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The industry newsletter, FoodNavigator-Asia did a special edition on the food business in the Arabian Middle East:

Special Edition: Middle East Spotlight

Ahead of the region’s biggest food and beverage processing industry event, Gulfood Manufacturing, we shine the spotlight on the latest packaging and consumer trends that are driving innovation, while also assessing some of the major developments among the Middle East’s major brands.

• QR and AR: How smarter packaging can appeal to Middle East’s younger consumers:  The Middle East’s growing younger population is driving consumption of packaged food and beverage products, with firms turning to new packaging innovations to entice this lucrative market… Read
• Convenience, cost and clean label key for Middle East success – Ingredion:  Consumers in Middle East are increasingly more willing to try out new trends, but demands for convenience at an affordable price can pose a challenge for manufacturers… Read
• Matcha move: Nestle launches limited edition KitKat in UAE, KSA, Kuwait:  Nestle has launched a limited edition green tea matcha KitKat in selected GCC markets including UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait… Read
• Disrupting the meat industry: Global Food Industries ready to launch plant-based burgers:  UAE food firm Global Food Industries (GFI) has announced plans to launch its plant-based ‘not-chicken and not-beef burgers’ in November… Read
• Renewable energy: Nestle’s Dubai factory now the UAE’s largest private solar plant:  Nestle Middle East’s Al Maha factory in Dubai has started generating renewable energy with its 20,000 photovoltaic (PV) panels, that will supply 85% of the factory’s annual electricity consumption… Read
• A tale of two desert dairies:  Abu Dhabi’s Al Ain Farms and Dubai’s Al Rawabi have evolved differently over the last four decades to become regional majors… Read

Comment: My personal knowledge of the region is restricted to Dubai where, 15 years ago, nearly all food was imported (except dates, eggs, and some dairy), nearly all water was distilled from seawater (and, therefore, expensive), land almost entirely desert, and temperatures well into the 100s on most days—not exactly conducive to farming.

And they play rough over there:

• Heads of Qatar’s largest dairy firm named in lawsuit amid jihadist funding allegations: The Chairman and CEO of Qatar’s largest dairy firm Baladna have been named in papers filed in the British High Court, which alleges they helped fund the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front, a Syrian jihadist organisation…Read

I was fortunate to be able to attend the Natural Products Expo East in Baltimore on Saturday and worth the trip it was.

Here is where to see—and taste—what’s happening in health foods: ultra-processed (drinks, crackers, puffs) and not (nut butters, smoked fish).

Impressions

This is a huge market: the exhibits took up three full floors of two buildings in the convention center.  I think I only managed to wander through about half of them.

The big news is hemp.  An entire section of one of the floors was devoted to CBD oils, pills, and balms, but hemp booths were also scattered throughout.  I didn’t see many edibles—just a few gummy bears.

The buzz words are “all boxes checked.”  I heard this many times.  My favorite example: hemp water (“hydrate your body to the fullest”).  Here’s its list:

• All natural
• No artificial flavors
• No THC
• No preservatives
• Gluten free
• Dairy free
• Sugar free
• Sodium free
• Zero calories
• Non-GMO
• Vegan

Everyone wants to get into Whole Foods.  When I asked small producers where I could find their products, one after another said this.

Plant-based products are on the move.  I tried oat- and coconut-based ice creams (not bad, but still can’t compete with the 17% fat dairy versions, alas).

The Business Roundtable’s Statement (and see B Corporation Statement below)

The Business Roundtable, an organization of corporations, issued a statement last week—in a two-page advertisement with all the signatures in the Wall Street Journal, no less—that got this New York Times headline: Shareholder Value Is No Longer Everything, Top C.E.O.s Say.

What?  This is some kind of joke, right?

I’ve been arguing for years that the Shareholder Value Movement, which forced corporations to single-mindedly focus on maximizing profits at the expense of every other societal value—attention to the welfare of workers, farm animals, public health, environmental protection—is responsible for just about everything that is wrong with our food system.

Corporations are now saying that they are committing to change that?

The Business Roundtable’s press release says that it is redefining the purpose of corporations to promote an economy that serves all Americans—customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders.   Here is its website with all the commitment info.

