knowledge, would be empowered to decide whether to spend their own scarce cash dollars on soda.

As for the lobbyists’ other arguments: removing sweetened sodas from the list of groceries that people can buy with food aid would neither burden supermarkets nor stigmatize poor families. Supermarkets already offer plenty of products that aren’t eligible for food stamps, from hot prepared sandwiches to diapers to cat food to cleaning fluids. Cashiers can separate “food” and “non-food” with the click of one button at the end of an order. As for the supposed scarlet letter: the government no longer dispenses “food stamps” through paper vouchers, but via a card that looks like a credit card. One has to be paying very close attention in the checkout line to see that the person ahead of him is using a combination of an electronic-benefits card and cash to buy food and non-food, including soda. New Yorkers stigmatize busy-bodies before they stigmatize poor people.

Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal, then, deserves the support of conservatives worried about the budget, liberals worried about public health, and New Yorkers trying to stretch every dollar.
Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

Choose MyPlate replaces Food pyramid

USDA Unveils New, Simple Tips to Stay Healthy, Active and Fit

Posted by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, on June 2, 2011 at 11:46 AM

Today was an exciting day at USDA as I was joined by First Lady Michelle Obama and Surgeon General  Dr. Regina Benjamin to unveil USDA’s new food icon, MyPlate. The icon is a departure from MyPyramid and serves as a quick, simple reminder to all consumers, built off of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for all Americans.

We all know that what we eat matters – MyPlate offers a visual reminder to make healthy food choices when you choose your next meal. MyPlate can help prioritize food choices by reminding us to make half of our plate fruits and vegetables and shows us the other important food groups for a well-balanced meal: whole grains, lean proteins, and low fat dairy.

 Visit www.ChooseMyPlate.gov for practical information to individuals, health professionals, nutrition educators, and the food industry to help consumers build healthier diets with resources and tools for dietary assessment, nutrition education, and other user-friendly nutrition information.

Today’s announcement was a monumental step forward for consumers and partners, as well. It was a pleasure to be joined by leaders from the Food Marketing Institute, United Fresh Produce Association, Mission Readiness representative Lieutenant General Norman R. Seip (Ret.) and Chef Marcus Samuelson, all committed to making a positive change in our nation’s health.

MyPlate is only the first step in a multi-year effort to raise awareness and educate consumers of every age. We’ll continue working closely with First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative and other stakeholders to deliver tips and information necessary to adopt healthier eating habits balanced with physical activity.

Head over to www.ChooseMyPlate.gov for information, tools, “how-to” materials about healthy eating. While you’re there, check out the interactive tools like the customizable Daily Food Plan orFood Tracker.

We hope that MyPlate becomes your plate in the months and years ahead. We’d love to see what’s on your plate so snap a photo of your next meal and share with us on Twitter using the hashtag #MyPlate.

If you missed the event today, check out this video announcing the new food icon, MyPlate:
http://blogs.usda.gov/2011/06/02/usda-unveils-new-simple-tips-to-stay-healthy-active-and-fit/

Next Wednesday in NYC: Food and Internet Week

Internet Week 2011: FOOD 2.0
Hosted by: Food+Tech Connect  |  Grubster  |  Pretty Project Collective

Wednesday, June 8, 2011
10:30 AM – 7:30 PM
Wix Lounge | 10 W 18th St | 2nd Fl | New York, NY

FOOD 2.0 is a day-long series of panels that brings together professionals interested in the future of food for discussions about how technology is shaping the way we interact with and produce food. The panels will explore food data sharing and standards, the future of food reviewing, open source food, and the social kitchen. Speaker bios available here.

Event Schedule

10:30 – 11:30: Food & Menu Data: Building A Standard Interchange Format
Moderated by Niles Brooks, Tech Co-Founder, Clean Plates

REGISTER
Panelists:
David Bloom- CEO, Ordr.in
Lev Steshenko- Co-founder, Campusfood.com and Allmenus.com
Ryan Scott- Chief Marketing Officer, SeamlessWeb
Data is what ensures we are all talking about the same restaurant, farm or same dish. It’s also what drives policy decisions, helps businesses plan, and if displayed in a meaningful manner, data can help change consumer behavior. The panelists will discuss their current projects using restaurant, menu, ingredient, food source, and nutritional data. We’ll also discuss any barriers they currently face in collecting and sharing data in hopes of building a standard interchange called “Clean Format.”

