Tag Archives: food

Supermarket chains suffering in wealthy countries

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Supermarkets in numerous wealthy countries are having a hard time competing with the wide range of choices offered to consumers:

As they scramble to maintain market share, the big four British grocers can take comfort from the fact that at least they are not alone. The global supermarket industry has its share of epic competitive scraps, too. In Europe alone, the discounters that have wrought havoc for Tesco, Morrisons, Asda and Sainsbury’s have an even more powerful grip on the industry. While Aldi and Lidl control around 8% of the UK market, according to figures from market research group Kantar the share controlled by discounters in France is 10% and in Germany – home of Aldi and Lidl – it is 37%. In the UK, two-thirds of the market is controlled by four players; this is the same as in Germany, while in France 56% of the market is controlled by the top four and in Spain just under 50%. A look at these markets, plus some of the biggest outside Europe, shows that every territory poses challenges for big grocers…

As in the UK, discounters and supermarkets in Germany are faced with shoppers who are less and less willing to drive out of town for their weekly shop, and more likely to do small, frequent trips in urban areas. In recent years, the trend has led to a revival in big cities like Hamburg and Berlin of the traditional Tante Emma Läden or corner shops, which have been able to be much more flexible in reacting to trends or food scandals than their bigger rivals…

Between the discount stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets there is a constant battle going on to woo the increasingly cash-strapped consumer. “Supermarkets are really the only sector [in Italy] where competition has worked out,” said Liliana Cantone of Italian consumer association Altroconsumo. “The players are doing their best to offer lower prices, and consumers can really benefit from this.”…

The market is far from impenetrable, however. Walmart, the only “everyday low pricing” operator in Japan, has forced domestic rivals to keep their prices low where it operates stores. Costco, with 20 stores nationwide, has proved a success, offering prices comparable to those found in the US. Tesco’s foray into Japan was frustrated, in part, by consumer idiosyncrasies.

Sounds like some contradictory forces at work. On one hand, increased globalization means food can travel all over the world. It might seem that such a global market would be controlled by some major players in the grocery industry who could use their size to their advantage. Yet, that same globalization allows other players to get into the game and gives consumers more low-priced options, usually something seen as a good in free-market economies. Throw in debates about subsidizing food production, getting healthy food to places that need it, and genetically modified food and you have a retail sector that is experiencing a lot of flux.

Just one quick thought: I’ve been in supermarkets in England, France, and Japan and they all seem more similar to each other than to the American version. Even not looking at Walmart or other big box stores with groceries, the American supermarket is an amazing size with tremendous variety. In contrast, stores in the other countries are smaller, something that may be cultural as well as economic due to higher rent and land prices.

Sociologists: home-cooked meals may not be worth the stress, money

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A new study examined mothers and families in order to look at the value of home-cooked meals:

But while home-cooked meals are typically healthier than restaurant food, sociologists Sarah Bowen, Sinikka Elliott, and Joslyn Brenton from North Carolina State University argue that the stress that cooking puts on people, particularly women, may not be worth the trade-off.

The researchers interviewed 150 mothers from all walks of life and spent 250 hours observing 12 families in-depth, and they found “that time pressures, tradeoffs to save money, and the burden of pleasing others make it difficult for mothers to enact the idealized vision of home-cooked meals advocated by foodies and public health officials.” The mothers they interviewed had largely internalized the social message that “home-cooked meals have become the hallmark of good mothering, stable families, and the ideal of the healthy, productive citizen,” but found that as much as they wanted to achieve that ideal, they didn’t have the time or money to get there. Low-income mothers often have erratic work schedules, making it impossible to have set meal times. Even for middle-class working mothers who are able to be home by 6 p.m., trying to cook a meal while children are demanding attention and other chores need doing becomes overwhelming…

Beyond just the time and money constraints, women find that their very own families present a major obstacle to their desire to provide diverse, home-cooked meals. The women interviewed faced not just children but grown adults who are whiny, picky, and ungrateful for their efforts. “We rarely observed a meal in which at least one family member didn’t complain about the food they were served,” the researchers write. Mothers who could afford to do so often wanted to try new recipes and diverse ingredients, but they knew that it would cause their families to reject the meals. “Instead, they continued to make what was tried and true, even if they didn’t like the food themselves.” The saddest part is that picky husbands and boyfriends were just as much, if not more, of a problem than fussy children.

