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 Vol: 12 | Issue: 14 -
Red Hot
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Public Enemy
Processed food is taking a lot of hits but the real problem may be the trust in the American food system, the same system that is “the greatest source of inexpensive, safe, healthy, widely available tasty food in human history,” Tom Nagle argues.
“We have seen the enemy, and it is us.”
With a tip of the hat to Pogo, a comic strip read by old people way back when even I was young, how and when did the American food industry become the enemy? Before proposing that we need a far better plan than we have today, I want to demonstrate just how bad it is, and why I believe it is actually worse than it looks.
Our firm has recently been engaged by food industry groups and companies in a few projects that study the attitudes of various consumer, nutrition, media and business groups toward the way food is produced, processed and distributed – and toward the people that bring this food from farm to table.
The results, in a nutshell: things ain’t good, and they’re getting worse.
A recent study showed that “processed foods” are viewed as very bad for you, and to be avoided whenever possible. These are the same food processing techniques that have made food plentiful and cheap, safe, reliable, consistent and tasty – often with an ease of use and shelf life the Pogo generation could only have dreamed of. Processed foods are viewed even less positively than fast food, joining junk food and irradiated food at the bottom of the grocery barrel.
Professional nutritionists around the country blithely claim that eating local, unprocessed foods is always best – this from the group that has traditionally been more rational in their view, tempered by nutrition and science education.
According to our study the media are no better, generally portraying processed foods as “nutrient void, unhealthy, dangerous, toxic, morally wrong and (my favorite) bad for the planet.” Are they referring to “the planet” with all those billions of hungry people, and with vastly more to come, that can only expect to eat if the full skills of the American industrial food enterprise are brought to bear? Really, it is an outrage. With the world’s population growing exponentially, is there an economist out there who can calculate a way to feed every mouth local, unprocessed food? If so, please contact me through this publication.
There was a time in this country when drinking unprocessed, unpasteurized milk presented a real threat. It’s still a very risky thing to do, but most Americans haven’t had to worry about that for 100 years or so. In the Ukraine, they were still struggling with that risk 10 years ago. Yet, seemingly normal U.S. citizens (fortunately very few) buy “shares” of cows so they can circumvent the legal requirement to process and pasteurize milk for consumer safety.
I believe the underlying issue is not processed milk, or pasteurization, or HFCS, or artificial coloring, or the host of other reasons – such as preservatives, chemicals of any kind, bio-engineering, pesticides, sweeteners, fat alternatives, and so on – that the activists groups use to attack the food industry from farm to retailer. Each of those individual issues, according to consistent consumer research, is only important to a tiny group forever or a large group for a short while.
I believe the underlying issue is something that is important to most of the people, most of the time: trust.
All of us – even those of us in the food industry – want to trust the folks who grow, process, manufacture, package, retail and serve us the food we eat. We want to believe that while making our food more nutritious, less expensive, more available, more consistent and more convenient, the American food production system is also making sure that our food is safe for us to eat.
The endless series of intense, high profile attacks by activists don’t actually win on every issue. In fact, on balance their impact by issue is pretty limited. We have yet to become a nation of vegans eating from our own backyards – even my daughter started eating meat again while away at college.
We ought to think about how these disparate and passionate activists, from the sincere and scientific to the crazed and fact-less, undercut the trust people have in the people and companies who make their food.
The real problem, I believe, is that after a lifetime of hearing an endless stream of accusations, what’s truly lost is confidence and trust in the American food production system. The same system that is, in fact, the greatest source of inexpensive, safe, healthy, widely available tasty food in human history.
Good corporate and industry-defensive PR can often blunt one individual attack or another. But my fear is that while we’re busy winning battles, we’re still losing the war.
I think we need a new plan.
Tom Nagle is co-founder of Statler Nagle LLC, a marketing strategies firm located in Washington, D.C. He has has worked in advertising agencies, market re-search firms, and most recently, as the head of Marketing for the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA), where he was the senior strategic and operational manager of the iconic national "Got Milk/Milk Mustache" campaign. For information visit www.statlernagle.com.
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