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12:00 – 1:00 The Future of Food Reviewing
Moderated by Ryan Charles, Founder Consmr, former Zagat Mobile Director
REGISTER
Panelists:
Amy Cao- Head of Social Media, Foodspotting
Eunice Chou- Founder, Flavorize
Nick Fauchald- Editor-in-Chief, Tasting Table
Colleen Curtis- Director of East Coast Marketing, Yelp
Lea Marino- Community Manager, Bizzy
Over the last decade there have been huge shifts in how users discover and research great food. The days are numbered for critics and experts, but is the future of food really the present day user generated sources? How do location, friends, palate and automated recommendations play a role? Our panelists will explore the hypothesis that we’re rapidly moving towards external signals and factors to determine our next dinner. Join executives from Foodspotting, Yelp, Tasting Table, Where, and Flavorize in exploring this topic

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1:00 – 2:00: Lunch sponsored by Yum Yum

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2:30 – 3:30: Open Source Food
Moderated by Danielle Gould, Founder, Food+Tech Connect
REGISTER
Panelists:
Britta Riley- Founder & CEO, Windowfarms
Natalie Jeremijenko-  Director of xDesign Environmental Health Clinic & Associate Professor of Visual Art, New York University
Devin Balkind- Director, Sarapis Foundation
Stowe Boyd- Social Philosopher & Connectivist, Work Media
Rising food costs, obesity and diabetes, and food borne illness have all increased demand for healthier, local and more transparent food. This session will explore how the ideas of open source food are energizing a new generation of food tech entrepreneurs and researchers to build a more transparent food chain based on new ways to use and share data in the private and public sectors and to change the fundamentals of the business of food and agriculture. The panel will look at what exactly open source food is, different approaches being explored, and why it’s important.

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4:00 – 5:00 : The Social Kitchen: How Social Networks & the Internet Have Hacked The Home Cooking Experience
Moderated by Mike Lee, Founder, Studiofeast
REGISTER
Panelists:
Amanda Hesser- Co-Founder, Food52
Sarah Maine- Co-Founder, RecipeRelay
Michael Lavalle- CEO, Gojee
Will Turnage- Mobile App Creator, Ratio & Bread Baking Basics
The kitchen has always been a hub of social activity in the home. For generations, cooking techniques and recipes have been passed on through real life interactions within the four, physical walls of a residential kitchen. Over the past decade, social networks & the internet have broken these walls down and home cooks are now exposed to an infinitely larger data set of ideas and inspiration to empower their cooking pursuits in the home. Hear from our panelists how this onslaught of data has benefited the home cook, changed the public discourse on cooking and foodie-ism, and created challenges in filtering and vetting all of this information.

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5:00 – 7:30: Happy hour sponsored by Wix Lounge & Singha
Special molecular gastronomy demonstration by Mike Lee of Studiofeast.

http://www.foodandtechconnect.com/site/2011/06/02/internet-week-2011-food-2-0/

--------------------------------------------------
Stefaan G. Verhulst
Chief of Research
Markle Foundation
10 Rockefeller Plaza, Floor 16
New York, NY 10020-1903

Tel. 212 713 7630
http://www.markle.org/

P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

A New Look at Where Our Food Dollars Go

http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/June11/DataFeature/

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service
From the report:

The ERS marketing bill has been a popular statistical series for food market observers interested in knowing the costs of getting food from farm to table. The marketing bill series identified the costs of processing and marketing the raw farm commodities contained in a typical dollar’s worth of U.S.-produced food and the share going to farmers. However, it is no longer possible to use the longstanding method for estimating the annual marketing bill because many of the data sources have been discontinued and the estimation procedures do not fully represent today’s food economy.

In February 2011, ERS introduced a new data product called the food dollar series that uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual input-output tables to provide a more complete accounting of U.S. food spending at both grocery stores and eating places. The new food dollar estimates are composed of three primary series that slice the same food dollar differently to provide a variety of perspectives. The new series spans 1993 to 2008 and will be updated annually.

