Bumblebee Does a Very Public Recall of Canned Tuna. Does This Make You Feel Good (Or Bad) About Our Food Supply?

Readers, take a look at this recent news story from CNN about a recall of canned tuna:

Bumblebee Foods, Tri-Union Seafoods Recall Canned Chunk Light Tuna

To me, it's impressive that all of this information is available about a can of tuna sitting on your store shelf: the specific lots, the codes to each lot and so on. But what's even more impressive to me is the involved companies' willingness to go public--very public--with the recall.

By comparison, do you remember the so-called "tomato recall" back in 2008? The one handled so poorly that authorities couldn’t even trace the right vegetable? It turned out it wasn't tomatoes at all, but rather jalapenos that were the source of the contamination. Worse still, the "discovery" of that contamination only began long after people started getting sick.

Here, the tuna recall was anticipatory. It happened before anyone got sick, and it's plausible, even likely, that no one would have even gotten sick in the first place.

I'm sure this post sounds like I'm on Big Food’s payroll, that I've suddenly and inexplicably dropped my consumer empowerment philosophy and sold out to greedy corporate interests. Perhaps. And yet objectively, on some level, this little tuna recall is a small miracle. It's a miracle of high-quality manufacturing, of tracking products and shipments, of knowing what you made, and when you made it. And of being willing to tell the media and the public ahead of time, rather than following the all-too-typical corporate playbook of going radio silent, crossing your fingers... and hoping nobody gets seriously ill.

And yet, after reading the above article from CNN, and despite the fact that I'm intellectually well aware that these companies did the right thing and that our canned tuna supply is safe, the next time I open up a can of tuna, regardless of the brand, I'll make a mental association with this story, and I'll get a vaguely icky feeling, as if that next can of tuna is somehow contaminated too.

It's like these companies can't win for trying. They look bad even when they're perfectly anticipatory and no one gets sick.

Readers, what do you think about all this?

PS: There's one more angle to this story that ties in strikingly with one of Casual Kitchen's most important themes. Stay tuned for next week's post!


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
Easy. Do all your shopping at Amazon.com via the links on this site! You can also link to me or subscribe to my RSS feed. Finally, consider sharing this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to Facebook, Twitter (follow me @danielckoontz!) or to bookmarking sites like reddit, digg or stumbleupon. I'm deeply grateful to my readers for their ongoing support.

How Food Blogs Disempower Their Readers

[Readers incapable of abstract thought may be excused from this post. Go directly to recess.]

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

I want Casual Kitchen readers to think in an empowered way. I want you to be confident and informed about your food choices, not fearful, doubtful or weak. Sadly, however, anyone spending even the briefest amount of time reading most food blogs--and nearly all sites about food politics--will stumble repeatedly onto passive, weakness-inducing phrases like these:

The food industry make us fat.
Greedy food companies don't care about us, they put profits ahead of people.
If you want to eat healthy, it's gonna cost you.
Big Food is in bed with Big Government and they're screwing up our food supply.

Now, these sentences may ring true to you or they may ring false. That's not my point. Instead, rather than seeing them as either fact or fiction, I'd like you to think of these statements as lenses.

A quick sidebar on what I mean by "lenses." Let's say you pick up a blue lens and look through it. No matter how hard you try, as long as you're looking through that blue lens, you simply will not be able to see the color red. You might see magenta, or some kind of purplish color, but you'll never see anything approaching a real, honest-to-goodness red.

Let's take it one step further. Let's say you're peering through that blue lens when you look at your world... but you don't actually know that you're using a blue lens. You're walking around like you're in some Bono lookalike contest, but you're completely unaware of it.

me, just before writing this post

Imagine how the world would appear to you through these lenses: people around you would talk about some color they call "red" but you won't see any evidence of it, anywhere. You just won't see it. I mean, if there were really a color red there'd be at least some proof, right? Clearly those "red-seers" must be deluded--or biased, or even crazy. They just.. they just don't get it! Can't they see? Idiots.

Perhaps it even gets to a point where you start to get offended by all those idiots who claim to see red. You actively avoid those deluded red-seers, and you begin to surround yourself with like-thinking people who, like you, simply don't see or believe in the color red. You look great in your invisible blue wraparound sunglasses, and you (and everyone you've surrounded yourself with) believe you see the world exactly as it is.

In other words, it's easy to see how using a lens like this can distort your reality--without you even knowing it.

The practice of empowerment vs. the practice of victimization
Okay. Let's give those blue lenses back to Bono and head back to the reality of our food industry.

The food industry offers many foods at extraordinarily reasonable prices, but it also offers us various traps and challenges. Sometimes, it markets aspirational food products at prices totally divorced from their value. At other times it offers simple, healthy and unprocessed food at great prices. And, yes, it offers fattening foods that are delicious, heavily processed and unhealthy when eaten to excess.

But when you think about the food industry, what kind of mental lens do you use? Do you use an empowerment-based lens, or do you use a disempowering lens? Does the lens you use help you navigate your food choices effectively?

An empowerment-minded person will use a mental lens that helps her see herself taking effective action:

1) This food is healthy, that food is not. I choose the healthy food because....
2) These healthy foods are expensive. Let me look for other less-expensive alternatives.
3) I choose not to respond to that advertisement.

All of these statements are active. All are choices. And the person who uses these statements is most likely going to have good results navigating the food industry.

Let's consider the other side of this equation: What if you were to use a victim-based lens? A victim-minded person will use a mental lens that helps him see the world acting on him. Thus he might frame up his statements this way:

1) These food companies are feeding me unhealthy food. They deliberately design these foods to be irresistible.
2) The government should get more involved in our food supply to make things more fair (or, the opposite: The government is already too involved in our food supply, introducing unfair distortions).
3) The food industry takes advantage of people.

