Food Week March 22, 2024

Welcome to Food Week March 22, 2024. A lot to review while you are watching basketball this weekend. New technologies for packaging and protein in soy, drone delivery of food, good vermouth, healthy sauces and the coming chocolate crisis. And much more. Enjoy!

MACRO

• Financial markets bounce back. Latest shutdown averted.

• No country benefits more than the US from immigration. It will $7 trillion in GDP over the next decade.

• Medicare expand coverage to weight loss drugs.

RETAIL AND CONSUMER

• The Federal Trade Commission says grocers leveraged the inflation caused by COVID supply chain disruption to drive profits. This wouldn’t be as easy if there was more competition. But two of the main culprits – Kroger and Albertson’s – want to merge.

• Unilever spinning off its ice cream business, including Ben & Jerry’s.

• Expect the price of your chocolate to double or triple soon. Climate change and supply issues have the market in a mess.

• A dietician recommends healthy sauces. It is mostly about making sure you aren’t falling for label claims.

• A list of the fruits and vegetables with the most pesticides.

RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE

• There are now more Starbucks around the world than Subways.

• Arby’s stepping in as Tennessee legislature refuses to address student hunger.

• Still working out the kinks on drone delivery of fast food.

• Do restaurants recycle bread baskets? Well, some.

• There are 62 Michelin starred restaurants in France. If your are heading to the Olympics, you might make a reservation now.

• This South Carolina restaurant in an old church with traditional soul food just oozes charm.

FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

• Farmed salmon isn’t very nutritious.

• Technology developed for edible coatings to replace plastic packaging.

• Protectionism or public health concerns? Senate passes a bill banning Paraguayan beef over foot and mouth disease concerns. But it feels a lot like election year grandstanding.

• Scientist have breakthrough, with soybeans containing protein from pork. The GMO crop is described as a vessel for the protein but is (probably) deliberately vague.

• Spain’s drought grinds on.

DRINK CORNER

• The best wine clubs, as per New York Times. And the best boxed wines for whatever occasions that call for that.

• Frank Sinatra and the origin of the rusty nail. TLDR: he was a better singer than he was a mixologist.

• The vermouth most of us have been exposed to is, well, nasty. Here are good ones instead. Try a Manhattan with one of the reds here and your life will be better.

• The essential home bar mix.

• An article about canned cocktails that is mostly noteworthy because of the lack of effort in writing and editing.

FOOD WEEK MARCH 15 LAGNIAPPE

• It was always great walking just north and west of the Loop in Chicago and all of a sudden getting a big of chocolate aroma. But Blommer, a mainstay since 1939, is closing it’s downtown plant. Corporate offices to remain in Chicago.

• The brutal truth about of retired Girl Scout cookies.

• Intermittent fasting linked to heart attacks.

• Are urban populations losing the gut flora necessary to digest plants?

• A podcast on sneaking food into the airport.

• Super rare and, of course, super expensive fruit shipped right to your door.