A comparison of related statistics between the new and older series highlights some important changes in ERS’s assessment of what food dollars pay for:

·       The marketing bill series, like the previous series of that name, identifies the distribution of the food dollar between farm and marketing shares. Like the old series, the new marketing bill series exhibits an increasing trend in marketing costs in most years since 1993. However, the new measure of these costs averaged nearly 4 cents higher per food dollar each year from 1993 to 2006 than estimates of the old marketing bill series. New data and better estimation methods explain this difference.
·       The industry group series identifies the value added, or cost contributions, to the food dollar by 10 distinct segments of the food supply chain. In this series, energy industry cost contributions to each food dollar went from about 4 cents in 1998 to 6.8 cents in 2008 and reflect energy use throughout the food system—from farm inputs to the grocery store or eating place. The old marketing bill series, which only reported energy costs from fuel and electric utilities of processing, wholesaling, retailing, and foodservice companies, indicated these costs were steady at roughly 3.5 cents in 1998-2006. Other energy costs in the old series were embedded in other cost categories. For example, fuel costs for transporting food and ingredients were part of transportation costs.

GOP says Obama's healthy lunch effort too costly

June 1, 2011

Republican House agricultural subcommittee spokesman calls new rules "classic nanny-state overreach"

WASHINGTON - House Republicans are pushing back against Obama administration efforts to promote healthier lunches, saying the Agriculture Department should rewrite rules it issued in January meant to make school meals healthier. They say the new rules are too costly.

The bill, approved by the House Appropriations Committee late Tuesday, also questions a government proposal to curb marketing of unhealthy foods to children and urges the Food and Drug Administration to limit rules requiring calorie counts be posted on menus.

The overall spending bill would cut billions from USDA and FDA budgets, including for domestic feeding programs and international food aid. The panel also cut some farm subsidies to cut spending.

Republicans are concerned about the cost of many of the Obama administration proposals, which they regard as overregulation, said Chris Crawford, a spokesman for the chairman of the Appropriations Committee's agriculture subcommittee, Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga.

Crawford said the marketing guidelines, released last month, are "classic nanny-state overreach." Though the guidelines, which would restrict which foods could be marketed to children, are voluntary, many companies are concerned that they will be penalized if they don't follow them. The bill questions whether the Agriculture Department should spend money to be part of the marketing effort.

"Our concern is those voluntary guidelines are back-door regulation," he said, deploring the fact that kids can watch shows that depict sex and drugs on MTV, but "you cannot see an advertisement for Tony the Tiger during the commercial break."

The school lunch guidelines are the first major nutritional overhaul of students' meals in 15 years. Under the guidelines, schools would have to cut sodium in subsidized meals by more than half, use more whole grains and serve low-fat milk. They also would limit kids to only one cup of starchy vegetables a week, so schools couldn't offer french fries every day.

The starchy vegetable proposal has been criticized by conservatives who think it goes too far and members of Congress who represent potato-growers. They say potatoes are a low-cost food that provides fiber and other nutrients.

The Republican spending bill also encourages the FDA to limit new guidelines that require calories to be posted on menus to restaurants, asking that grocery stores, convenience stores and other places whose primary purpose is not to sell food be excluded from the rules.
The effort would dial back many of first lady Michelle Obama's priorities in her "Let's Move" campaign to curb childhood obesity and hunger.

"This shows a very clear trend in trying to undermine some of the important gains in nutrition policy," said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The overall spending bill would cut billions from USDA and FDA budgets, including for domestic feeding programs and international food aid. Even after some of the money was restored Tuesday, the bill would still cut about $650 million — or 10 percent — from the Women, Infants and Children program that feeds and educates mothers and their children. It would cut almost 12 percent of the Food and Drug Administration's $2.5 billion budget, straining the agency's efforts to implement a new food safety law signed by the president early this year.

Tomorrow: NEW food pyramid

Goodbye Food Pyramid, Hello Dinner Plate

By WILLIAM NEUMAN  NY Times  5/28/2011

Whatever you do, don’t call it a pie chart.