These statements are all passive. They are reactive, rather than active. And a person using statements like these will likely have trouble finding foods that meet his needs, because he's chosen a mental lens that makes it more difficult to do so. You could even argue (particularly in the case of the third statement) that his choice of lens not only disempowers him, it leads him to assume other people are powerless too. Be careful what you wish for.

So, which lens helps you most when you decide what to buy and what to eat? Which lens helps you help others?

Readers, one of these lenses is effective, the other is clearly not.

One final thought: Note that I haven't addressed the trueness or falseness of either group of statements. In fact, both groups of statements could be true or false. It depends on the evidence you seek out to support or debunk the statements. And the evidence you choose to seek out depends on the kind of mental lens you use to observe your world.

It's disturbingly circular, isn't it? And yet it's also deeply empowering, because once you begin to pay attention to the kind of lenses you use to look at the world, you realize that you can actually choose the lens that helps you be most effective.

So which mental lens would you rather use: the lens that lets you be acted upon, or the lens that helps you take action? The lens that assumes you have no choices, or the lens that lets you see all of your choices?

By now it should be clear that I'm talking about much more than just how consumers interact with the food industry.

We hold much more power than we think. It's just that too many of us don't know it, or wear a lens that enables us to refuse to know it. This realization is the first step towards becoming a truly conscious consumer.

Readers, please share your thoughts!


This post draws inspiration (and steals ideas) from two sources: The Art of Confident Living by Bryan Robinson, and Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina. I'm grateful to both authors.







How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Who Gains From Fair Trade Certified Products?

Do companies capitalize on our desire to feel good about ourselves? Can they persuade us to buy if they make us think we're doing the right thing?

Here's why I ask. Recently, I received as a gift a bar of "Fair Trade" chocolate that, for a few moments, made me feel really good about myself. Here it is:


The sales copy on the box assures me that my chocolate is not only Fair Trade Certified, but it's also USDA Organic. But wait: that's not even the best part! The best part is that when I buy this chocolate, I'm assured that my purchase has helped cocoa farmers in Bolivia improve their livelihoods. And to emphasize it all, there's a nice photo of a happy, smiling (and presumably Bolivian) woman, improving her life.


Hey, this was the most uplifting thing I'd read all day. And the chocolate was pretty good too. Not awesome, but good. Interestingly, here are the ingredients:

COCOA MASS (BOLIVIA, COSTA RICA), COCOA BUTTER (BOLIVIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC), CANE SUGAR (PARAGUAY).

Even more interestingly, look at the lower left corner of the package. It says Made in Switzerland.


Hmmm. Wait a minute.

Okay. The production of high-quality chocolate is high-margin, high value-added work. In other words, the final steps involved in making this chocolate constitute the vast majority of its economic value. So, how happy and uplifted could this nice Bolivian lady really be if almost all of the value in this product was performed 7,000 miles away on another continent? Worse, how does it help her if a good chunk of the ingredients don't even come from her own country?

I felt great about myself when I first started eating this chocolate, but the more I read and think, the more I'm starting to feel like a good old-fashioned sucker.

Readers, what I'm trying to do today is raise some honest questions about Fair Trade products. What exactly does Fair Trade mean? As a consumer, should I be suspicious of an apparently well-meaning company that writes great label copy--and yet sources ingredients and buys finished product from countries other than what their own label says they are supporting?

Is it "fair" to buy a fraction of your raw materials from Bolivia (yet do no value-added work there), and still imply that you're helping some smiling woman in a photo? Is it worth it to us as consumers to pay extra for that?

Or is Fair Trade just a marketing technique to make us feel good about ourselves? Is this just another retail Ninja mind trick that ropes us into paying significantly higher prices for the products we buy?

Readers, what do you think? Does "Fair Trade" make you want to buy? Or is it just another marketing technique that appeals to consumers' narcissism and self-image?

Related Posts:
Divorce Yourself from the False Reality of Your Grocery Store
Ending Overeating: An Interview With Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler
Doing More Harm Than Good
Never From Concentrate? Never Again


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Uninstalling Limiting Beliefs With Healthy Food

Sarah writes in (edited slightly for length):

As someone who is at this time below the poverty line AND eats healthy, I can assure you all, it is with sacrifice to the wallet. Take into account that my partner and I can't go through food as fast as a family of four could- So for example I bought bananas the other day- they were green, and today they already started to go bruised looking. Had I bought granola bars instead- I'd have a pack of them for a very long time-they won't go bad. Each town and city is different with costs and each family thinks about more then the initial cost.

You can eat healthy! But it does cost.

First, Sarah, let me encourage you to keep reading Casual Kitchen. You'll find a ton of resources here to help disabuse you of the belief that healthy food has to be expensive.

And let me say it one more time: Just because there are instances where healthy food costs more doesn't mean all healthy food costs more. This is a costly logic error, and it needlessly separates people from their money.

Consider the comparison of bananas to granola bars. Is that really proof that healthy food is expensive? Or is it merely proof that processed granola bars are expensive--and therefore not worth your hard-earned money? (PS: Here's a healthy alternative to store-bought processed granola bars.)

Beliefs are funny things. We tend to "find" evidence that supports the beliefs we hold--and we tend not to find evidence that doesn't. Thus if you believe healthy food must be more expensive, and you don't have the instinct to look for evidence contradicting that belief, well, you've already put yourself behind the economic eightball.

Thus "healthy food will cost you" is a textbook example of a limiting belief. And this particular limiting belief causes consumers to overpay for foods they think are healthier. Even worse, it enables skillful food marketers to persuade consumers that high prices equals high health value. I feel good about myself paying double for organic onions.

By far the worst part, however, is how it causes consumers to throw up their hands and give away their power. Yep, I tried eating healthy and it just cost too much. Big Food's got me stuck eating processed junk.

Here's another option: Consider "uninstalling" this limiting belief. Or actively seek out evidence contradicting it. Not only will you find plenty of examples, you'll save plenty of dough too.

