"Food Fight"

[MarketStEl]

Tonight on Dateline NBC, Stone Phillips devotes the entire hour to the obesity epidemic and who is responsible for it. The report will ask whether the producers or the consumers are more to blame, and looks at how food is marketed, among other things.

With obesity on the rise, Stone Phillips asks who is to blame for your waistline - you or those who make and market your food? Pitting personal responsibility against corporate responsibility, Phillips explores the subject from the courtroom, the supermarket, the drive-thru, and even the lab: looking at the latest developments in brain imaging science suggesting some of us may actually be addicted to fattening food. Also included in the hour-long report, "Food Fight," are rare television interviews with one of McDonald's top leaders, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of McDonald's USA, Don Thompson, and Kraft's Senior Vice President in charge of Health and Wellness, Lance Friedmann.

The program was teased on this morning's Today Show with an interesting segment in which one of the Dateline reporters showed 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-year olds cards bearing images--some noncommerical (e.g., the American flag) and others commercial (e.g., the Nike swoosh, Cap'n Crunch, McDonald's golden arches). The children all easily recognized most of the trademarks and commercial characters they were shown--sometimes because they recognized them from the things their parents bought (Starbucks coffee, for instance).

In one rather surprising (to me) segment of this report, a 2-year-old couldn't properly identify the letter M (though he knew it was a letter) but got the McDonald's M right off the bat. Looks like we need to market the ABCs more aggressively, folks.

The program airs tonight at 8 pm ET, 7 pm CT, on NBC.

[moosnsqrl]

Sounds interesting, although I'm sure it will be disturbing. I'm reading Omnivore's Dilemma and, while none of it is really news to me, having it all laid-out in a cohesive whole is truly amazing, in the disheartening sense.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

Sounds like one for the TiVo. I have no doubt this will really be disturbing. How can they fit it all into one hour? I'll reserve comment until I see it.

I'm reading Omnivore's Dilemma and, while none of it is really news to me, having it all laid-out in a cohesive whole is truly amazing, in the disheartening sense.

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Exactly. It'll be interesting to see if Pollan is interviewed or his book referenced.

[MarketStEl]

Sounds like one for the TiVo.  I have no doubt this will really be disturbing.  How can they fit it all into one hour? I'll reserve comment until I see it.

I'm reading Omnivore's Dilemma and, while none of it is really news to me, having it all laid-out in a cohesive whole is truly amazing, in the disheartening sense.

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Exactly. It'll be interesting to see if Pollan is interviewed or his book referenced.

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Pollan made no appearance, nor was The Omnivore's Dilemma mentioned, on this program, or at least that portion of it I saw.

I found fascinating the extended segments dealing with Kraft and McDonald's, though, both for what they said and how the respective efforts at corporate image-shaping worked.

Kraft came off smelling like a rose, or pretty close to it, in the segment where their top exec for nutrition was interviewed. Somehow even the fact that Kraft's majority shareholder is Altria Group (nee Philip Morris) became a quasi-positive in the segment, inasmuch as the narrative suggested that, having been burned on tobacco, the corporate parent wasn't about to repeat the experience with its food processing affiliate.

McDonald's vice president for US operations (I guess they really do walk the walk about "being in our community 365 days a year," as the ads the company runs in African-American-oriented media say; the guy is himself black), it seemed, had a somewhat rougher time of it with that company's efforts to beat the "nutritional merchant of death" rap. When even a successful substitution of fruit for French fries in the Happy Meal gets dinged because the apples come with a caramel dipping sauce, you know you're operating in rougher terrain. I gotta give him points for not doing the "it's what our customers want" thingie about the high-fat foods, though--the show's producers let the customers do that for him, going back to one of the focus groups assembled for the report to serve up quotes to the effect that folks go to Mickey D's because of the fries.

But the sentence that cuts to the heart of the matter when it comes to corporate responsibility and obesity had nothing to do with either Kraft or McDonald's. It had to do with the issue of putting nutrition information on menus in a place where customers could digest it before ordering their food. The sentence was this:

"When the restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday put nutrition information on its menus, it discovered that sales dropped."

This is at once a huge point in the food (or in this case restaurant) critics' favor and a real dilemma for the restaurant operators. It bolsters the critics' argument that the companies bear a lot of the burden by giving an example of consumers behaving responsibly when given enough information to make an informed purchase, but it also shows that in this case, giving the customers enough information is not in the restaurants' best interest. (The funny thing here, at least from where I sit, is that Ruby Tuesday's in-restaurant promotional materials touted their salad bars as much as their TV ads do their burgers--including the turkey and veggie ones).

Maybe the answer is to mandate on-menu nutrition info (which apparently even McDonald's has experimented with) so that the entire industry takes the hit simultaneously. But if the Ruby Tuesday experience could be considered illustrative, it will be difficult indeed to get an entire industry to willingly shove a chunk of its sales out the door by so doing.

[ghostrider]

But the sentence that cuts to the heart of the matter when it comes to corporate responsibility and obesity had nothing to do with either Kraft or McDonald's.  It had to do with the issue of putting nutrition information on menus in a place where customers could digest it before ordering their food.  The sentence was this:

"When the restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday put nutrition information on its menus, it discovered that sales dropped."

