What’s In Store

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently announced the results of a study on food marketing to children and adolescents. The report, Marketing Food to Children and Adolescents: A Review of
Industry Expenditures, Activities, and Self-Regulation, finds that the landscape of food advertising to youth is dominated by integrated advertising campaigns that combine traditional media with previously unmeasured forms of marketing, such as packaging, in-store advertising, sweepstakes, and the Internet. The report calls for all food companies “to adopt and adhere to meaningful, nutrition-based standards for marketing their products to children under 12.”

The report also acknowledges that the food and beverage industry has made significant progress since the 2005 Workshop on Marketing, Self-Regulation & Childhood Obesity, citing the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative launched by the Council of Better Business Bureaus in 2006, for taking “important steps to encourage better nutrition and fitness among the nation’s children.”

To date, 13 of the largest food and beverage companies &mdash accounting for the majority of food and beverage expenditures directed toward children &mdash have adopted the initiative, pledging either not to advertise to children under 12, or to limit their television, radio, print and Internet advertising to foods that meet specified nutritional standards. Several major food and beverage companies have also adopted the Alliance for a Healthier Generation guidelines, which are designed to increase the nutritional value of food and beverages sold in schools outside the federal School Nutrition Program.

In a concurring statement, Commissioner Jon Leibowitz said, “… a little government involvement — combined with a lot of private sector commitment — can go a long way toward the healthier future for our children that all of us want.”

As nutrition professional, I have spent a large part of my career building strong, productive partnerships among industry, government, academia, and professional groups, and I know that Commissioner Leibowitz is right on target when he says that collaboration among groups that share a common goal is what will ultimately drive the change we are seeking. The innovative programs needed to build and sustain the nationwide infrastructure we need to prevent childhood obesity are happening at the local level all over the country. Is your organization using integrated marketing techniques to support and publicize, promote these best practices?

Author: Susan Finn, PhD, RD, FADA

August 6th, 2008 by Susan Finn | Comment on this.
Tags: children and adolescents · food marketing · FTC · Nutrition

Critical issues surrounding food safety will become more pronounced with the accelerated globalization of food industries and the continued strain on existing agriculture systems to provide food for the world.  While global transport is an  easy target for food safety concerns, the overall need to shore up production, distribution and traceability holes is significant no matter the where the food came from.  The debate in the next few years will focus on traceability – the ability to track a product back through the supply chain to its source.

Traceability is a cornerstone in our ability to mitigate damage and discover the source during a food safety failure. The difficulty is that no system exists today that can be fully integrated into the food production chain to assure traceability.  This currently creates wholesale chaos when a large scale food borne illness outbreak occurs.  In short, traceability is the only hope to answer the public’s primary question during a food crisis — Who or what is to blame?

The Salmonella St. Paul strain recently created havoc and cost the tomato industry millions of dollars. The FDA and CDC first identified tomatoes as the likely culprit, excused a few tomato varieties and then began to exclude certain growing regions,  primarily based on growing season and distribution patterns.  However, painting product by the broad brushstroke of geography rather than by certifying best practices such as traceability, causes good product to face waste and risks bad product slipping through to market.  It is a highly imperfect system in need of reform.

The issues surrounding food safety will not be going away any time soon.  They will become more critical and complex as diverse agricultural and manufacturing practices fail to find common systematic approaches that could allow food safety certification and full traceability. 

Manufacturers, meat and produce brands and commodity suppliers all have the opportunity to take a leadership role in the food safety dialogue that is anticipated to be at a boil next year.  Practices that provide assurances of safety and product trace-back will go even further than the current interest in organic and sustainability and given the current environment for regulatory reform aimed at safety, it is important that industry prepare to enunciate a point of view and priorities.

July 16th, 2008 by Janet Greenlee | Comment on this.
Tags: food safety · globalization

As someone once said, “Europe invents issues and exports them to the rest of the world.” While the EU has modified their stance on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) over the years there is still clear activist opposition to GMOs in many quarters in Europe and other parts of the world.

But given the events of the past few months we are seeing more pressure on food production than ever before. Food demand is outstripping availability and prices are starting to rise, in some cases dramatically. In other cases we are predicting prices hikes yet to come on products such as meat. Unpredictable weather patterns that include more intense hurricanes, floods, droughts all speak to disrupted availability of agriculture commodities. Many countries that were food exporters are restricting exports to ensure their own people can be fed.

Last week at the UN-sponsored summit of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has proposed a 50 per cent increase in world food stocks by the year 2030. And in that time we will continue to reduce available agricultural land globally. The time has come to produce stronger crops that are more nutrient dense, resistant to pests, with higher yields per acre.

Is the timing right to look at introducing crop varieties that need less water, can be grown in imperfect soil, are pest resistant or require a shorter growing season? It appears to be. If the agricultural companies are smart they will look at GMOs and working on plans to develop and roll out GMO fruits, vegetables and grains that will capture the need and the solutions we will all be looking for to feed ourselves, our families and families in other countries who risk starvation.

At the summit, Mohammed Beagovui, the director of West and Central Africa for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said, “GMOs may be dangerous for animals but not for crops. Everyday we are modifying agricultural products to achieve drought resistance and higher productivity,” he said. “You cannot reject all kinds of GMO’s.”

June 11th, 2008 by Linda Smith | Comment on this.
Tags: agriculture · EU · Europe · Food and Agriculture Organization · genetically modified organisms · GMO

With the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans staring us squarely in the face, everyone’s making projections about what will and what will not be on the plate. One thing’s for certain—a lot of insiders are speculating that we’ll get a sizable portion of nutrient density.

But what does “nutrient density” mean anyway?