Better still: spend a half hour perusing the tag Laughably Cheap here at Casual Kitchen, and start cooking your way through CK's 25 Best Laughably Cheap Recipes. You'll find a mountain of evidence that healthy food won't cost you.

Readers, what would you suggest to help out Sarah?


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Do You Let Yourself Be Manipulated To Buy?

Remember my Can You Resist $107 Worth of Advertising post from a few months ago? For those readers who missed it, this post discussed how the entire advertising budget of the entire food industry in the United States works out to only $107 per person per year.

In other words, in order to keep from spending ourselves silly, each consumer must resist the enormous pressure of about nine dollars a month in advertising. Nine bucks.

There was some excellent back and forth in the comments after that post, but one of the most intriguing comments came from the blogger who inspired the post in the first place, and there's a specific part of it I'd like to address directly:

"Yes, they may be spending "only" $107 on advertising per person. But they're spending even more than that on packaging design (expertly designed to manipulate us), research and development (designed to manipulate through taste, whether it's healthful or not), lobbying (food policy is such a huge component of this), and so much more."

Let me say first that I'm grateful for reactions like these from readers because they start conversations that make us all smarter and more savvy as consumers. But what I'd like to do is get at the subtext and the implications of this striking statement by asking three questions to readers:

1) Have you ever been "manipulated" to buy a food product by the design of the package?

2) Should food companies be required to sell food that doesn't taste very good?

3) Should owners of food companies be forbidden to advocate for themselves in the political system that we have collectively created? (Careful: this is a trick question.)

Readers, I want to know your thoughts to any or all of these questions. Share your reactions in the comments!

Once again, I owe an enormous debt of thanks to Andrew at Eating Rules for inspiring this post.


Related Posts:
How to Defeat the Retail Industry's Ninja Mind Tricks
The Mysteriously Shrinking Hershey's Bar
Where Going Generic Works... And Where It Doesn't
What's Your Favorite Consumer Empowerment Tip?
The Top Lame-Ass Excuses Between You and Better Health

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Can You "Engineer" a Food To Be Healthier?

CK readers know all about my dislike of branded boxed cereal, one of the food industry's most heavily engineered products. It costs too much, it's usually loaded with sugar (often hidden in plain sight on the ingredients list), and it's packaged in tall, skinny boxes that seem bigger than they really are.

Worse, thanks to stealth price hikes, those tall, skinny boxes contain less and less cereal each year. Which reminds me of the famous joke from Annie Hall: "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." "Yeah, I know. And such small portions!"

Which is why news that General Mills has been re-engineering some of their breakfast cereals is both timely and fascinating. A Wall Street Journal article* recently chronicled General Mills' efforts to reduce the sugar in Lucky Charms, a cereal I practically grew up on.

What's more interesting, however, are the problems that pop up when you try to tweak the ingredients list of a manufactured food. For example, when you cut a cereal's sugar content, it doesn't float in milk. It gets soggy too quickly and loses that satisfying crunch. And, hey, if that soggy, unsatisfying crunch isn't sweet enough, kids won't eat your cereal at all. Which means the parents of those kids won't buy your cereal.

Another example--one that's borderline nasty: When General Mills attempted to reduce the sodium content in their low-fat crescent rolls, the rolls became moldy. Mmm-mmmmm.

Stuff like this makes me wish I were a sanctimonious food pundit, because it's so laughably easy to explain away these issues using the prism of corporate greed. Think about it. General Mills is greedy if they leave the salt in--that's because they're feeding us hyperpalatable salt-laden rolls that give us hypertension. And they're greedier still if they take the salt out and our food gets moldy--that's because they're trying to kill us with unsafe food. And if they put the salt back in, they're even greedier still for making their food unhealthy all over again on purpose. Clearly, all they care about is putting profits before people. QED.

And yet it's another thing entirely to try to figure out a incredibly complex problem like how to get safe, shelf-stable food out the door that tastes good enough for people to buy. A fat lot of good it does General Mills or consumers to make healthier food if it sits moldy and unbought on store shelves.

Which is why I want my readers to be knowledgeable, empowered consumers who can grasp several sides of an issue. Look, food companies want us to buy their foods and they want to make a profit. Duh. They also want to sell us what we want, which means if we demand healthier food they will make it for us. So far, so good.

But can we consumers expect these foods to taste exactly the same, have the same shelf life and perform exactly like the prior unhealthy versions? It's that last step in the argument that exposes the often inconsistent expectations we consumers have for our food. As we saw with the sad, quiet death of Campbell's low-sodium soup, sometimes food company's can't win no matter what they do.

Frankly, there aren't that many examples of a food company re-engineering an engineered food--and doing it flawlessly. One that comes to mind: when Crisco removed all of the trans fats from their vegetable shortening in 2007 (readers: if you can think of others, please share them in the comments).

And yet here's an irony. Any food pundit worth his salt could still criticize Crisco! Heck, the soundbite practically writes itself: "Why did they wait so long? Why did they sell trans fat-laden vegetable shortening for years to unsuspecting customers? We all know the answer: greed. They simply put profits before people, and they only made the change after the pressure over health concerns became overwhelming."

Gosh, it's awesome to have all the answers, isn't it? But the truth is, approaching this subject from this kind of predetermined, "corporations are greedy" prism doesn't give you answers, it merely gives you the illusion of answers. Here at CK, we obviously don't want to mindlessly defend food companies--but we also aren't interested using prisms that encourage consumers to give away their power either. If you think food companies are too powerful for you, and that they can persuade you to eat food you wouldn't otherwise eat, you've already willingly given away all your power.

But there's at least one conclusion that I take away from this debate: Processed, second-order foods like boxed cereal aren't really food--they are solutions to complex engineering problems. They are designed not to feed us per se, but to float in milk, to dissolve at a certain rate, to release sweetness in certain amounts, to decompose at a certain rate, and so on. All of which takes us to what is the most fascinating quote in the entire WSJ article:

"If we just took the sugar out, you wouldn't want to eat the product left behind, independent of sweetness."