Its statement, signed by nearly 200 corporations, commits them to [with my comments]:

• Delivering value to our customers [they aren’t already doing this?].
• Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them fairly and providing important benefits [this would indeed be a groundbreaking improvement].
• Dealing fairly and ethically with our suppliers [they weren’t doing this either?].
• Supporting the communities in which we work [another excellent idea].
• Generating long-term value for shareholders [isn’t this what they’ve been doing to the detriment of everything else?]

This sounds good, but how do they plan to solve the central dilemma?  How do they intend to pay workers decent wages, improve the communities in which they operate, and stop damaging the environment—and still maximize benefits for shareholders?

No surprise, they don’t say.

Also, as the Times noted,

There was no mention at the Roundtable of curbing executive compensation, a lightning-rod topic when the highest-paid 100 chief executives make 254 times the salary of an employee receiving the median pay at their company. And hardly a week goes by without a major company getting drawn into a contentious political debate. As consumers and employees hold companies to higher ethical standards, big brands increasingly have to defend their positions on worker pay, guns, immigration, President Trump and more.

I looked for food corporations among the signers (sorry if I missed any):

• Aramark
• Bayer (it owns Monsanto)
• Coca-Cola
• Land O’Lakes
• PepsiCo
• Procter & Gamble
• Walmart

This is a small list.  Where, for example, are Mars, Nestlé, and Unilever?

I see this as flat out public relations, a response to increasing public distrust of corporate America and demands for corporate accountability.

If the signers mean business, let’s see them deal with workers’ wages right away.

Otherwise, I’m not holding my breath

The B Corporation Statement

And here’s more.  Sunday’s New York Times carried this advertisement from Certified B Corporations “meeting the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.”

The ad is addressed to Business Rountable CEOs.

We are part of a community of Certified B Corporations who are walking the walk of stakeholder capitalism…We operate with a better model of corporate governance—benefit corporate governance—which gives us, and could give you, a way to combat short-termism and the freedom to make decisions to balance profit and purpose.

Among its food company signers are Ben & Jerry’s, Cabot Creamery Cooperative, Danone North America, King Arthur Flour, Sir Kensington’s, Stonyfield Organic, and Stumptown Coffee (there are others, as well).

I read this as a challenge: if the Business Rountable CEOs are serious about ensuring as B Corporations do, that “the purpose of capitalism is to work for everyone and for the long term,” why don’t they start by becoming B Corporations?

Until they do, the Business Roundtable statement is smoke and mirrors, to distract us from the damage the corporations are doing to our society and to our democratic institutions.

If you have been reading FoodPolitics.com for long, you know that I love collections of industry newsletter columns on specific topics.  This one is on meal kits.  If you’ve never tried one, these are boxes of ingredients delivered to your door with recipes for what to do with them.

I’m not a user.  I tried two different kinds.   I have to admit that they cooked up into delicious meals.  But, I could not believe the number of bowls and pots I needed to make them, the enormous mess I had to clean up, and the piles of packaging that I had to throw out.

With that said, some of them are doing pretty well, and some are trying new things, according to these articles from FoodNavigator-USA’s terrific writers.

Special Edition: What’s for dinner tonight? The meal kit (r) evolution

Meal kit brands have tapped into a consumer need, but some have struggled to build a viable business model, with subscription based home delivery firms finding it hard to retain customers, and retailers finding it hard to manage shrink on in-store meal kits. The rapid growth of services from GrubHub to UberEats enabling consumers to order pre-prepared food for delivery in 20 minutes without a subscription has also presented consumers with options that didn’t exist when many meal kit brands got started. So where does the market go from here?

