Cake and Commerce

Hey Ethicureans and Sustainable-types: Big Business is on to you, and it ain't pretty

It was only a matter of time before marketing/research consultants to the packaged goods industry figured it all out. Yep, thanks to the Hartman Group, CPGs (consumer packaged goods manufacturers, like Kraft and SC Johnson and Unilever and P&G and Nestle) can actually strategize about how to give their products a 'Brand Halo' around sustainability.

From data gathered from a qualitative and quantitative study of the Organics market, the Hartman group has outlined the pros and cons of developing a 'halo' around consumer products. You need to read this article.

Here's the Hartman Group's take on growth in the awareness of 'sustainable' grown or manufactured goods (all material copyright The Hartman Group):

We believe, as interest in sustainability grows, we will see the following happen:

• The distinction will continue to dilute as it comes to mean many more things to many people.
• Nearly every company or product can and will produce a sustainability narrative (i.e., anybody can be "green").
• Simply designating your product as sustainable or "environmentally friendly" will do little to differentiate your brand or drive a brand halo.
• Only a tiny percentage of very core consumers will even be interested in adjudicating between competing sustainability narratives to identify the most authentic sustainable products or services.
• While there always remains the possibility for product and service brands to achieve a sustainable halo, we believe it will likely be easier for retailers, especially food retailers, as they can more easily tap into the "local food" angle.

Get it, get it? There's no point, really, for CPGs to go down the sustainable path because the only barrier to entry for competitors is the cost of raw materials. Additionally it will likely never be as mainstream in understanding as it needs to be to generate the kind of sales a large company would be interested in. So lets see, if cost of entry is high and there's not necessarily an early mover advantage, and it only really make sense for retailers, wouldn't it make sense for the big CPGs to do nothing?

No. Not at all.

As the largest consumers of raw food materials, the CPGs owe it to the consumer (and, to an equal extent, the planet) to develop and maintain sustainable sources of ingredients and raw materials. Every small change they make has a large incremental impact on the type of agriculture done, the pesticides used, and the health of the planet. Since I'm just conjecturing and not using research, I don't have data to back this up, but it seems obvious - sustainable agriculture/products emphasis a polyglot approach to farming and production, which will have less of a negative impact on agriculture than the monoculture - and big organics - are having today. I'm taking a page out of the Omnivore's Dilemma (on organic monoculture and big agriculture) but it makes sense that the larger the buyer of a certain commodity, the bigger the impact a switch to a less damaging form of agriculture will have.

But there's hope for those still dreaming of a sustainability brand halo. The Hartman group advises:

1. There will always be a small number of successful entrepreneurs able to generate a sustainability halo through very specific, often technical, innovations. The Toyota Prius would be an example here. While there is no question that this is a desirable space, the fact that it requires groundbreaking innovation is a significant obstacle to those interested in simply offering "sustainable" versions of existing products or services.

2. Curiously, the more conventional pathway toward a sustainability halo may not necessarily even require many of the attributes one might otherwise imagine are necessary to craft such a halo. Our recent research reveals that firms currently generating a sustainability halo have managed this task by generating several key consumer perceptions that can be grouped loosely under the rubric "good person." Companies included in the top ten list consumers most often associate with social AND environmental responsibility include Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe's, Starbucks and Wild Oats.

OK CPG company folk, let me summarize: Sustainability is more than just a line extension. It is a commitment, not to be taken lightly or discontinued when costs run too high and your shareholders are complaining at your annual meeting. And in case you think you are going to be credible just because you have the right products, think again. Look at Wal-Mart and all they've done with organics in their stores (and, adversely, diluting the meaning of organics). Yet because of their labor practices, no matter what they stock, they will always be reviled by consumers who care about more than just 'stuff'. 'People' is part of the equation too.

End of rant.

So, are you a foodie or did your momma make you buy verjus?

People, at least people I know, don’t like to categorize themselves. Yet the food fanatical seem to enjoy giving themselves titles and dividing the world into subsets to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’. I suppose it is human nature. What follows is quick-and-dirty breakdown of a few of the more common – and some less common – terms used to describe those who live-to-eat.

When I hear the word “foodie”, I immediately think of the stylish monied, making reservations at Per Se or Alinea, stocking their pantries with this year’s vintage olive oil or befriending their local cheesemonger just to have bragging rights. They’re passionate but easily dismissed as status-seekers.