Now we're getting somewhere. After reading that quote, there's a question that practically sits up and begs to be asked: Why would you pay your hard-earned money for a food product made up of things you wouldn't want to eat?

Now that's a prism that empowers consumers.

What's your take? Share your thoughts in the comments!

* PS: Readers, to get past the WSJ paywall, just Google the title "Success Is Only So Sweet in Remaking Cereals" and you should be able to access the article.


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

A Slaughterhouse Catch-22 for Food Regulations

One of my favorite readers left a great comment about food regulations on my Interview With FDA Commissioner David Kessler post. Here's the portion that struck me as particularly provocative:

I have no patience with the "nanny state" objection. All the governmental regulations that have been put in place to protect citizens are there in response to citizen demand. The government doesn't do a single.blessed.thing that citizens haven't asked for.

If someone is smart and responsible and capable of figuring out, e.g., how to read a food label and why it's desirable to wear a seat belt, well yippee for them. The regulations don't impinge on their rights at all.

Double true. With extra truth sauce.

However, if we're going to be intellectually honest here, we owe it to ourselves to at least try to think up the contra-case: an instance where food regulation goes too far, becomes a clearly bad thing and does impinge on peoples' rights. Fortunately, we have one. Actually two.

One is happening right now. It's the new slaughterhouse regulations recently enacted by the US Department of Agriculture, in response to a spate of high-profile e. coli outbreaks that shook the meat industry over the past few years. This article in The Atlantic addresses the subject better than I ever could, but suffice it to say that our government's new meat processing regulations have become so complex, so onerous and so expensive that only the largest mega-regional slaughterhouses can afford to meet them.

So what happens next? Well, for starters, the small-scale meat processing industry is now likely to die off or get consolidated away.

Which leaves us with a problem. Let's say you're a local, small-scale rancher or beef farmer, and you want to send your ethically grown cattle to a small, local, ethically-managed abattoir. Unfortunately--and in an ironic example of unintended consequences--you can't. You'll soon have to send your cattle hundreds of miles away to the same gigantic industrial slaughterhouse everybody else is stuck using, because your small-scale abattoir became unprofitable under the new regulatory framework.

Here's the thing: As regulations increase, the economics of a given industry inevitably change. Big players can handle the incremental costs of new regulations--but the little guy can't always. If regulations become too costly, the big guys become the only players left. Sadly, our government, while trying to protect us, may have inadvertantly regulated away an entire segment of the meat industry, leaving behind an entrenched and far less competitive oligopoly of a few huge market players.

Bonus question: what do you think happens to meat prices as the slaughterhouse industry consolidates? Will farmers get paid more per head of cattle? Will consumers end up paying less for meat? It only takes vestigial critical thinking skills to figure out the answer to both questions is no.

Another irony. Talk to the ethical meat consumers you know. Ask them if they're in favor of more government regulation of our food supply. After they say yes, explain this scenario of the slaughterhouse industry, and see what happens to their once decisively-held opinions. Careful what you wish for.

And if you think the snowball stops there, think again. Consider any onerously regulated industry with a small number of large players. What's the primary barrier to entry for new competitors in such an industry? The primary barrier to entry is, sadly, the ability to meet onerous regulations. The secondary barrier is the ability to exercise political power by lobbying political leaders to impact future regulations in your favor.

You'd think being successful in the meat processing industry meant being good at processing meat. Not for long.

Okay, admittedly, this is just one example. But it's an exceptionally clear and depressing example of how increasing regulations can destroy competition, hurt suppliers and consumers, and worst of all, force perfectly ethical market participants right out of an industry. The question is, where exactly is that point where regulations become too onerous? How do we know when we've crossed it?

I don't know the answer. But I suspect it tends to happen to already-regulated industries that happen to be deeply out of favor with the public. Think about it: Our politicians can easily generate maximum electoral capital by regulating, punishing, assailing, railing, grandstanding and moralizing against these out-of-favor industries, all the while appearing as if they care about their voters. And in a few years, when the industry consolidates down to a few powerful mega-players, you can quietly start collecting political contributions in exchange for softening future regs. This to me is one of the darkest aspects of nanny state politics.

There's one more point I'd like to make: We consumers often think big, greedy companies are anti-regulation. This is far less true than you'd think.

And since I'm trafficking in so much irony today, let me share possibly the most ironic regulatory event of the last one hundred years: The cigarette industry, which is essentially a duopoly here in the USA, actually wanted the FDA to extend its authority and regulate tobacco products. Why? Because the FDA was likely to pass onerous regs that--if strict enough--would prevent another major cigarette company from ever being created in the USA. Bam! You've earned yourself permanent protection from new competition.

Why am I talking about this? Am I trying to say I hate all government regulations, I love contaminated meat, and I think we should return to an Upton Sinclair-esque era with no rules?

Don't be silly. My point is far more limited: regulations don't always protect people. Sometimes they actually hurt consumers, prevent competition, and annihilate small businesses. And all that does is make life easier for the large, politically-connected businesses that remain--and the politicians who represent them. What I want CK readers to understand is that there's no black and white here: you cannot assume that more government regulation is always a good thing. Again, be careful what you wish for.


For Further Reading (investment and industry analysis geeks only):
Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter
Innovation and Enrepreneurship by Peter Drucker
Wikipedia on Porter's Five Forces
Prophet of Innovation by Thomas K. McCraw (a great biography of economist Joseph Schumpeter)


Related Posts:
The Problem with Government Food Safety Regulation
How to Give Away Your Power By Being a Biased Consumer
Survivor Bias: Why "Big Food" Isn't Quite As Evil As You Think It Is
Let Them Eat Cake! Thoughts About Wealth, Power and the Food Industry
Understanding the Consumer Products Industry


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Ending Overeating: An Interview With Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler

Readers, today we have an enormous treat: An interview with a true thought leader in food, and one of Casual Kitchen's biggest influences, Dr. David Kessler.