According to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines, nutrient dense foods are those foods that provide substantial amounts of vitamins and minerals (micronutrients) and relatively few calories. This definition left a lot of us wondering, “what does ‘substantial’ mean?” and “how do you define ‘relatively few’ calories?”

As a registered dietitian, I’ve been following this conversation for some time now. Pretty much anyone who eats can tell you that the vast majority of fresh foods (fruits, vegetables, lean cuts of meat, fish, poultry, whole grains, legumes, fat-free and low-fat dairy, eggs, etc.) probably fall under the umbrella of “nutrient dense.” Intuitively, this makes sense. But once you start trying to evaluate packaged foods, it’s not that straightforward.

This is why a lot of nutrition gurus recommend “shopping the perimeter” of the grocery store. But let’s face it, we all push our carts down those inner aisles every once in a while (o.k. every time we go to the store). And grocers are smart—with a little cross merchandising, we’ve got many more products that we intended to buy.

Nutrient density is a wonderful and needed concept, but it’s not easily communicated to consumers. And there’s no reason that consumers should feel like they have to have a degree in nutrition science to know how to make the right choices. If it seems like there’s confusion on the aisles, it’s because there is. And as we’ve seen over the past few years, when it comes to nutrition information, confusion breeds contempt. That’s why it’s our responsibility as expert communicators to provide a clear, credible path for consumers. After all, we wouldn’t be here without them.

It’s going to be interested to see how the debate on nutrient density evolves as we approach the 2010 guidelines – and how companies might band together to help define their benefits and educate consumers.

Author: Allison Beadle, M.S., R.D., L.D.

June 9th, 2008 by Alison Beadle | Comment on this.
Tags: Nutrition

Yes, each of us eats what we want. And many of us eat foods we think are healthier so we can maintain good health. But in the future we may be eating to precisely ward off disease or maintain health. And we mean precisely. Low cost, non invasive bio-monitoring will be commonplace. By simply wearing a bracelet or a watch or even sleeping a special pad we will collect our personal biometric information. That combined with our personal genomic mapping will tell us what foods we should eat that day to keep a pre cancerous condition from developing further or how our serotonin levels are doing and what we need to eat to have a happy day.

Advances in monitoring for saliva, breath, skin, and body monitoring are already quite significant but over the next decade reliability and affordability will increase and so will their applied uses. A simple morning breath test before brushing our teeth will provide signs for oral cancer, lung cancer, diabetes, respiratory infections, inflammation, and serotonin levels.

And nutrigenomics, the study of our genes and nutrition, will have developed to the point where we will truly have nutritional therapies for disease and understand their evidence based outcomes. And our willingness to adopt this information and incorporate it into our lifestyles is being proven every day. For example micro flora have a role in digestion but they also are believed to have a role in food/energy and efficient processing. Some experts think that changes in micro flora driven by the widespread use of antibiotics might be a contributing factor to the significant weight gain seen in North American populations over the last 20 years. Studies in animals have shown that adjusting micro flora can yield a 10 per cent increase in energy uptake. So eat more yogurt.

And given the complexity of nutrition information, we will be looking for professional advice and nutrition coaches. That may mean the further rise of dietitians as a career destination, or it may mean family doctors will increasingly move into the arena of nutritional consulting, or it may mean that everyone will have a naturopath as well as a gp. Or it may mean we will go on Second Life to meet with our nutritional coach – everyday.

But there is no disputing it, food will become even more important to our health as we move through next few decades.

June 6th, 2008 by Linda Smith | Comment on this.
Tags: Nutrition

Mark Senak, SVP at Fleishman-Hillard in D.C., spoke at today’s seminar. In his most recent blog post on Eye On FDA he gives a link to Dr. Bezold’s food and nutrition forecast White Paper, which you and download here- Download Food 2028 Whitepaper.

Mark Senak is an attorney with more than twenty years of experience offering a blend of law, communications, public health, and public relations. He recently led a team in designing a global communications plan to raise awareness of and support the execution of evidence based on public health interventions in developing nations for the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the National Institutes of Health, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

June 5th, 2008 by Laura Knapp | Comment on this.
Tags: FH D.C.

Organic has been on the rise for the last decade in North American agriculture with grocery stores now devoting large produce sections to pricier organic produce. But as food inflation hits us rapidly and we struggle to feed the world now and in the future, we will see some dramatic emphasis shifts in food. We will look for food labeled “sustainable” to denote food that is highly productive and better for the environment. Today, with demand outstripping supply, food prices soaring and food protests and riots happening in countries from Thailand to Italy, another wave in agricultural productivity is urgently needed. We will start thinking not only about feeding ourselves and our families, but truly become concerned about feeding the world.

And with the emphasis on increased crop productivity we will see the rise of GMO’s, genetically-modified foods which will be engineered for harsher climates, to be more insect resilient and to create even larger yields. While we once ran from GMO’s we will embrace them those that have direct benefits to increased productivity and yield. GMO’s to resist salinity will be possible so we can use sea water for irrigation as will plants that can further resist drought. We will need a new armamentarium of agricultural weapons.

Advanced sustainable agriculture will draw heavily on agro ecology and adopt some of the methods of organic farming to solve problems like soil erosion and the rising costs of fertilizers. New tools for superefficient “precision agriculture” will allow water and other inputs like drip irrigation systems with soil moisture sensors, so we don’t waste a drop. Not only will every household have a backyard vegetable garden, high rises will be devoted to growing food to reduce the foot print on the land.

And to reduce energy costs, every farm will have a wind turbine.

The world is changing but the world of agriculture will change the most rapidly.

June 5th, 2008 by Linda Smith | 1 Comment
Tags: agriculture · food · organic · sustainable

June 4th, 2008 by David Lowey | Comment on this.
Tags: New York What's In Store Event