Bye-bye hot dog

Our eating habits are changing and if you ask me, changing for the better. Of course food companies are struggling to keep up. Step by step we’re learning a basic concept: we are what we eat. It’s easy to make fun of people obsession with gluten, but more and more studies are correlating this allergy to poor quality / processed food.

Slowly getting rid of tricky advertisement, we are turning away  products created by big food companies. We don’t want anymore artificial colors and flavors in cereals, for example. We want to limit antibiotics in chickens. No more artificial dyes in macaroni and cheese. No more dubious, strange emulsifiers. We want simple and easy-to-understand ingredients like fresh milk from local farms, cocoa beans, cream, sugar…. natural ingredients.

This reflects a new reality: consumers are walking away from most iconic food brands. Big food manufacturers are reacting by cleaning up their ingredient labels, acquiring healthier brands and coming out with a prodigious array of new products. Whenever possible, organic products.

Food companies are moving in the right direction, but it won’t be enough to save them. If they are to survive changes in eating habits, they need a fundamental shift in their approach. NOT just a façade (turned to organic labels).

The food movement over the past couple of decades has substantially altered consumer behavior and reshaped the competitive landscape. They want more and healthy products, no more sodas, replaced by water. Orange juice, a drink once seen as an important part of a healthy breakfast, is now more correctly considered a serious carrier of free sugar, stripped of its natural fibers. Sales of packaged cereals, also heavily sugar-laden, are down over 25 percent since 2000, with yogurt and granola taking their place. Frozen dinner sales are down. Sales at McDonald’s have been on a downward spiral for nearly three years (I can’t be happier): we want healthy food.

To survive, the food industry will need more than its current bag of tricks. There is a consumer shift ongoing: there was a time when consumers used to walk through every aisle of the grocery store, but today much of their time is being spent in the perimeter of the store with its vast collection of fresh products, raw produce and fresh prepared foods. Sales of raw fruits nd vegetables are also growing.

For consumers today, packaged goods equals the image of foods stripped of their nutrients and loaded with sugar. Also, decades of deceptive marketing have left large food companies with brands that are fast becoming liabilities (I can’t be happier for this too).

Food companies can’t merely tinker. For food companies to have any hope of survival, they will have to make bold changes in their core product offerings. Companies will have to drastically cut sugar, process less, go local and organic, use more fruits, vegetables and other whole foods. Develop fresh offerings. Just recently processed meat has been declared highly carcinogenic (rightly so! Excuse me!).

McDonalds needs to do more than use antibiotic-free chickens. The back of the house for its 36,000 restaurants currently looks like a mini-factory serving fried frozen patties and French fries. It needs to look more like a kitchen serving freshly prepared meals with locally sourced vegetables and grains.

This require a complete overhaul, major organizational restructuring and billions of dollars of investment, but these corporations have the resources. It may be their last chance.

The message is: WE ARE WHAT WE EAT. For the time being, bye-bye hot dogs.

….Always humble,

Angiolino