The researchers quote food writer Mark Bittman, who says that the goal should be “to get people to see cooking as a joy rather than a burden.” But while cooking “is at times joyful,” they argue, the main reason that people see cooking mostly as a burden is because it is a burden. It’s expensive and time-consuming and often done for a bunch of ingrates who would rather just be eating fast food anyway. If we want women—or gosh, men, too—to see cooking as fun, then these obstacles need to be fixed first. And whatever burden is left needs to be shared.

It seems like there is a bigger issue here: while such meals may be healthier but more stressful and expensive, the bigger issue is the idealization of home-cooked meals. In other words, the standard of “normal” mothering and home life is one that is difficult for many people to regularly meet. When they fall short of the standard, mothers feel guilty because society suggests this is one of the markers of a good mother. If it came down to it, might the particular food on the table be less important than the fact that the family regularly eats together?

Seeing the effects of globalization in Mumbai’s suburban restaurants

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A historian looks at the changing suburban dining patterns in Mumbai’s suburbs:

“Globalization has brought in a consumerist culture and the socio-cultural category that we broadly label as middle class is growing in importance. The movement of people, culture goods and ideas from one part of the world to another has forged new links between diverse cultures and peoples.

“In India, the food service industry is a very old business. Such service evolved from early khanavals and small restaurants in Bombay. While taverns and inns typically provided food and lodging, the food service industry as a whole has been continually growing throughout the last two decades. The industry has seen one of the strongest continuous growth periods in the mid to later part of 1990’s. While much of the growth has occurred in restaurant and catering, institutional food service has also shown steady growth. The restaurant industry has strongly established itself as an essential part of urban India’s lifestyle. Consumers continue to look for convenience, value and an entertaining environment away from the stresses of daily life, and restaurateurs are filling those needs. In recent years, the number of alternatives available to consumers for purchasing food prepared away from home has increased dramatically…

“The study is also important because restaurants are evolving from just places to eat to an entire experience. While we have in Mumbai and its suburbs, full-service restaurants, hotel-restaurants, fast-food restaurants, buffets, food courts, tea & coffee parlors, fine dine restaurants, messes, canteens, khanavals, there are no full-fledged studies, neither sociological, nor anthropological nor historical, either on their popularity or clientele. Such a study will discuss their growth, strengths, and will naturally be a record of the eating out behavior of the Mumbaikar…

“I hypothesize that: There has been a mushrooming of restaurants in suburban Mumbai in the post-globalization period; Consumption patterns have undergone a drastic change during the period under study; The attitude towards public dining in the suburbs has undergone a change; The growing middle class is the clientele at places of public dining; Double incomes, travel abroad and cookery shows are greatly responsible for the change in the attitude towards food and dining; Food consumption patterns in restaurants can shape and influence the social history of suburban Mumbai.

Sounds like it could be quite interesting on multiple levels. The study of food seems to be growing in importance among academics as it involves looking at common practices and it is relatively easy to make comparisons. Yet, I’m most intrigued by this idea of a suburban restaurant culture developing outside Mumbai. It isn’t just about what food is ordered, prepared, and ends up on plates – it is also about a way of life around suburban restaurants. If I had to describe this in the United States, it would likely involve lots of chain restaurants surrounded by parking lots and populated by relatively middle-class individuals looking to enjoy food outside the home. Perhaps one could focus on the restaurant: it often is in an outlot of a larger shopping center, it has some sort of kitschy Americana decor, tends to have some televisions showing sports, and patrons don’t stay too long. Or focus on how Americans budget money for eating out as a regular part of their entertainment and/or food spending. All of this looks different than urban eating which may focus on smaller restaurants, hipper and more cutting-edge places, and a different feel.

Building suburban subdivisions around farms, CSAs, and food production

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Over 200 new subdivisions feature a new amenity that the neighborhood is built around: a farm or food production operation.

It’s called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA. In planning a new neighborhood, a developer includes some form of food production — a farm, community garden, orchard, livestock operation, edible park — that is meant to draw in new buyers, increase values and stitch neighbors together.