The word “gourmet” (and to a lesser extent, ‘epicure’), at least in its current usage, is several degrees worse than “foodie”. The word “gourmet” always seems to be paired with “cook”, as in, “my daughter Amber is a gourmet cook”, meaning that Amber really knows her way around cookbooks, not that she cooks gourmets. I don’t know how “gourmet” came to sound like an insult to my ears, but I shudder whenever anyone uses the word to describe anything.

Few seem to use the word “gourmand” to describe themselves these days, although it seems like a fitting appellation for many and doesn’t sound nearly as bad as ‘gourmet’. Gourmands are no longer committing one of the seven deadly sins – nowadays they just probably belong to one or two bacon of the month clubs.

“Chow hound” or “chowist” are both words of recent vintage, and both can be tied to the (now CNET-owned) Chowhound web bulletin board. Chow hounds and chowists are foodies who also happen to love everyday food – it doesn’t matter what kind of food or where it is from, as long as it is high quality and smacks of authenticity.

A subset of the Chowist is the “LTHer”. LTHForum is a bulletin-board based website formed after its founders splintered off from Chowhound. LTHers are based primarily in Chicago, although there are LTH pockets all over the US and the board covers topics of interest to anyone ‘into’ food.

Similar to LTHers are “EGulleteers”, frequenters of the EGullet website and board. It is possible to be an LTHer, a Chowhound, and an EGulleteer, but only if you are unemployed and have plenty of time on your hands to shop, cook, eat, garden or farm and post about it.

The newest term I heard is “ethicurean” – and also the name of a group blog about food ethics and sustainable/organic/local agriculture. I suppose if I had to define myself by any one term, “ethicurean” might come close, but I would never call myself one. Nope. I’m just a foodservice professional trying to keep my nose clean as best I can.

“Locavore” or “localvore” are people who eat anything – as long as it is produced locally (usually a 100 mile radius of home). This diet is easy to follow if you happen to live in a temperate farming area, are a dedicated cook, or have a local restaurant that serves only local products, but you’ll never be a locavore if you live in the middle of Nevada. Unless you live in a biodome, of course.

My Favorite Donut?

From Bouchon Bakery, NYC...a Boston Creme Donut made from what tastes like brioche dough. Mmmmmm

And those specs are vanilla bean in the pastry cream. So good!

The irony isn't lost on me - Big Business owns my soul

"We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods."

-From the Slow Food Manifesto

Carlo Petrini, the founder of the Slow Food movement, is in the US right now promoting his book, Slow Food Nation: A Blueprint for Changing the Way We Eat. This past weekend he came to Chicago to speak as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, a week long series of lectures, events and arts in early fall focused around a single theme (unsurprisingly, 2007 is environmentally themed).  I had three tickets to his lecture. I purchased them months ago, the moment the event was announced via the Slow Food email. Yes, I am a member of Slow Food, and I have been, off and on, since 1996. I am, thankfully, no longer the youngest person in the room at events.

Slow Food was started by Carlo Petrini as a direct response to the cultural imperialism of the fast food multinationals, who, by providing fast, cheap, convenient and industrialized foods, have out-competed local and traditional foods and foodways, leading to the decline of health, environment and tradition. The organization is active in 50 countries and has over 80,000 members, including 12,000 in the USA, according to the website.

Their mission is summed up in the following, also from the website:

...[O]ur mission is to create a robust, active movement that protects taste, culture and the environment as universal social values.

Sometimes Slow Food events feel more like a fancy dress party than an activist-based organization focused on food. But nevermind. At least they do -with some success - call attention to the plight of declining traditions at the hands of modernization and industrialization, despite occassionally insulting argiculturalists and farmers, historians, artisans  and consumers in the process.

So how sad and ironic was it that I could not attend the Carlo Petrini lecture, one I had planned on attending for two months, because I had to work at the National Restaurant Association Show that same day?

