Climategate: Dangers Of Relying On Manipulated Science
We have written many stories and given many speeches related to sustainability, and since sustainability is not a new concept we were often asked, “Why now? Why the sudden interest in the subject?” The answer, clearly, was global warming. This both directly created urgency and created the basis for expected government action, such as carbon […]
Thanksgiving’s Journey Of Freedom
You Say Potato, I Say Yam is the title of a piece in The New York Times op-ed section written by Jessica B. Harris, an English professor and African-American woman: On Oct. 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared the final Thursday of November to be a national holiday of Thanksgiving. That came just over a […]
Arugula Shines At White House Dinner
The White House hasn’t announced what will be on the President’s Thanksgiving table but the menu for President Obama’s first State Dinner included a first course with “White House Arugula” — meaning it had been grown in the White House garden. The First Lady, Michelle Obama, worked with the chefs to develop “a menu that […]
Thanksgiving Chemicals
The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) and its irrepressible President Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H. are an important counter weight to scare-mongering pseudo-scientific organizations. ACSH has often spoken out on pesticide issues with pieces such as… An Unhappy Anniversary: The Alar ‘Scare’ Ten Years Later … ‘A’ is for ‘Asinine’: Alar and 60 […]
Deep Fried Turkey In This Health Conscious Age
If you need evidence for why attempts to increase produce consumption based on health are so difficult, all you have to do is look at — in this supposedly health-conscious age — the increasingly common trend of deep frying the Thanksgiving Turkey. If you need evidence as to the power of the media, just look […]
Anatomy Of A Recession
Take a look at these two pictorial representations of job losses during the current recession. This one, from a privately held Austin-based economic development consulting firm, is an animated map that “provides a striking visual of employment trends over the last business cycle using net changes in jobs from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics […]
Retailers Eye Target’s
Food Expansion Plans
Target is a quandary when it comes to food. Its “Cheap Chic” approach that led it to be characterized by shoppers across America as “Tarjey” in a mock French pronunciation was extraordinarily successful right up to the current recession. It was not, however, instantly obvious how such a positioning could be applied to food and […]
Pundit Mailbag — Is Wal-Mart Adopting Other Retailers’ Buying Practices?
Our piece, As Manolo Reyes Takes Over Ron McCormick’s Role, Wal-Mart Squeezes Vendors To Generate Higher Profits, brought a number of interesting notes including this one from an industry veteran who says it is basic economics: Wal-Mart putting more pressure on suppliers is nothing really new! All the chains stores do it! The mere fact […]
Tesco’s Fresh & Easy Promoting Its Pricing In A Big Way
A hat tip to Chris Puentes, President at Interfresh, Inc., for sending us this photo of a truck parked in front of the Fresh & Easy store a block away from his office. It demonstrates the lengths Tesco’s Fresh & Easy is going to communicate its positioning as a low price leader: Chris has been […]
Got Produce? Increasing Consumption One Item At A Time:In Search Of Product Innovations
All the time and attention paid to the proposal to introduce a generic promotion board to the fresh produce industry won’t be wasted if it leads to a new focus on increasing consumption. In our piece, Got Produce? Next Move Is To Push For School Salad Bars, we pointed to a policy approach, in this […]