“These projects are becoming more and more mainstream,” says , a fellow with the Urban Land Institute. He estimates that more than 200 developments with an agricultural twist already exist nationwide…

After World War II, Americans escaping crowded cities flocked to the suburbs. Most suburbanites didn’t want to be right next to a farm, and so restrictive zoning pushed livestock and tractors out of new residential areas. Now, says Lindsay Ex, an environmental planner with the city of Fort Collins, municipalities are being forced to change their codes…

The marketing of these new neighborhoods appears to be working — at least at Bucking Horse, where the developer says 200 single-family lots were snatched up within days of going on the market. Values of existing homes have jumped 25 percent since construction began on the agricultural amenities.

My question: does supporting a local food source within your suburban subdivision offset the evils of sprawl and suburbanization? A farm might help mitigate the results of sprawl including needing to drive for food (now it is closer by, maybe walkable), there is open space (though it is used for food production – so a different version of “fake”/human-influenced nature), and farms can help provide a center for community life. On the other hand, such developments take up more land, it is unclear how productive or effective the CSAs are (they may not have to be that productive – as long as the neighbors like it), and this still skews toward wealthier residents who can afford the land and the setting (price premiums to live near a farm, just like living near a golf course?). In other words, is this just another suburban trend that is primarily available to certain middle- and upper-class Americans so that they feel better about their food sources and being green (neither of which are necessarily bad things)?

Combine these farm ideas with New Urbanism or retrofitting existing developments that didn’t work out and there could be some interesting outcomes here.

Calling local McMansion restrictions a “McMansion diet”

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Plenty of American communities have changed their zoning guidelines to limit the size of new McMansions, particularly teardowns in older neighborhoods. But, I’ve never seen this phrase before:

McMansion Diet? Continuation of Public Hearing to amend local law Chapter 197, Zoning, of the Rye City Code, Section §197-1, “Definitions and Usage”, to amend the definition of “STORY, HALF”, and Section §197-43.2, Subsection B, “Attics” to amend the Calculation of Attics in Gross Floor Area.

At its most basic level, the term implies the slimming down of McMansions. In teardown situations, a new home might not be that big compared to the average new home size in the United States of 2,500 square feet. But, if some of the neighborhood homes are 1,200 square feet and the new home is 2,300 square feet or the older and smaller homes are 1950s ranches and the new home is a Spanish with Tudor elements two story structure, the difference is more striking. The diet, which here looks like it relates to how attics should count toward square footage, will lead to smaller homes.

But, such a term also implies that McMansions need diets, that they are obese, that they may be the result of gluttony. These judgments are more involved with teardowns though the implication for McMansion in new sprawling neighborhoods is that they are unnecessarily large as well. And, some McMansion critics would argue, this diet should really be applied to an entire American consumption mindset that ranges from houses to fast food portions to SUVs.

I’ll be on the lookout for more links between McMansions and food diets and how this connection is presented.

McMansions also feature large kitchens

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McMansions have particular exterior and interior features, including the ability to store all sorts of things in their spacious kitchens:

If you live in a sprawling McMansion, the sky is the limit when it comes to holiday gifts for the cook and the kitchen. But if, like me, you live in a house or apartment with limited storage space, kitchen gadgets, tools, appliances and even cookbooks must be carefully considered. There just isn’t room in my kitchen and pantry for anything that isn’t vital or that doesn’t get used regularly.

So, for this 2013 edition of the Gift Guide, I offer up some items that any cook would be happy to find under the tree on Christmas. They are all items that I own—and, most importantly, use.

McMansions may often be criticized for having too much space (and perhaps this space is apportioned poorly), but how many owners of new homes want small kitchens? If anything, the trend in recent decades has been toward bigger kitchens that offer plenty of storage, prep space, room for large appliances, space for people to gather, and space to see into or connect with other rooms. An interesting experiment would be to offer much smaller homes – since the average new home is around 2,500 square feet, maybe we’ll say 1,500 or smaller – but keep the kitchen large and shrink the other rooms. Just how much would people trade for a bigger kitchen?

A related question: does the average McMansion kitchen provide better quality food because of its space?

Why Americans have the world’s largest refrigerators

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Move over McMansions, hello world’s largest refrigerators:

Americans have the biggest refrigerators in the world — 17.5 cubic feet of volume on average. The size of our refrigerators is followed closely by Canadians while the rest of the world lags far behind. Since our refrigerators run day and night, they use more energy than any other household appliance, which means their size has ramifications for the planet’s rate of global warming. However, the enormous popularity of refrigerators in the United States is an indicator of the value of refrigeration both for preserving the food we buy and for the convenience that comes when such huge machines are stocked. The fact that we put perishable food in the refrigerator (even sometimes when it doesn’t belong there) suggests that we still remember refrigeration’s most basic advantage: to prevent food from spoiling before we consume it.