The NRA is the antithesis of Slow Food. It supports big agriculture, fast food, industrial food and just about everything I despise about modern eating habits and foods: speed, convenience, portability. It includes as members commentators in Nations Restaurant News who dismiss the Center for Science in the Public Interest as quacks and praise the right-wing hysteria of the Center for Consumer Freedom as fair and balanced. Sure the CSPI's favorite tactic for promoting change is the lawsuit, but it works and brings attention to the issues at hand, such as added trans fats, companies that market directly to children, obesity in the US and the still-under-regulated supplements industry. The NRA also has two political associations, GO! Network, which helps individuals monitor their legislators' records on restaurant and food-related issues, and NRA-PAC, whose express purpose is to make congress "pro-restaurant." There's also the SAFE Fund, designed to provide money for Big Restaurant to 'fight back' against new laws or proposed legislation that could hurt profit or make financially onerous demands. Here's a blurb from the website:

Save American Free Enterprise (SAFE) serves as a catalyst to mobilize, educate and execute the restaurant industry's political efforts at the state level in cooperation with the National Restaurant Association (NRA), state restaurant associations (SRA), multi-unit companies and allied partners.

This is not a fund for small restaurants, Chef-owned enterprises, or any number of independents who may operate under a different set of beliefs from the NRA and its allies.

The NRA is, in short, a vehicle for big business. It supports the restaurant industry through lobbyists and other political means. It doesn't take a stand on additives or food ingredients or health. Those things only become issues once they reach the 'tipping point' in consumer and operator consciousness and when fighting those issues makes them look bad. The NRA is political, opportunistic and capitalistic to the detriment of public health and the environment. Yes, I'm generalizing, but a walk-through of the NRA show pretty much confirms that any attention the NRA gives to these two issues (and anything else outside of corporate profitability) is lip-service. Additionally, at last year's show, the speaker of honor was, guess who, George W. Bush.

Sure, the NRA features well-known chefs who do demos during the show, and also sponsors some culinary scholarships and contests, but at its heart, the NRA is a conservative industry group with strong ties to our current administration.

Yes, I'm part of the problem as a big food employee. And just like people who ride planes and drive cars and buy carbon offsets to ease their consciences, I'm going to give to Slow Food's Annual Fund to balance out the evil I am helping to visit on the world. And you should too!

Overpackaged at Whole Foods

I used to be a die-hard Whole Foods fan. I worked there for nearly a year in 1998-1999 as the cheesebuyer in one of their stores. With my 20% employee discount in hand, products were affordable and better quality than most markets near my house. They also had an unbeatable cheese case. Since there were just over 100 Whole Foods stores at the time, it flew under the radar. No stores had been opened in NYC, Canada or announced for the UK. Wild Oats was still a competitor.

In 9 short years times have indeed changed. There are now 194 stores and most of the new stores and the stores in the works are super experiential food centers of 55,000 - 80,000 square feet, offering restaurants and cafes, wine tasting, gelato stands, coffee roasted on-site, and the usual selection of produce, groceries, cheese, wine, meat, bakery products in conventional all-natural and organic. New Whole Foods stores are places where you could spend a day, attending a class, dining at a restaurant, and grocery shopping.

Whole Foods Market polarizes the food-obsessed like nothing else. There are the haters and there are the loyal-'til-death fans. Not too many fall into the "Whole Foods is okay" camp. In general, Whole Foods is a conscientious corporate citizen and does make an effort to recycle, use green products and alternative energy, and, increasingly, offer local produce. They are trying.

Recently a Dutch friend, Pim van den Berg, came to visit for a tour of Chicago's interesting new shopping sites. I brought him to the brand new Cicero/Peterson Store, which, until the new Lincoln Park store opens, is the largest Whole Foods in Chicagoland. We strolled through the store casually, checking out the new features (unfortunately this store doesn't have a cheese cave like the SoHo store) such as the Brauhaus featuring house-smoked sausages and meat (and, of course, beer on tap and in the bottle). Everything looked gorgeous. And then I noticed something that for some reason I had never noticed before. The packaging. Everywhere I looked there were shelves, tables, cases piled high with goods that were packaged in wrap packaged in glossy printed cardboard. And I was buying this stuff, recycling what I could, and throwing out the rest. For the first time I felt like a very bad consumer.

In my current job I've come to have a basic understanding of the amount of fossil fuel and resources needed to package food products. Food grade plastic film, used to keep products from cookies to pasta and everything in between fresh, is, surprise, a petroleum product. Cardboard, even partially recycled cardboard, is produced from trees and plant pulp and then processed. At least craft board, the unbleached version, is less processed. Inks, if not made from soy or linseed, are made from a heavy petroleum distillate.

