Fresh Produce Discussion Blog

Created by The Packer's National Editor Tom Karst

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Why don't we eat more?

That's the gist of The Los Angeles Times piece on produce consumptoin this morning. The lede makes me laugh:

If fruit and vegetables are so great, everyone must be eating tons! Well, they aren't.

TK: Any lede that contains an exclamation point is priceless. Let's continue!

The latest survey from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, published in March using data collected from 1998 to 2002, found that just 28% of American adults get their basic two servings of fruit, and 32% get their three vegetables.

TK: The article goes on to say that the deficiency in f/v consumption is probably worse now and then explores why we don't eat like should. (Hank, why do you drink?) One expert says we are programmed to like fat, sugar and salt, and an accusing finger also is pointed out the disparity in advertising dollars between what f/v spends and what fast food/manufactured food processors spend. Other problems include lack of knowledge of how to prepare produce, availability and cost. What caught my eye in this story - given my recent trip to the U.S. Apple Association Outlook and Marketing Conference - was the last line of the story:

"If you had an apple on the counter, lots of people would pass it by. But if you cored it and pared it, the apple would go in seconds." '

TK: U.S. Apple estimates now put the volume of fresh apples used to make apple slices between 2 million and 3 million cartons per year and the category is growing fast. More later on the presentation at the conference by Tony Freytag, marketing director of Crunch Pak LLC .

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1 Comments:

At August 26, 2007 at 7:01:00 AM CDT , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Americans celebrate as Big Mac turns 40

August 24, 2007 - 10:46AM


McDonald's Big Mac, the triple-decker burger that helped breed America's super-size culture and restaurants' ever-expanding jumbo meals, is turning 40.

For some fast-food junkies, that is cause for celebration.

"The flavours that come together - it's like heaven in your mouth," said April Kohlhaas, a 31-year-old Chicago resident.

"It's just tradition, like American comfort food."

The Big Mac was first introduced in 1967 by Jim Delligatti, a McDonald's franchise owner in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.

A year later, it became a staple of McDonald's menus nationwide.

Since then, the burger has been a pop culture phenomenon, spawning everything from a well-known commercial jingle extolling its ingredients ("Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun," ) to a currency-evaluation index created by The Economist.

Along the way, more people in more than 100 countries have given in to Big Mac attacks, according to Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald's Corp.

"The Big Mac is certainly one of our most popular sandwiches," said spokeswoman Danya Proud. "There is only one Big Mac and there will only ever be one Big Mac."

McDonald's estimates 550 million Big Macs are sold each year in the United States alone, about 17 per second.

With 540 calories and 29 grams of fat each, it is enough to make nutritionists cringe.

"When it was eaten once in a while there wasn't anything wrong with it," said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.

"It was just fast food, something fun once in a while. But then it became everyday fare."

Andrea Hawkins had her first Big Mac in high school and likes the treat so much she started the Facebook group "Big Mac-aholics."

She has put her Big Mac attacks on hiatus while she gets ready for her wedding next month.

But that is not stopping her friends from building a cake-like tower of McDonald's hamburgers for her upcoming bachelorette party.

"(The) first treat on the way to the honeymoon will be a Big Mac," jokes the 25-year-old from Dayton, Ohio who prefers hers without cheese.

To celebrate the burger's anniversary, Delligatti, 89, and his family opened a Big Mac Museum Restaurant this week in North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, full of memorabilia, celebratory exhibits and "the world's largest Big Mac statue."

Love them or hate them, the Big Mac has grown from its humble beginnings to become a cultural unifier, said pop culture expert and author Rachel Weingarten.

"You can live in Beijing or Brooklyn and you can enjoy as your favourite snack a Big Mac attack," she said.

"Maybe you didn't grow up watching the same cartoons, maybe you didn't grow up speaking the same language, maybe you grew up next door to each other and never said hello, but you suddenly have a point of reference - this warm, yummy, bad-for-you, sometimes-naughty thing."

© 2007 AP DIGITAL

 

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