Image via Wikipedia

In the past year, consumers have cut back on dining out. They are clipping coupons. Shoppers are careful when spending on extras at the supermarket. And retailers are feeling the pain.

There are, however, some products that are actually experiencing higher sales compared to one year earlier.

Here are a few examples, according to a study by Mintel, a retail market research group:

* Sales of bread products have grown 7% this year, much a higher than a previously projected 2%.

* The classic American lunch – peanut butter and jelly sandwich – is enjoying a revival as well, despite a setback in the past few months due to the peanut butter / salmonella outbreak.

* Frozen meals, convenient and relatively cheap, are experiencing a growth spurt of 4.5% vs a forecast of -0.3% earlier.

Read here to learn about additional products doing well this recession.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

Two recent articles in Progressive Grocer Magazine highlight changes in food purchase and preparation.

1. Trading down from premium brands to private label or store brands.
2. Consolidation of shopping trips.
3. Coupon clipping and purchase planning using store circulars.
4. Comparing prices more carefully.
5. Stocking up on bargains.
6. Curbing impulse buys. This is painful for grocers, as impulse items are usually more profitable.
7. Cooking in large batches and then freezing foods.
8. Cutting back on desserts, wine and alcohol, gourmet oils.
9. Eating out less.
Sources:
Grocery Shopping Behavior Shifts, Some Changes Permanent
Study Illustrates Women Concerned with Food Costs

If there is a bright side to the financial downturn, maybe it’s people eating more home prepared fare, which tends to be leaner, less salty, and less sweet than prepared foods.

Do you see yourself eating better these days?

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

Kitchen Gardeners International

These tight economic times may lead us to opt for low cost “bargains” when it comes to our food choices. Especially susceptible are fresh fruits and vegetables that sometimes come at exorbitant prices. Roger Doiron, founder of Kitchen Gardeners International has posted a great summary of how he saved over TWO THOUSAND dollars by growing food in the 1600 sq ft of his backyard:

By the time we had finished weighing it all, we had grown 834 pounds and over six months worth of organic food (we’re still eating our own winter squash, onions, garlic, and frozen items like strawberries, green beans, and pesto cubes). Once we had the weights of the 35 main crops we grew, we then calculated what it would have cost us to buy the same items using three different sets of prices: conventional grocery store, farmers’ market and organic grocery store (Whole Foods, in our case). The total value came to $2196.50, $2431.15, and $2548.93 respectively.

Read the entire post…

There are million households in the US that can do this now, according to Roger. There’s plenty to like about this idea:

- You get fresh, organic produce for practically free (seeds and compost are very cheap)

- The physical work will help slim you down.

- It’s a fun family activity if you get your kids excited and involved.

Obviously, not everyone has a suitable backyard, or a backyard at all, but community and school gardens are also growing in popularity. Check to see if there are any where you live.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Here’s an interesting piece from the Wall Street Journal, summing up the change in our collective behavior thanks to the recession:

Consumers have cut back sharply on food spending, shunning restaurants, opting for generic products over brand names, trading in lattes for home-brewed coffee and shopping for bargains. That is hurting sales and profits at many food processors, grocery chains and restaurants.

In 2008’s fourth quarter, consumer spending on food fell at an inflation-adjusted 3.7% from the third quarter, according to data from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. That is the steepest decline in the 62 years the government has compiled the figure.

read the full article…

People who never used to look at prices are now on the lookout for deals.

Several trend:

- a shift from full service restaurants to cheaper fast food joints. [BAD]

- more meals at home rather than out. [GOOD, home food is usually lower in fats, sodium , and sugar]

- at the home: more cooking and baking from scratch, rather than relying on prepared meals. [GOOD, less chemicals, additives, and sodium]

- sales of  fresh vegetables are actually up 2.3%. [GREAT!]

What to do at the supermarket:

Check out our top ten tips for healthy shopping during a recession.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

Mott's for Tots® Juice

Would you pay more for beer that was watered down by 40%?

What if we told you it was healthier or you?

Mott’s, icon of everything apple, is offering your kids the same deal, but for apple juice.

They’ve introduced a line of juices for young children – Mott’s for Tots, with 40% less sugar, but 10% more expensive. Not a lot of food science went into this formulation. Mott’s simply replaced 40% of the juice with good old water. Marketing science – yes.

What you need to know:

Why water down  juice?

Apples, like many other fruit, are sweet. They contain plenty of sugar. A medium apple has 18 grams (3.5 teaspoons).

When squeezed into juice, the sugar content is even higher. An 8 fl oz serving of apple juice has 23 grams of sugar (4.5 teaspoonfuls). Mott’s for Tots has only 13 grams (2.5 teaspoonfuls). Parents that would like to reduce their children’s sugar consumption now have a panacea. Just imagine all the thank you letters pouring into Mott’s mailroom:

“Thank you Mott’s; it was just too hard to add water on my own…”

This is a sweet deal for Mott’s. It costs shoppers $3.59 for a 64 fl oz bottle of “regular” apple juice, but the healthier tots version is $3.99. This is a 10% premium for the consumer. But the profit margin is even higher for Mott’s. Remeber, 40% of the juice is not juice anymore but water (Mott’s calls it purified water; just between us though, this means filtered tap water that costs close to nothing).