I checked the Whole Foods website's Green Action section looking for their policy on packaging for suppliers. The closest policy I found was for their in-house publications:

Printing Standards

For our printed material, we work with printers who are as dedicated as we are to caring for the planet. Whenever possible, we insist on recycled paper, soy inks and solvent-free printing processes. Plus, we carefully evaluate the "right to exist" of every piece we print.

A good start, but it doesn't go far enough.

Whole Foods has a lot of buyer power amongst certain niche suppliers. United Natural Foods, the largest natural and organic distributor in the US, does a lot of business with Whole Foods, and a lot of manufacturers of all-natural and organic goods are distributed through United. If United and Whole Foods decided to change their packaging policies, and require suppliers to reduce the amount of packaging in their products, they could make a deeper impact on the reduction of fossil fuels. Additionally, if they provided incentive to their suppliers to seeks out alternative, eco-friendly substitutes for traditional packaging and printing materials, perhaps demand could motivate packaging companies to innovate in materials and design.

I realize that one barrier to changing packaging materials is shipping -- products need to survive shipment from manufacturer to distributor to store to shelf. Is there a reusable outer packaging that could be use, a la the plastic pallets at Wal-Mart? There's got to be a solution, but in the absence of pressure from Whole Foods or similar supermarket chains, change will be slow, at best. Recycling is great, but it isn't enough.

I'm no eco-activist, I'm just a consumer who cares about sustainability. Until Whole Foods starts reducing the amount of packaging in their stores, both their own (the cheese case is particularly ugly, with pre-sliced plastic wrapped cheese) and their suppliers, I'll avoid shopping there.

The scourge of fine dining: Truffle Oil

Daniel Patterson got it right.

"Truffle oil has simultaneously democratized and cheapened the truffle experience, creating a knockoff that goes by the same name." - Hocus-Pocus, and a Beaker Full of Truffles, NY Times, 5-15-07

Thank you, thank you thank you. I usually don't comment on the dining section of the NYT (or the LA Times, or the Boston Globe, or the AJC....), but truffle oil is one of those ingredients that truly raises my ire. I hate it. If I taste even the tiniest amount in a dish I've ordered, I can't eat it.

I first came into contact with truffles in 1996 when I was an intern at Hamersley's Bistro in Boston, MA. On my station, I had to prepare a lovely little scallop appetizer that was topped with three perfect slices of white truffle. For every slice I shaved, I tried a small piece. I was trying to create a memory of what good truffle tasted like. It was good, not great. Truffles alone aren't so interesting, kinda like salt. You can eat salt, but when coupled with something else, salt really makes an impact. I feel the same way about truffles.

A year later, when I was preparing a dish for our New Year's special dinner at Sent Sovi in Saratoga, CA, I had to make a dessert to pair with our black and white truffle dinner courses. The chef suggested White Truffle ice cream. Made with...white truffle oil. Which is not actually made with truffles but has a terrible flavor and stench thanks to the concentration of 2,4 -diathiapentane.

As I made batch after batch and tasted each for consistency, I grew increasingly disgusted with what I was tasting. Eventually I was so repulsed I couldn't taste it anymore, even though I cut some of the flavor with Port.

Since 1997, I have not been able to smell or eat truffle oil without an adverse, 'damn I wanna puke' reaction. I have never bought a bottle, and I will not use it in my food. Until this year I avoided ordering anything prepared with 'truffles' - usually a slice or two of pathetic black summer truffle and a long drink of truffle oil. And then something happened. The restaurants where I dined - and dared to order - no longer seemed to use truffle oil. And when I did order something with truffles, there was, thankfully, an upcharge (as there should be, real truffles are very pricey) and no evidence of the bastard 2,4-dithiapentane molecule.

So chefs, enthusiastic home cooks, food enthusiasts - demand that your local restaurant stop using truffle oil. It tastes lousy and doesn't add anything to a plate. If you want to put 'truffles' on your menu, use the real thing - please!

Food Poisoning!

So I'm writing this post from my sickbed...every joint in my body aches and I've run up a temperature...why?

