Food Week July 27, 2024

Welcome to Food Week July 27, 2024. A little under the weather but I don’t think it’s because of listeria. Or glysophate. Or chlormequat, Or salmonella. Or banana ketchup. (Actually the last one sounds awesome.) Lots of non-adulterated food info too. Enjoy!

MACRO

• Very strong economic growth and slow inflation. I don’t know what you people want.

• Coal – the dirtiest energy – is not declining but increasing as a source, driven by India.

• Project 2025 promises to end to federal environmental rules for farms, redcue food safety regulations add work requirements for food aid , reduce school meals for children and discontinue farm subsidies.

RETAIL AND CONSUMER

• Flamin’ Hot Cheetos – star of Netflix and lawsuits

• 2 dead, at least 30 sick from food-borne illness outbreak that appears to have started with Boar’s Head products, Delis have a problem in that if one suppliers sends in contaminated – in this case listeria – product, it can infect the entire inventory.

• In another kind of poisoning, the Kelce brothers relesaed a new cereal concept combining 3 different, highly sugared General Mills products.

• Home meal kits are a mystery no one has solved

• People have gotten so used to having handles on their paper bags that they go into high dudgeon when they are removed. They are a relatively new innovation; Chat GPT tells me they weren’t that common until the 80s.

• A Costco deli misstep?

RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE

• Chipotle in a fight with influencers, social media memes about smaller portion sizes.

• Waffle House workers are organzing for union. While the company has slowly improved compensation, th eplurality of workers still make below $10/hr. and each worker is required to buy a meal a tthe end of the shift, whether they want it or not.

• The people at Texas Roadhouse are good at their jobs.

• Portillo’s, confronted with its own union movement, goes nuclear and challenges the existence of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This is a consquence of the recent Supreme Court rejection of Chevron.

• The world’s most famous dumpling chain Din Tai Fung arrives in New York.

FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

• The movement to seed-free oils continues to gain momentum, reaching Europe.

• Colorado mandates surveillance of herds for HPAI (Avian Influenza).

• Quaker Oats, has another issue with product adulteration. After salmonella, this time the presence of Chlormequat in oat cereals.

• Glyphosates in Eurpean rivers coning more from laundry detergent than from farmers?

• I don’t know about the economics of it but pet food company is cleared to sell lab grown meat.

DRINK CORNER

• A start up in the whisky business means that you may go 12 years before you release your first label, Daftmill has done that and apparently very well.

• It is Pimm’s Cup season! Here is a white sangria version for you to try.

• The Nutcracker is an NYC tradition: an illicit frozen cocktail made for the beach.

FOOD WEEK JULY 27 LAGNIAPPE

• Why have people been keeping banana ketchup a secret from me?

• Countries are bringing their unique domestic foods to Paris for the Olympic. The Irish think this means oats. At least they aren’t from Quaker.

• Prediction: next hot food destination: Lagos.

• The green stem rule for getting ripe peaches.

• 11 common foods that are in reality highly-processed.

• Sausage grillng tips.