Long-time CK readers of course know Dr. Kessler as the author of the exceptional book The End of Overeating, which exposed many of the food and restaurant industry's most pernicious and manipulative food processing techniques. His book completely reshaped how I think about food (you can read my rabidly positive review here), and it galvanized many CK readers to reconsider the suspect value of most processed foods and restaurant meals.

What readers may not know is that Kessler's book is just the tip of the iceberg of his career: Kessler ran the entire US Federal Drug Administration from 1990 to 1997, and he was a rare example of a senior government official who was able to work successfully under both a Republican and a Democratic President (George Bush Sr., who appointed him, and Bill Clinton, who kept him on). During his tenure FDA Commissioner, he was best known for dramatically increasing regulations on cigarettes, instituting many of our current food labeling requirements, and for stiffening the regulatory framework surrounding our food industry. After leaving government service, he served as the Dean of Yale Medical School.

I asked Dr. Kessler to talk about The End of Overeating for one simple reason: If there's ever a time of year we should read his book, it's right now during the holidays when we're surrounded and most tempted by processed, hyperpalatable and unhealthy foods. I'm grateful that he took the time to share insights about his book, about the food industry, and about the current state of overeating today.

Here's what he had to say:

CK: What's changed in the two and a half years since the publication of The End of Overeating? Are things improving in our culture with regard to obesity and our eating habits?

Dr. Kessler: It's been gratifying that new science continues to support the findings in The End of Overeating. I purposefully did not use the word "addiction" in the book, feeling it was a distraction, but scientists increasingly are using addiction science to look at the world of overeating and weight gain. The past two and a half years have seen an explosion in attention to this topic. Awareness and knowledge can only help us make informed decisions about what we eat.

What's the most important piece of advice you'd share with the average person who's up against the modern food industry?

It is most important to understand how huge portions of foods loaded and layered with sugar, fat, and salt can hijack the mechanisms of our brains. It's not always obvious what those foods are, so try to know what's in that chicken breast, as well as what's on that hamburger.

What's been the harshest, most unusual or most unsound criticism that you've received about The End of Overeating? And what reader responses to your book have most inspired you?

One criticism [I've received] is that I place the blame for the obesity epidemic on food companies, who are merely selling what the public wants, and not on individuals. I believe that corporations have a responsibility not to manipulate the brains of consumers. I believe individuals have the responsibility to understand they are being manipulated. I think that is clear to readers of The End of Overeating.

I am most inspired by readers who approach me after I have given a talk on the topics in the book and tell me that they felt for the first time as if someone knew what they were going through, that the science of that was a revelation, and their eating habits and lives had been changed forever. Heady stuff!

Some of the central ideas of your book--if taken to an extreme--can put us on uncomfortable ground. An example: if hyperpalatable food is truly bad, does this mean that the food industry should instead sell us "not-very-good-tasting food" so we won't eat so much? Is it really Big Food's fault that it merely sells the very food that we consumers consent to buy?

We've been conditioned to consume those loaded and layered foods. Believe it or not, once you know what's in those products, they can become "not-very-good-tasting food." Foods that are not highly processed, real foods, can taste good once we break the cycle of eating hyperpalatable foods. Food companies have long known what sells. Now they know the science of why. What is their responsibility once they have that knowledge?

You were appointed to run the FDA in 1990 under bipartisan support. You've successfully served under presidents of both the right and the left. If President Obama took you aside and asked you for your top policy suggestions on the subject of heath, diet and the business of food, what would you tell him?

What I tell all policy-makers is what I've said in my answers to your questions. Policies about truth in food marketing, food labeling, farm subsidies, etc., should be informed, as all good public health policy is, by the science.

Readers, share your thoughts and opinions!





Related Posts:
Four Steps to Put an End to Overeating
The Pros and Cons of Restaurant Calorie Labeling Laws
Obesity and the Obama Administration: A Blogger Roundtable Discussion
Who's Watching the Watchdogs? Ethical Problems in the "Ten Riskiest Foods" Report By the CSPI


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

The Tragedy of Ersatz American Restaurant Food

A month or so ago, in the main dining room of the last cruise I'll ever take, I was offered a chocolate souffle.

The problem was, it was fake.

If you've ever had a real souffle, you know what it's supposed to be like: an incredibly delicious dessert with a weirdly perfect texture, halfway between liquid and air, that trembles and collapses with the first plunge of your spoon.

Sadly, this ersatz souffle was essentially a hypersweetened chocolate pudding/mousse mixture with a thin layer of what appeared to be cake batter poured on top of it. At least it was warm.

And not only was the souffle itself fake, but the entire rhythm of the souffle-ordering process was phony, as our waiter went around the table before dinner asking which of us would like the souffle, so he could "put the order in ahead of time." Thus was preserved the fiction that our souffles would be hand-made in advance for us.

I was more mad at myself than at the cruise line for this hilariously fake dining experience. I should have recognized the logistical impossibility of real souffles being lugged up from the ship's galley and heaved across the main dining room to you and 900 other guests at the same time. It doesn't matter how much you embellish the fiction by taking orders in advance. This ersatz "food" was quite clearly manufactured days--if not weeks--ahead of time.

But here's what's worse. I actually overheard people in that cruise ship dining room say they thought this phony souffle--not made, but rather shelf-stabilized, frozen and loaded onto the boat along with their suitcases--was absolutely amazing.

There are at least two distinct levels of tragedy here.

The first one is just a simple reality. When you sit down at almost all high-volume restaurants, the idea that your dinner entrees are actually "made" for you is a quaint fiction.

Instead a restaurant supply company--perhaps Sysco Foods, some other food service company, or the restaurant chain's parent company--prepares, plates and freezes most of the food, puts it on a truck, and ships it to the restaurant.