• Home Chef: Our instore meal kit business could be bigger than our ecommerce business in pretty short order:  Home Chef meal kits are now available in more than 1,000 Kroger stores targeting the significant subset of consumers that buy into the meal kit concept but don’t want to commit to a subscription, or don’t want to plan meals so far ahead, says Home Chef chief revenue officer Rich DeNardis… Read
• Meal kit co Purple Carrot acquired by Japanese online grocer for $12.8m (with $17.2m to follow if earn-out goals are met):  Plant-based meal kit co Purple Carrot has been sold to Japan’s largest meal kit and organic food delivery service Oisix ra daichi for an upfront payment of $12.8m, with another $17.2m due in 2021 if it achieves unspecified earn-out* goals… Read
• Blue Apron’s stock pops after partnering with Beyond Meat, but can it salvage the company’s stock?  Beleaguered meal kit company Blue Apron’s stock price surged 36% overnight after announcing July 16 that upcoming menus would feature the popular plant-based burger from Beyond Meat, which also saw a 3.6% bump in its stock in the same period… Read
• Chef’d and True Chef meal kits to ‘double if not triple’ retail footprint this year:  True Food Innovations will steam ahead expanding its retail offering of Chef’d and True Chef meal kits this year and will also reveal an exclusive licensing deal with a major CPG brand, its president says… Read
• Sun Basket expands beyond dinner to better reach ‘all people in the US interested in healthy eating’, says CMO:  Meal kit company Sun Basket has expanded its offerings from ready-to-make dinners to an online market of breakfast, lunch, and snack options created in collaboration with partner brands including bone broth and noodle company Nona Lim, fresh pasta brand Tallutos, soy producer Hodo Foods, and Hu Chocolate… Read
• Meal delivery service Veestro shares three strategies for making a startup profitable quickly:  Starting a business is one thing, but making it profitable is another, and one which often requires some trial and error, according to Monica Klausner, the co-founder of the plant-based meal delivery service Veestro… Read
• Sun Basket seals $30m Series E investment ramping up automation, personalization, and healthy meal offerings:  Meal kit service Sun Basket has closed $30m in a Series E investment led by PivotNorth Capital to accelerate its direct-to-consumer business offering AI-powered meal personalization and meal plans from breakfast to dinner… Read
• Blue Apron to trial same-day on demand delivery service in the Bay area:  Blue Apron will pilot a same-day on-demand service in the Bay Area enabling consumers to order meals by noon for delivery the same evening in an ongoing attempt to reach customers that buy into the meal kit concept but don’t necessarily want to commit to a subscription… Read
• Giant Food amps up fresh offer in new store concept: ‘We’re competing with everyone that sells food’:  We’re no longer a nation of pantry stockers. Many Americans don’t know what’s for dinner tonight, never mind next week, and with grocers now competing with everyone from GrubHub to IKEA, is it time for a radical rethink of the traditional supermarket layout as the lines between food retail and food service continue to blur?.. Read
• Instore meal kit sales reached $93m in 2018, says Nielsen:  US sales of in-store meal kits reached $93m in 2018, according to the latest Nielsen data, with 187 new retail meal kit items introduced during the year as high-profile brands sought to reach consumers that like the concept, but don’t want to commit to an online subscription… Read
• eMeals: We’re offering inspiration, curation, and delivery; but you have to chop your own carrots…Preparing delicious healthy home cooked meals every night requires inspiration, time and energy: things most working people are short of, hence, the growth of meal kits. But not everyone can afford them, is comfortable with the amount of packaging they create, or wants to commit to a subscription over the long-term, says Forrest Collier, CEO of meal planning and grocery shopping platform eMeals… Read
• OpenTable hops on mobile food ordering wagon:  Online restaurant reservation company OpenTable is expanding into food delivery and pick-up services by partnering with Caviar, Grubhub, and Uber Eats… Read
• Grubhub’s ‘State of the Plate’ report: Orders of the Impossible Burger up 82% year on year:  Grubhub has seen a significant increase in vegan and plant-based food orders in the past year based on user data of more than 500,000 food orders placed through the mobile app on an average day… Read

One small table says it all.

For the record, I’m not related to the top ranked company.

The George Institute in Australia (see clarification below) publishes an annual index holding the ten largest U.S. food and beverage corporations accountable for how they addrss nutrition challenges.

The 2018 Index ranks corporations on their governance, products, accessability, marketing, lifestyle, labeling, and engagement.  Here’s what it looks like.