While the usefulness of refrigerators explains their prevalence, it does not explain their size. Most people would agree that fresh food tastes better than anything that’s been kept in a refrigerator for even a short amount of time. So why then would anyone want a weeks’ worth of perishable food stored in their kitchen at one time? Are Americans slaves to convenience? While our large refrigerators do limit the number of shopping trips we have to take, they also make it possible for us to consume a much greater variety of foods than we ever did without them in our kitchens…

Because the average American family goes grocery shopping once a week, a gigantic refrigerator is required to keep all the perishables they acquire on that trip. Household refrigerators differ greatly from country to country because the characteristics that citizens in different countries want in their refrigerators are reflections of their cultures so at this point in history once weekly shopping trips is an almost uniquely American habit. While Americans and Canadians want storage capacity, European countries are generally more concerned with energy efficiency or the cost of their operation. Since Americans have always had abundant natural resources (like food), a large refrigerator has become closely identified around the world with the American way of life.

While large refrigerators are a recent development, ice and refrigeration have actually played an oversized role in American culture for a very long time. Before refrigerators, American iceboxes kept our food cold, at least as long as nobody opened them too often. “Who ever heard of an American without an icebox?,” wrote the British travel writer Winifred James in 1914. “It is his country’s emblem. It asserts his nationality as conclusively as the Stars and Stripes afloat from his roof-tree, besides being much more useful in keeping his butter cool.” “The Hard Times Refrigerator,” sold by the Boston Scientific Refrigerator in 1877 for people who were facing difficult economic circumstances was nothing but a wooden chest big enough to store fifty pounds of ice.

It sounds like decisions in American about other areas in life – priority on convenience and having food already at hand, food centers distant from concentrations of population and innovations in transporting cold foods, the suburbs and driving (?) – led to these large refrigerators. I’m not quite sure what prompted this: “Americans had an early collective desire for cold things.” This could be a new rallying cry: “American Exceptionalism: the biggest refrigerators!”

There seems to be a pattern here, especially when compared to the rest of the world: big refrigerators, big houses, big SUVs, Big Gulps, big land mass, big box stores…

The cold infrastructure behind America’s food supply

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Alexis Madrigal provides an overview of the cold storage that makes modern America’s food supply possible:

At least 70 percent of the food we eat each year passes through or is entirely dependent on the cold chain for its journey from farm to fork, including foods that, on the surface, seem unlikely candidates for refrigeration,” Twilley writes in introducing her show…

These systems, by design and necessity, exist away from the cities, and even when they’re within cities, away from where the people are. You don’t see them unless you work there, and if you work there, you generally don’t get to tell the stories of the landscape in the popular press.

To venture into infrastructural space is not just to leave the Beltway or the New York media world behind, but to come to know entirely different networks. The nodes on the map are different: Oakland and Richmond, not San Francisco; Long Beach and Hueneme, not LA; Newark and Wilmington, not New York.

In these geographies, the physical reasons people have long chosen certain locations retain their purchase: proximity to resources and markets, water access, transportation access, grid access. Take Allentown, Pennsylvania. It features a logistics hub “where U.S. Foods, Americold, Millard Refrigerated Services, Kraft, Ocean Spray, and others all maintain facilities,” thanks to its “location at the intersection of I-78, I-476, and several East Coast railway lines. It is also close to major urban markets in the north-east corridor–but not so close that the land is expensive.”…

My point here is that this is another America. And it’s neither the pastoral, wholesome family farm of Iowa political campaigns and Wendell Berry poems nor the dense Creative Class preserves where the nation’s bloggers and TV producers live. Almost no one tells the stories of these places.

It sounds like our current food supply is very dependent on several factors that get little attention. A distribution network that efficiently gets food from source to shelves. A transportation system, primarily trucks and railroad, that links this all together. An army of workers in both blue-collar and white-collar jobs that make this all possible. A geographic system/map that doesn’t line up with the global cities of the United States.

Another question to ask is whether it matters much if Americans know this tale of where their food travels. Some have powerfully argued yes in recent years, suggesting knowing this information and being able to make choices based on it is linked to sustainability and enjoyment. On the other hand, many Americans seem happily ignorant of the infrastructure that makes much of their food possible and only care if something goes wrong.