Sure, these foods--in all their oversalted, hyperpalatable and shelf-stabilized glory--might be customized a little bit with a fresh sauce, a side dish, or seasonings added by the restaurant staff. But make no mistake, most restaurant food is mass-produced, institutional food.

Foods are made this way because they have to be. Feeding thousands of customers in chain restaurants, on cruise ships and in high-volume restaurants presents immense logistical challenges. The restaurant and its workers need to have a good chunk of their work done in advance. Then, they can just add a couple of minor final touches before that food gets into our bellies. And thanks to consumers being willing to consume this food, it's quite a profitable business.

A better question, however, is whether it's worth our money to purchase restaurant experiences like these.

But there's a second distinct level of tragedy here, and it's particularly depressing when I think about my ersatz souffle. Imagine an unsuspecting diner who never had a souffle before, and this was his first one. What happens someday down the road when he gets a real souffle? An actual souffle that's good? There's an entirely good chance that he will prefer the phony ersatz souffle, or even think that the ersatz souffle was the real thing and this real souffle isn't.

It's getting to a point where the average American diner cannot tell the difference between food prepared in the ersatz style and food actually made at the place at which they are eating. Hey, the next time you visit a Chile's or a Cheesecake Factory, look around. People prefer ersatz foods!

Here's the point: we here in the United States do a bang-up job at manufacturing perfectly uniform, shelf-stabilized food that can be served in massive volumes. And manufactured food, when considered within its genre, doesn't have to be bad. Heck, I like an ice-cold Coke once in a while, and I would die without my beloved Cool Ranch Doritos.

But don't try to fool us into thinking these are actually foods. And that's the real tragedy of high-volume restaurant food.

One final thought: Serving a bad souffle isn't a crime. Serving a phony souffle isn't a crime either. But serving a bad, phony souffle to an audience that doesn't know that they're being served a bad phony souffle... well, if that's not a crime, it should be.

When you go to restaurants, go small. Go local-owned and owner-operated. And try to order food that was actually made there, not purchased flash-frozen from a restaurant supply company.

Otherwise, why eat out?

Readers, what are your thoughts?

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

In Defense of Big Farms

Anyone who bites into a rock-hard California tomato in February and compares it to a sweet Jersey tomato in August quickly learns an indisputable truth: there are certain things large-scale agriculture can do, and certain things it can't.

And that's one of the many reasons everyone enjoys driving over to the local farmstand to buy produce. Not only are you supporting your local economy, you get a tomato that, well, actually tastes like a tomato.

But what happens during a drought, or a flood, or a poor year for crops in your part of the country? What happens when there's a shortage of local food?

I'll share one recent, and sobering, example of what happens. Remember the rice shortage of 2008? Most Americans don't, for reasons we'll get to in a moment. But sadly, this shortage created severe problems in dozens of countries around the world. In fact, nations like Senegal and Haiti faced skyrocking rice prices, food hoarding--even food riots.

But in the USA, almost no one remembers. Why? Because our ag and transport industries adapted so quickly that consumers hardly noticed. In fact, the only evidence of a rice shortage in our local grocery stores here in northern New Jersey was a brief limit of two 20-pound bags of rice per customer. And within two weeks, rice in our local stores was in oversupply and put on sale at 50% off.

Remember: this was a shortage severe enough to cause food riots in some countries. And while there was plenty of panicked media coverage of the horrors of the rice shortage, I never saw a single article discussing how our food industry adjusted to it so effectively.

Admittedly, Big Food and Big Ag can be hilariously easy targets to criticize. To the most paranoid among us, they represent everything wrong with America today: Big Food makes irresistible snacks as part of a master plan to fatten us all up, while Big Ag secretly grows genetically-modified produce, soaks it in e. coli for good measure, and then drives it cross-country in an orgy of fossil fuel consumption.

But this perception is parody, not reality. Today, the options available to American food shoppers have never been greater: the average American grocery store carries some 55,000 items, and in the dead of winter you can find anything from organic California raspberries at $6 a pint to regional potatoes at 59c a pound. I'll leave it to you to decide which is the better value.

In short, food is available to us in a range that is simply unimaginable to our grandparents' generation. And at the same time, American consumers are reaping the benefits of a full-blown renaissance in local food. A truly robust food industry -- one that can handle spot shortages, manage uncooperative regional weather, and adapt to the natural fluctations of food production -- needs to have both local and large-scale food production to work properly.

That's how we can protect the food needs of a nation of 300 million people.

A shorter version of this post ran in Dirt Magazine.

What's Wrong With the Government Limiting Food Marketing to Kids?

I thought I would weigh in on the recent proposed Federal Trade Commission's rules for limiting food marketing to children.

To me this is a fascinating debate. One one side you've got food writers like Marion Nestle arguing (somewhat predictably) that the new rules don't go far enough. Other bloggers are a bit more circumspect and are willing to consider abstract but important aspects of the debate, like unintended consequences, free speech issues and so on. And, sadly (uh, and also somewhat predictably), over at the Huffington Post we have a totally information-free post in which the author jokes about playing games on the Lucky Charms website.

Okay. As usual with any political issue, you ain't gonna find much nuance out there. Most people have agendas that they're pushing, and those agendas typically come from one of two extremes: YAY! More regulation! Corporations are evil! or BOO! get the government out of my life and get off my lawn!

For my part, sure, I would love to see less advertising in general. And long-time CK readers especially know about my particularly insane hatred of overpriced, hyper-sweetened cereals--a food marketed to children like no other, coincidentally. So, yes, I have a bit of a personal axe to grind in this debate too.

And heck, making the contra-argument on this subject is a little like being against puppies. It is not an easy position to take. (Wait, don't you care about kids? You're in favor of evil corporations taking advantage of our children, you bad, bad person you?)