Because stupid, arrogant me - I ate some food that is particularly prone to bacterial growth after it had been sitting out for 12 hours. Uh huh. That's right. I knew better and I still did it. And to make matters worse, it was food at my house, and there was no reason to eat it as I had plenty of other snacks available. Here's my sad, short and pathetic story:

On Sunday Nam picked me up from the airport. Ever thoughtful, she brought along a plate of dinner goodies - some chicken, salad, cauliflower, potatoes. I ate some of it and put the rest in my fridge. Flash forward to Monday morning. I take out the plate, heat some of it up, and then absent-mindedly leave the plate out. I'll blame the dog I'm pet-sitting, who had me up at 4 am.

At any rate, when I came home at 6 I gobbled up the remaining tidbits on the plate, cold (or at least lukewarm). As I did so, I thought, "Hmm, this isn't a good idea. This completely cooked food has probably been growing bacteria all day. What the hell..."

At 4 am, 10 hours later, I woke up nauseated. I vowed not to lose my lunch. Or dinner, or snack. It wasn't too difficult to avoid eating - the food poisoning has given me a raging fever, the worst body ache and has destroyed my appetite.

I did go to work, and occasionally lay down on the floor under my desk. Eventually I left...drove home fearful I'd be losing my lunch within minutes.

So here's the lesson: do not eat food that has been left out in temps above 41 degrees and below 145 for more than 4 hours - especially meat or foods that have come in contact with meat. You will regret it.

One last thought: given incubation periods, it may be that I became sick from what I ate on Sunday night...hope this goes away soon.

Here's more info: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001652.htm

Scrapplefest: What happens when the new world and leftovers come together

Technically, scrapple is not cake. But at this year's Scrapplefest at Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, there was a wedding cake - made especially for the event - composed of scrapple and decorative ribbon. For the Mid-Atlantic raised, scrapple sculpture is probably not so unusual. For those of us from elsewhere, not only is a scrapple sculpture or wedding cake potentially nausea inducing, it is unfathomable and somewhat mysterious. The mystery: why would anyone want a scrapple wedding cake. Unless they were these guys:

Apparently they've got a scrapple page on myspace.com. Check out their T-shirts!

If you didn't click the link above and still don't know what scrapple is, allow me: scrapple is corn meal mush, sometimes buckwheat (a grass, not technically wheat), pork and pork trimmings, simmered up and formed in a loaf pan. Apparently the treat was introduced by the German "Pennsylvania Dutch" settlers in the 17th or 18th centuries. To eat it, you slice off a piece and pan-fry it. You can incorporate it in a sandwich or eat it on its own.

And until Scrapplefest, I (a New Englander) had never tried Scrapple. Given my self-imposed culinary restrictions and banishment of pork from my diet at age 14 (a long time ago) I was lucky that one vendor brought along some turkey scrapple for sampling.

Let me lay out the scene: imagine table full of little sample cups of fried scrapple, piggy balloons, Amish farmers, older scrapple manufacturers, and young scrapple enthusiasts, duking it out in front of a panel of judges for coveted scrapple prizes.

Or I could show you a picture:

Here contestants show off some of their scrapple sandwich creations...I think.

Of course, every Scrapplefest needs poetry. Here is a booklet sold by two young hipsters who feel more than just a minor affinity for the Pennsylvania treat:

While I loved my introduction to scrapple and look forward to locating some (or making it) in Chicago, my traveling companion, herself an artisan cheesemaker, was not as moved. I think the term she used was "disgusting".

Capogiro Gelato Artisans, Philly

I'm usually not a fan of inedibles as garnishes. Unless a rind has been candied or a stem removed,I won't use it to make my plates (or, in this case, hotel pans) look prettier. But I give a pass card to Capogiro Gelato Artisans, who make some of the best authentic gelato this side of the ice cream triangle. I still am a food for The Bent Spoon, but they have admitted that their product is more of a hybrid of styles than a straight-up Italian gelato.

For the last year I've been buying Capogiro by the pint from my friends at Bouffe and Provenance Food and Wine in Chicago. I've spent several hundred dollars (it is $10 for a pint) on this creamy cold fresh and delicious confection, and won a few converts in the process. Eating out of a pint, however, is not even close to the experience of visiting the shop.

Just looking at this makes me hungry. Dang. Make sure you stop in for a visit next time you are in Philly.

Moment of Glory: Dark Lord Day 2007

And because we didn't plan ahead, all we could buy were three bottles.

At Three Floyds Brewery, Munster, Indiana April 28th 2007