Millennials eat out 199 times a year on average

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A larger article about new trends in eating in America includes these figures about how much millennials eat out:

Disproportionately affected by the recession, the average millennial is expected to make 199 visits this year, down from 250 in 2008. But the restaurants they frequent are some of the fastest-growing chains.

This seems really high to me but it also fits with being in a certain stage in life. People eat roughly 1,000 times a year (give or take some meals) so eating out 199 times is roughly one-fifth. I have never gotten anywhere near these kinds of numbers myself but I could understand why it happens. It takes a lot of time to cook from planning out meals to buying groceries to cooking to cleaning up. Especially if millennials are consumed by their career, all of this business about food may just be too much. Eating can often be a social event, whether with co-workers or friends or family. On the other hand, eating out is often way more expensive – so perhaps it is a trade-off of time versus money. Also, many restaurants of today lack character or give you much of a reason to want to stick around outside of the immediate people you are with. And, maybe this isn’t just about millennials: I’ve seen figures in recent years that suggest 1/4 of American adults eat fast food every day.

All of this reminds me of Michael Pollan’s writings about how we treat food in the United States. Instead of eating natural food in relaxed and sociable settings (that can take hours – so perhaps you lose the time advantage), we tend to eat to be filled up or too have the proper amount of nutrients.

So how do restaurants try to appeal to millennials? Here is how one restaurant does it: by appealing to customization.

To appeal to millennials, Harald Herrmann, CEO of Yard House, a 42-unit chain focused on American fare and a vast beer selection, said customization is key.

“They don’t want to be confined to anything,” Herrmann said. “If you can put an offering out there that allows four to five millennials the opportunity to behave any way that they want and make decisions on the fly in an environment that’s casual and fun in a way that they can be expressive, then you’re onto something.”

At Yard House, Herrmann said, 30 entrees can be made vegetarian. He added that many groups of young customers eat their meals family style, ordering a number of dishes to pass around.

The ability for self-expression has also proved crucial in keeping millennial employees happy.

The chain, which works hard to include employee feedback, recently made visible tattoos acceptable for employees.

One other thought: I’ve seen a number of articles lately about the potential purchasing power of millennials. But, without good jobs and perhaps more stable situations, this spending is not going to happen at the levels it could. So…why don’t many politicians talk about this?

“Eating plays a central role in both civility and civilization” vs. a fast food society

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According to this argument, perhaps we should worry less about addiction to smartphones and more about how we eat:

There are four clear threats to the modern family and possibly civilization at large; cell phones, video games, the internet, and junk food. We allow the first three because they are cheaper than tutors, private schools, and nannies. Indeed, games and gadgets support a kind of electronic autism where neither parent nor child speaks to each other until the latter is old enough to drive. With junk food the threat is more complicated; a fusion of chemistry and culture. In combination, internet social networks and poor diets seem to be conspiring to produce a generation of pudgy, lazy mutes with short attention spans.

Culture begins and ends on a plate. A proper wake is followed by good food and drink for good reason; a testament to life even without the guest of honor. We eat to live and then we live to eat. From the earliest times, food played a key role in the spiritual and literal growth of families and a larger society. An infant bonds with its mother while nursing; families bond when they share food. We define hospitality with friends by inviting them to break bread – or share a refreshing adult beverage. Alas, eating plays a central role in both civility and civilization.

Contrast this elevated role for food versus the fast food approach common in the United States. I recently led a discussion in my introduction to sociology class about the social forces that lead to having a fast food society where around one-quarter of American adults eat fast food each day. Here are some of the ideas we came up with:

-Americans don’t have time for food preparation and eating as we are too busy doing/prioritizing other things.

-Fast food is cheap (particularly in the short-term) and convenient.

-Food is the United States is more about finding sustenance or nutritional content as opposed to sociability. (I’m thinking of Michael Pollan’s work here.)

-Americans love cars and driving and what could be better than going to a restaurant without ever having to get of the car? (Imagine the outcry if more communities like this one in South Dakota bans eating while driving.)

-Fast food is made possible by changes in the industry where it is now easier to draw upon food sources from all over the world. (The book Fast Food Nation does a nice job describing some of this process.)

-Fast food places offer a homogenized and familiar experience.

-There is a lot of money to be made in fast food.

In other words, there are a variety of social factors that influence why and how we eat. There are not easy fixes to changing a fast food society.