Food Week January 17 2025

Welcome to Food Week January 17, 2025. Programming note: we will stop referring to Avian Influenza as AI and start calling HPAI – Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza so we don’t confuse it with the more dangerous Artificial Intelligence. AI generated pic tho. I think others will be adapting this signifier and you will be hearing it a lot more as the situation worsens with shortages and a further increase in prices. Lots more and a quiz. Enjoy!

MACRO

• After months of progress, inflation accelerated in December rather significantly.

• More and more people are dropping their home insurance(!?)

• Which one of these 5 things is not a vegetable?
  • Romanesco
  • Oca
  • Tigernut
  • Avocado
  • Fiddleheads
  • (answer below)

RETAIL AND CONSUMER

• Albertson’s cuts a bunch of staff after merger falls through. Makes one wonder whether they were going to wait for these cuts until they announced the merger with Kroger. You know, the weasel way.

• The best thing to do for weight loss is to change habits. Perhaps this is another way weight loss drugs could help. Also, a new definition of obesity not so based on Body Mass Index.

• Ever go into Walgreen’s and be confronted by doors with pictures of food that isn’t actually there? Wasn’t thatt annoying? You weren’t the only one. It was about as successful as their idea to lock a bunch of shelves up.

• Small New England grocer tries to hold the line on egg prices. But a small guy isn’t going to change the supply problems the HPAI is causing.

• The worst frozen pizza brand.

RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE

• Restaurants are now making hard decisions as HPAI has caused more and more shortages of eggs as well as spiking prices.

• Among the many things wrong with the schools is the idea that lunch time is something that can be whittled away to nothing. Washington state considers a minimum lunch time.

• Rome voted top restaurant destination in the world.

• Chick-Fil-A lemonade is so popular they have turned to robots to squeeze the lemons

• Starbucks reverses its open door, no purchase necessary policy.

• The best bakeries in America.

• Steak and Shake now cooking its french fries in beef tallow

FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

• HPAI outbreaks continue. After losing 10 million layers the last quarter of 2024, there are 11 million birds currently affected by quarantines and culls. This is a situation that will more likely worsen than improve in the short to medium term

• JBS settles for $4 million over child labor claims. Perdue settles for $3 million for the same practices.

• As predicted here, the FDA bans red dye no, 3. 2024 was a generally big year for ingredient bans. Here are some of the foods affected.

• Port strike averted.

• More disgusting information about the Boar’s Head plants.

• Protein powders sure have a lot of heavy metals in them.

DRINKS

• Last week we proclaimed Bourbon was over. Now the distillers have to deal with all the aged liquor they produced during the boom. Almost everywhere, consumption of alcohol is down. But not India. And if you want a unique experience, Whistle Pig – one of my favorites – now has an alcohol free old fashioned.

• I’ll take Infantilizing cocktails for $200, Alex: The Twix Chocolate Gladiator.

• The journalist who has been writing about craft beers for decades goes all philosophical.

• An Amaro from Mexico. And a high quality vanilla bitters.

• The Kennedy’s – John and Jackie – preferred daiquiri’s made with falernum which sounds awesome. Also from the olds, the Rolls Royce cocktail.

FOOD WEEK January 17 LAGNIAPPE

• The drug store/malt shop that was a meeting place for the civil rights movement has been restored.

• Some vegetables you’ve never heard of. But not avocados as they are a fruit.

• Sumo Citrus or the shiranui orange is becoming the not new fruit, a smaller sweeter grapefruit, packed with vitamin C.

• States with the worst drinking water.

• How to choose a juicy lemon.

• Would you add Marmite to your spaghetti sauce? Only if a.) you’ve never tasted it or b.) you are British.