Welcome to Food Week July 10 -16, 2023. Hot temps, good calories, bad sweeteners, fake foie gras, oily coffee, dumped milk, brown M&Ms, regional barbecue and the death of Anchor brewing. Lots more too. So stay cool and enjoy.
MACRO
- Inflation down again and labor still strong. Is a soft landing really in sight?
- A brief biography of the Biden Administration official trying to fight industry consolidation that plagues many industries including food production. But here’s an argument that profit taking is only a minor contributor to the recent inflation
- It’s Hot. I guess global warming isn’t fake.
RETAIL AND CONSUMER
- Calories in, calories out is sure taking a log time to die. But General Mills is leaning into products with protein and good calories for weight loss.
- Related, the increased scrutiny regarding aspartame will likely sound a death knell for dozens (hundreds?) of low-cal products.
- You’ve just bought a ton (maybe literally) of agricultural products to support your community. What do you do now? Some tips.
- Costco to monitor membership fees, a surprisingly large contributor to profits.
RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE
- Faux Gras. A vegetarian version of Foie Gras which will likely lead to more bans of the original stuff.
- Chipotle rolls out avocado peeling robot. I for one welcome our new robot overlords.
- Starbuck’s expands Oleato. Highly scientific survey of people standing next to me in Southern California store this week garnered this response: No.
- Burger King Thailand introduces a cheeseburger with 20 slices of cheese and loses the burger altogether.
FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN
- Lab-grown meat has yet to show that it is anymore commercially viable than other alt-proteins. But the money keeps pouring in.
- There’s way too much milk and now they are dumping it in places like Lake Michigan. It’s probably time to drop price supports as demand wanes. Other than a spike during COVID, it has decreased each year of the last 13. And alternatives aren’t going away.
- The first effect of El Nino taking place in Peru. Get used to hearing about it.
- Formosona variant of Cavendish banana seems resistant to fusarium
FOOD WEEK LAGNIAPPE
- About glass gem corn.
- Anchor Brewing, one of the godfathers of the craft brewing movement, goes bankrupt.
- The story of Van Halen’s brown M&Ms.
- The best two ingredient cocktails for the lazy bartender.
- A guide to regional barbecue.
- Warren Buffet’s wife complains about $4 cup of coffee.
- Americans spend billions on peanut butter, made possible by hydrogenation, which means it really isn’t that healthy