To be honest, I don't really know where I stand on this issue. So instead of advocating a position, I'm going to ask you, readers, a few open-ended questions, in the hopes that we can collectively foster an open-minded and nuanced debate of our own.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, the readers here at Casual Kitchen are as articulate and thoughtful as anybody can find anywhere (did I mention for the millionth time how grateful I am for this?). With that in mind, what are your thoughts on the following questions?

1) Is it children who actually buy these foods? (PS: This is a bit of a trick question.)

2) Will rules like these actually change peoples' behavior?

3) What are the possible unintended consequences that might result from enforcing guidelines like this? (Keeping in mind that it's notoriously difficult to perceive a law's unintended consequences when those consequences are unlikely for you.)

4) What are the free speech issues involved here?

5) Is it appropriate to hand responsibility for our food choices over to our government? And to what extent is it appropriate that we give away our power to make choices in the face of advertising--or in the face of our children's demands for certain foods?

6) Are we creating rules to make ourselves feel like we've solved a problem?

Readers, here's your chance to sound off--on any or all of these questions. What do you think?

Related Posts:
What's Your Favorite Consumer Empowerment Tip?
Companies vs. Consumers: A Manifesto
A Tale of Two Breakfasts
Food Militancy, and Food Moderation


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

What's Your Favorite Consumer Empowerment Tip?

One of our favorite themes at Casual Kitchen is consumer empowerment, and it's a fundamental article of faith here that consumers have far more power over big companies than they think.

After all, companies that make overpriced, unhealthy foods absolutely cannot sell them without our consent. We consumers, by our very act of consumption, are the ones who complete the circle.

Long-time Casual Kitchen readers intuitively understand this, but there are many consumers out there who struggle to grasp this important concept. As a result, they simply give their power away.

We can't have that. So today I'm sharing my favorite consumer empowerment tips, and at the end of this post I'll open it up to you, dear readers, to join in and share your favorites with all the readers here at Casual Kitchen.

CK's Top Five Consumer Empowerment Tips:

1) Be a contrarian: stock up on things when they're unwanted, out of season, or in oversupply.

2) Never be an early adopter.

3) Avoid TV and other media, and respond to media-based advertising with deep and open cynicism.

4) When you see any product being heavily advertised, think about the enormous cost of that advertising, and then think of yourself paying for that advertising when you buy that product. Before long, you'll see heavily advertised products for what they are: destroyers of consumer value.

5) Recognize that no company forces anyone to buy anything. Even the most evil or greedy company relies on us to consent to buy their products. We consumers complete the circle.

Readers, what's your favorite piece of pro-consumer advice? Share your thoughts in the comments!


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

There's Always Somebody On the Other Side of Every Trade

Let's say you're interacting with a food company or consumer products retailer, and you don't see eye to eye on a price, a purchase or a customer service issue. How easy is it to assume the company is stupid (or evil, or greedy, or run by jerks), shake your fist at it, and carry on, delusionally confident in the correctness of your position?

Pretty darn easy. For most consumers, this is a default behavior pattern.

Here's the thing though. When you consider interactions with the food industry purely from your standpoint as a consumer, you only see part of the picture. There may be things happening outside of your perception that you're totally unaware of.

There's even an old expression from Wall Street that relates to this: There's always somebody on the other side of every trade. (This expression is one of the few investment chestnuts that actually doesn't make me throw up in my mouth--unlike, say, markets are efficient, or past performance does not guarantee future returns.)

Uh, okay. What do I mean by saying there's somebody on the other side of every trade?

Well, think about it this way. When you buy a stock, you're probably highly confident that it's going to go up, right? Otherwise, you wouldn't buy it.

But here's the problem: for every buyer, there has to be a seller. If you're so confident buying this stock, and if it's so clear it's going to go up, then why is that guy selling to you? It bakes your noodle just to think about it.

What does this have to do with food and consumer products? Well, how many of us have entertained thoughts like these:

1) Couscous should not cost $2.95 for a six-ounce box! Those greedy bastards!

2) I only buy organic foods. They are obviously a good value, and they make me feel safer.

I'd bet most consumers would understand and sympathize with both of these statements. But after a just few minutes of considering these statements from a store's standpoint, a few rather important puzzle pieces fall into place.

For example, once you learn that organic foods are an important source of incremental profits for grocery stores, you might realize that they may not offer quite as much value as you thought. Likewise, that greedlicious couscous price might be an indirect function of the unprofitable economics of grocery store retailing. That price simply is what it is, and you can choose to buy or not, depending on your needs and wants.

I'm not at all telling you to take the store's side or the food industry's side. This is not about taking sides. I'm merely suggesting that if you dispassionately think through the business logic behind the various actions of the food and consumer products industry, you will become a savvier and far more empowered consumer. Furthermore, you'll be in a much better position to figure out your options and alternatives--without being sidetracked by pointless irritation or anger.

And then you can very calmly and rationally put down that overpriced box of couscous--and run screaming out of your grocery store.

Related Posts:
The Economics of Wasteful Foods
Death of a Soda Tax
The Pros and Cons of Restaurant Calorie Labeling Laws
Let That Other Guy Pay! Saving Money in Two-Sided Markets


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

Told to Eat Its Vegetables, The New York Times Wrings Its Hands

Indulge me for a moment while I rant about the fundamental bias of this well-intentioned article from the other day's New York Times:

Told to Eat Its Vegetables, America Orders Fries

The underlying bias--the very framework beneath this article--is that eating veggies (or more generally, eating healthy) is too hard to do. And that is demonstrably false. It is not too hard to do.

But when the Times frames up a debate about eating vegetables in terms of "us vs. Doritos" or "helpless consumers vs. an evil and omnipotent food industry" it simply encourages readers to give their power away to the food industry, rather than take action on their own behalf. After all, what can you possibly do against a delicious, "flavor-blasted" Dorito sold to you by an all-powerful food industry?