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Was there any analysis of why sales dropped? (For that matter, any statement of just how much? I'm curious as to how significant the drop was.)

I would expect that you'd get 3 distinct groups of people contributing to the sales loss:

- those who are actually counting calories, or looking at other nutritional factors, & simply order less when they patronize an RT

- those who find having nutritional info on a menu annoying & decide not to return

- those who suspect that the chain may have done something wrong & is being forced to atone by printing nutritional info, & decide not to return due to the perceived taint.

An interesting phenomenon. Most nights dining out, I would be irritated to find nutritional info on my menu; but if I'm on the road & have to eat at a fast food place, I would wish for the info at that point.

[MarketStEl]

Was there any analysis of why sales dropped [at Ruby Tuesday]?  (For that  matter, any statement of just how much?  I'm curious as to how significant the drop was.)

I would expect that you'd get 3 distinct groups of people contributing to the sales loss:

- those who are actually counting calories, or looking at other nutritional factors, & simply order less when they patronize an RT

- those who find having nutritional info on a menu annoying & decide not to return

- those who suspect that the chain may have done something wrong & is being forced to atone by printing nutritional info, & decide not to return due to the perceived taint.

An interesting phenomenon.  Most nights dining out, I would be irritated to find nutritional info on my menu; but if I'm on the road & have to eat at a fast food place, I would wish for the info at that point.

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The report gave no further detail into the nature or amount of the fall in sales at Ruby Tuesday.

Exploring some of the questions you raise would be useful. A drop in sales due to the second or third factors you cite above could be reversed through marketing efforts or a change in the way the information is provided (e.g., the waiter could ask patrons if they wanted to see the nutrition charts before they order or hand out separate cards listing things like Weight Watchers points--which I suspect many patrons would appreciate). But a drop due to the first factor would be harder to reverse; about the only way would be to turn tables over faster during peak periods, which would probably annoy at least as many customers as the menus with the nutrition information printed on them.

Suffice it to say that if the producers of Dateline were so inclined, they could probably do another entire hour on this subject.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

Yanno, back when I was writing about food regularly, a chef told me the best way to kill a menu item was to call it "heart healthy."

Anyway, I just watched the piece and thought it was okay and, as Sandy said, NBC could do another full hour on it.

A few points and more when I think of them:

-Nothing about full-sugar soft drinks. Interesting. I've no doubt most of those obese teenagers suck down a liter of the stuff on a regular basis.

-Asking a three year old if they want a banana or a decorated rock for breakfast? For these kids, breakfast will be there no matter what they choose in front of the camera. that seemed a little contrived to me.

-At some point, these activists are going to have to stop saying that parents are not responsible for their kids' eating habits. They are. If you don't want the kids to get all that advertising, for heavens' sake, turn off the television. As this woman is applauded by 'exhausted parents everywhere,' who just can't do with the nag factor, think for a second if she was advocating formula feeding for infants, because the alternative is too hard for exhausted parents.

-At some point, too, people have to be responsible for their own bodies. If you go to sleep weighing 120 pounds and wake up at 190, something is very wrong. No one who declared McDonald's as making them fat seemed to be clueless or ignorant. Quite the contrary -- very articulate, sharp people!

-The Kraft dude needs to shave his beard; he'll seem more trustworthy. The Kraft nutritionist needs to be prepped for the camera better, or at least try harder to believe what she's saying. I didn't buy 90% of what she was saying, because she didn't look like she bought it.

I used to do consulting work for a premium ice cream maker. I told the owner the job was making me fat and he said, correctly, in his Carolina drawl, "naw, Fabby. It's all y'alls othah bayud habits!"

I think he's right.

[MarketStEl]

[...]

-Asking a three year old if they want a banana or a decorated rock for breakfast?  For these kids, breakfast will be there no matter what they choose in front of the camera.  that seemed a little contrived to me. 

[...]

Maybe. But have you seen the current crop of GEICO insurance commercials featuring their spokesgecko?

One of them is a dead-on self-parody of the phenomenon this segment was trying to illustrate. The gecko says, in all earnestness, that people trust spokesanimals more: "If a human told you you'd save 15 percent on your car insurance, you'd say, 'Yeah, right, that's nice.' But a gecko? You're all ready to say, 'Yes! Yes! Would you mind watching my baby?'"

I think the basic point the producers were trying to make here is a pretty strong one: children do attach great significance to familiar characters and images.

-At some point, these activists are going to have to stop saying that parents are not responsible for their kids' eating habits. They are.  If you don't want the kids to get all that advertising, for heavens' sake, turn off the television.  As this woman is applauded by 'exhausted parents everywhere,' who just can't do with the nag factor, think for a second if she was advocating formula feeding for infants, because the alternative is too hard for exhausted parents.

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The comic strip "Peanuts"--which, pace Charles Schulz's brilliance, should really be retired to make room for cartoonists still living--once had a daily strip in which Lucy Van Pelt went around with a sheet of paper, asking the gang, "Sign this, please--it absolves me of all blame...Sign this, please--it absolves me of all blame..."

Ya think today's tort lawyers took her message to heart?

Edited August 23, 2006 by MarketStEl (log)