Here’s how this is explained:

Seven out of ten companies claim to focus on improving health and nutrition (all except Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper Snapple and Kraft Heinz), as expressed in their mission statements or corporate growth strategies, the objectives they defined related to health and wellness are mostly limited to product development, product reformulation and responsible marketing. Only two companies (Nestlé and Unilever) have defined a more comprehensive set of objectives within their nutrition strategy.

To remind you: food corporations are not social service or public health agencies.  They have stockholders to please as their first priority.  The conflicts of interest with public health approaches are obvious.  That’s why none of them does particularly well on this Index.

Clarification from a reader

I believe you are referring to the US Spotlight Index, a product of the Access to Nutrition Foundation, an independent nonprofit in the Netherlands.  (https://www.accesstonutrition.org).  The George Institute provided research support for the US Spotlight index. RWJF [Robert Wood Johnson Foundation] was a major funder.  The Foundation has also published an India Spotlight Index (2016) and a Global Index (latest in 2018).  Shiriki Kumanyika chairs the Expert Group.

Lisa Young, author of Finally Full, Finally Slim, has long argued that portion control is the key to maintaining healthy weight.

Now, the industry-funded (see list here) British Nutrition Foundation has issued a “handy” guide to appropriate portion sizes.

I put “handy” in quotes because the system is based on hand measurements.

The guide tells you how many servings you are supposed to have each day from each of the major food groups, and how to tell the serving size for a very long list of foods.

I find all of this hugely complicated, and don’t think you should need to learn what looks like a guide to sign language to know how to eat.

I’m especially suspicious because the Nutrition Foundation is an industry-sponsored group and it is very much in the interest of the food industry to have you take full responsibility for controlling your own food intake.  If you eat too much, it’s your fault for not learning this system.

How about food companies making and serving smaller portions?  Nope.  It’s up to you to take greater personal responsibility for what you eat.

Try this for yourself and see what I mean.

• The guide is here.
• The full list of portion sizes is here.
• A one-page summary is here.

I don’t usually pay attention to what the American Council for Science and Health (ACSH) says or does, mainly because it is a long-standing front group for the food and chemical industries, and it predictably supports the interests of those industries over public health (see US Right to Know’s analysis).

But then I read this from the Center on Media and Democracy: Corporate Front Group, American Council on Science and Health, Smears List of Its Enemies as “Deniers for Hire.”

Smeared by the site are scientists Tyrone Hayes, Stephanie Seneff, and Gilles-Éric Séralini; New York Times reporter Danny Hakim and columnist Mark Bittman; well-known food and science writer Michael Pollan; nutrition and food studies professor Marion Nestle; public interest groups like U.S. Right to Know, Greenpeace, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sierra Club, the Environmental Working Group, and Union of Concerned Scientists; past and present CMD staff, and many other individuals ACSH does not like.

Clearly, I’m in good company.  But what, exactly, have I—a “Crankster,” apparently—done to deserve this honor?  It seems that I:

• Support organic foods. Yes, I do.  They are far better for the environment.  I explain why I favor organics in my book, What to Eat (2006).
  
• Express concerns about the safety of glyphosate.  Guilty as charged, and I’m not the only one; the International Agency for Cancer Research says glyphosate (Roundup) is likely to be carcinogenic.
• Joined in attacks on Kevin Folta: Sorry—this one baffles me.  I don’t recall ever commenting on Dr. Folta or his work (he’s mentioned on this site once, in a list of documents obtained by the New York Times).  Perhaps ACSH is referring to my concerns about the aggressive tactics of the GMO industry and its supporters, which I wrote about in detail in my book, Safe Food (2003). 
• Express concerns about food chemicals.  I am indeed concerned about these chemicals, especially with respect to increasing evidence that they harm soil, beneficial insects (bees in particular), and, perhaps, humans. 
• Express concerns about the role of the food industry in promoting unhealthful products. Also, guilty as charged. I write carefully referenced books on this topic, particularly Food Politics (2002) and Soda Politics (2015).  
• Express concerns about industry funding of nutrition research. That’s the topic of my most recent, also extensively referenced, Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.

What can I say?  Read my work and decide for yourself if such concerns are justified.