Worse, when the Times manufactures generalized and unsubstantiated opinions disguised as facts in order to fit this bias (e.g., "And compared with a lot of food at the supermarket, [vegetables] are a relatively expensive way to fill a belly," an arrogant and false trope I've repeatedly read in the Times), people will once again just wring their hands--and again, not take action.

What should be a discussion about ideas and solutions becomes an enervating and circular "yes, but" argument.

I doubt the reporter who wrote this article has any idea of the enormous disservice she's doing to her readers. But the most pernicious biases are the ones that we have but don't know we have.

I'd like to gratefully thank readers Melissa Ortiz and Eurica Chang for spurring the ideas behind this post.

Related Posts:
Don't Fall Victim to False Logic With the Food Industry
Let Them Eat Cake! Thoughts About Wealth, Power and the Food Industry
Who Really Holds the Power in Our Food Industry?


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!

The Economics of Wasteful Foods

1) Cooking time for regular oatmeal: 4-5 minutes.

2) Cooking time for "quick oats" (essentially regular oats cut up into slightly smaller pieces): 2-3 minutes.

3) Cooking time for instant oats, which are pre-flavored, have the texture and consistency of glue and cost as much as 3-4 times per serving as regular oats: 1-2 minutes.
*********************
After reading the information above, can you tell me why, as a society, we manufacture and sell "foods" like instant oats?

They're a textbook example of a second-order food. They cost more--up to 42c per serving, vs. 9-10c for generic oats and 13-14c for branded oats. And, arguably, they taste worse.

Are we really that busy? And is it a good use of society's collective time to save two minutes at the cost of triple the money? (Um, especially when there's a solid chance the average person is likely to waste those minutes many times over by watching TV or obsessively checking email?)

Why do I bring this up? Well, the other day my wife and I were having a deep conversation on the value proposition of various types of oats (hey, the fun never stops here at Casual Kitchen), and the conversation climaxed with yet another of Laura's pithy sayings:

"You know, instant oats are a metaphor for everything that's wrong with our civilization."

I think she might be right. So, I'll ask it again: Why do foods like this exist?

Here's the short answer: they exist because it's a free country. When you live in a free country, you'll find many of the foods on your grocery store shelves aren't all that tasty, healthy or even tolerable. Some of them cost appalling amounts of money and will kill you if eaten to excess. And don't try to tell me you don't have your own horrendously unhealthy food that's your guilty pleasure (mine is Cool Ranch Doritos).

The thing is, these foods don't exist to please you, they exist for the people who buy and sell them.

In a free society, neither you nor the government gets to decide what foods stores can sell. Nobody gets to tell people what they can or cannot buy. If people want to buy Fruit Roll-Ups, chlorinated pre-made mixed salads, Velveeta, Marshmallow Fluff, ranch dressing or mayonnaise, it's their right.

Yep, that brief list of vile foods I just quoted (and listed in order of increasing vileness in a subtle example of my subclinical OCD) is part and parcel of our free society. Hey, freedom ain't always pretty.

Back to oatmeal. Look, if you can get past the taste and texture, regular "old-fashioned" oatmeal is perhaps the easiest and most laughably cheap breakfast out there. I can't stand oatmeal in any form, but I make it nearly every morning for Laura. It keeps her full for hours, costs pennies, and helps manage her above-average cholesterol. Some might even consider it evidence that I'm a halfway decent husband.

But think about it: if the food industry had its wits about it, it should be charging more for regular oats. Call them "unprocessed oats," promote their all-natural taste and texture, tout the health benefits and the high fiber levels--and then charge triple the price. They could make humble oatmeal into yet another aspirational good, and millions of people would happily pay up for it!

I can hear the ad now, with a testimonial spoken by an earnest-looking, blonde, thirty-something actress: "My parents and I ate instant oats, but I think it's worth it for my family--and especially for my kids--to experience the superior taste, quality and health benefits of natural, unprocessed oats."

Sadly, this kind of marketing is also part and parcel of a free society, as are consumers who mindlessly internalize and obey said marketing. And heck, it was so easy to come up with that ad copy that it makes me wonder why I spent all those years working on Wall Street.

But here's the bottom line. Free economic systems, just like free societies, produce both traps and opportunities. Casual Kitchen readers know this. They know, for example, that there are pricing idiosyncrasies ripe for the taking throughout the food industry (a perfect example would be to eat plain oatmeal at pennies a serving while skipping the $5 box of tooth-achingly sweet cereal). CK readers also know that instant oats are just another hilarious example of a second-order food, with extra branding and processing costs that they do not need to pay.

It can surprisingly easy to beat the free-market food industry at its own game, but you have to be awake and aware. You must keep your mind open to creative ideas and solutions, and you must avoid whining and giving your power away to the evil food industry. Remember, freedom means we are empowered to make our own choices.

Let me add a final tangent to this oddly tangent-laden post: by far the vilest breakfast food I've eaten in my life was a big bowl of Čokolino (pronounced Choh coh LEE no) that I tried in Slovenia back in 2008. The taste and texture were indescribable--the best I can say is it tasted like a foamy and slightly rancid protein shake.

Was this yet another free-market food? Another metaphor for the decline of society? Well, no, not exactly. This "food" was a relic from the former Yugoslavia, back when it was under Tito's dictatorship!

I guess Winston Churchill was right when he said democracies produce the worst food, except for all the other forms of government.

Readers, what processed foods really turn your stomach? Would you ban them (warning: trick question) if you had the power to?

Related Posts:
Why Do Products Go On Sale?
Who Really Holds the Power in Our Food Industry?
Survivor Bias: Why "Big Food" Isn't Quite As Evil As You Think It Is
Let Them Eat Cake! Thoughts About Wealth, Power and the Food Industry


How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by purchasing items from Amazon.com via links on this site, or by linking to me or subscribing to my RSS feed. Finally, you can consider submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon. Thank you for your support!