The Obama administration is about to ditch the food pyramid, that symbol of healthy eating for the last two decades. In its place officials are dishing up a simple, plate-shaped symbol, sliced into wedges for the basic food groups and half-filled with fruits and vegetables.

The circular plate, which will be unveiled Thursday, is meant to give consumers a fast, easily grasped reminder of the basics of a healthy diet. It consists of four colored sections, for fruits, vegetables, grains and protein, according to several people who have been briefed on the change. Beside the plate is a smaller circle for dairy, suggesting a glass of low-fat milk or perhaps a yogurt cup.

Few nutritionists will mourn the passing of the pyramid, which, while instantly recognized by millions of American school kids, parents and consumers, was derided by nutritionists as too confusing and deeply flawed because it did not distinguish clearly between healthy foods like whole grains and fish and less healthy choices like white bread and bacon. A version of the pyramid currently appearing on cereal boxes, frozen dinners and other foods has been so streamlined and stripped of information that many people have no idea what it represents.
“It’s going to be hard not to do better than the current pyramid, which basically conveys no useful information,” said Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Willett said he had not seen the new logo.

The new symbol was designed to underscore a central mantra of the federal government’s healthy eating push: make half your plate fruits and vegetables. And it is expected to be a crucial element of the administration’s crusade against obesity, which is being led by the first lady, Michelle Obama.

“We need to get consumers’ attention,” said Robert C. Post, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. He would not discuss details of the icon in advance of the official unveiling. But he said it was meant to be a “visual cue” that would prompt “consumers to say, ‘I need to be a little more concerned about what I choose to build a healthy day’s diet.’ ”

Some who have seen the logo compared it with a pie chart, though dessert is hardly the association that the administration would like to conjure up. Others likened it to a pizza cut into slices (equally unpalatable for officials). One person said it called to mind a painting by the artist Mark Rothko, who was known for canvases with blocks of color. Those who had seen it would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by the administration to discuss it.

Dr. David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, who said he had heard descriptions of the new plate, suggested that if the symbol succeeded in getting people to eat significantly more fruits and vegetables, that alone would be an achievement.
“The reality is that very few of us eat like what has been suggested” in government guidelines for healthy eating, Dr. Kessler said. “There’s a world of difference between what’s being served and what’s on that plate.”

He called the plate a major improvement over the pyramid. “It conveys the message simply in a way that we all can understand,” he said.

The plate symbol is meant to help educate consumers about the government’s latest dietary guidelines, which were released in January.

Dr. Post said the U.S.D.A. had spent about $2 million to develop and promote the logo, including conducting research and focus groups and creating a Web site. Some of that money will also be used for the first year of a campaign to publicize the image. He said the agency would use the plate to get across several basic nutritional messages, including urging consumers to eat smaller portions, switch to low-fat or fat-free milk and drink water instead of sugary drinks.

The food pyramid has a long and tangled history. Its original version showed a hierarchy of foods, with those that made up the largest portions of a recommended diet, like grains, fruit and vegetables, closest to the wide base. Foods that were to be eaten in smaller quantities, like dairy and meat, were closer to the pyramid’s tapering top.

But the pyramid’s original release was held back over complaints from the meat and dairy industry that their products were being stigmatized. It was released with minor changes in 1992.
A revised pyramid was released in 2005. Called MyPyramid, it turned the old hierarchy on its side, with vertical brightly colored strips standing in for the different food groups. It also showed a stick figure running up the side to emphasize the need for exercise.

But the new pyramid was widely viewed as hard to understand. The Obama administration began talking about getting rid of it as early as last summer. At that time, a group of public health experts, nutritionists, food industry representatives and design professionals were invited to a meeting in Washington where they were asked to discuss possible alternative symbols. One option was a plate.

When several participants at that meeting said it would be better to create an improved version of the already familiar pyramid, an administration official rejected that idea, telling the group, “We can’t go back,” according to one person who attended the meeting. The person, who requested anonymity because the deliberations were intended to be confidential, said it was clear that the “marching orders were obviously to come up with something new.”
That “something new” will be plated up on Thursday.