If you can get your kids to drink water from the get go, do it. Apple juice can be a nice treat here and there. But avoid making it a daily ritual. Pouring anything other than water in baby bottles or sippy cups, is a dental disaster. Even in the tots version, the amount of sugar loving bacteria that forms around juice cloaked teeth is a thousandfold more than the herds of buffalo roaming the great plains 300 years ago.

What to do at the supermarket:

Get your apple goodness from real apples, especially local and in season (July-December). Apple juice should be no more than an occasional treat. If you really must drink it, store brand is just as good as branded juice, at significant savings of up to 30%. And in these rough economic times, really do yourself a favor – water down the juice at home.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

A thoughtful piece circulated by Reuters today discusses the nutritionally saddening effect of the economic recession. People are cutting back on expensive foods. Makes sense.

Unfortunately the expensive foods are fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and other healthy items.

“People … are going to economize and as they save money on food they will be eating more empty calories or foods high in sugar, saturated fats and refined grains, which are cheaper,” said Adam Drewnowski, the director of the Nutrition Sciences Program at the University of Washington in Seattle.

“Things are going to get worse,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. “Obesity is a toxic result of a failing economic environment.”

He added that studies in California suggested that a 10 percent rise in poverty translates into about a 6 percent increase in obesity among adults.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over one third of U.S. adults — more than 72 million people — and 16 percent of U.S. children are obese.

The unfolding recession could inflate U.S. waistlines further as more and more people fall onto hard times and seek cheaper food.

Read the entire article…

What you need to know:

Healthy and nutritious food does not have to be expensive. There is a cost though – time. If you want to eat healthfully, you need to invest time in preparing your meals. If you can cook a meal, then you can buy unprocessed foods at the supermarket and save the premium you would have paid for a frozen dinner or prepared dish.

True, in the winter it is a bit more difficult to find fresh fruits and vegetables that are cheap, but usually frozen versions are available at reasonable prices.

Some items are low cost but superfluous. Soda pop is a perfect example. Cheap sugary water. But over the course of a year, these empty calories set back an average family of 4 over $500!

More Ideas here: Top ten Tips for Nutritious Shopping in a Recession

Do you have any more suggestions?

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Time Magazine has published its Top 10 of Everything issue, and the food list is filled with great insights into what we were thinking about this past year. Some of the interesting trends:

Recession dining - people are saving on food wherever they can.
Nanny-state food regulations - Obviously the Time editors don’t like menu labeling laws.
Salmonella Saintpaul – recap of this summer’s food scare.
The war on bottled water – Tap water is the new black.
Caffeinated foods – as if Red Bull and its clones weren’t enough.
The backlash against local food - not as friendly to the environment as previously perceived?

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Image via Wikipedia

1. Before going to the supermarket, make a shopping list. And then stick to it. Market research shows that 1 in 2 products in our shopping carts are an impulse buy. Many times these are not items we really need. Supermarkets are designed to lure us to into buying more more more in the 24 minutes we spend on average roaming the aisles. The enticements during our seven minute wait at the checkout counter are also unnecessary most times, yet expensive at all times.

2. Stop buying soft drinks! Hard to imagine, but you really are paying a lot of money for carbonated water mixed with food coloring and heaps of high fructose corn syrup. On average every man woman and child consumes over 50 GALLONS of soft drinks annually. A family of 4 switching to tap water can save over $500 a year! Go ahead, drink a glass of water and watch your piggy bank swell with pride. I this is too drastic, at least switch to 100% fruit juice.

3. Drastically cut down on sugary, salty, and fatty snacks. Limit yourself to 2 or 3 items per grocery trip. If your children protest, practice a revenue share model with them – for every dollar in grocery bills saved, they keep 50 cents.

4. Switch from brand name products to store brands. Whether frozen foods, dairy, staples, or canned goods, a store brand is usually just as tasty and nutritious, but costs 10-25% less.

5. Use coupons. Wisely. Don’t buy a year’s worth of canned prunes to save a dollar when the last time you had prunes was at your grandma’s birthday in 1993.

6. Shop less. Plan your shopping trips for once a week at most. Those short trips to the grocer for one item usually end up with many more items in your shopping bag.

7. Eat more homemade food, even out of the home. Prepare sandwiches for lunch; or bring leftovers in a Tupperware dish to heat in the office microwave.

8. Don’t throw away food. Bananas gotten too mushy? Toss into the blender, add milk honey, and ice cubes to get a wonderful smoothie. Stale bread? Check out some bread pudding recipes.

9. Go meatless a day or two a week. To some this may sound like an abomination, but statistically, vegetarians are healthier and live longer. For protein on your off days, try different types of beans, tofu, lentils, quinoa, and grains, with plenty of vegetables and fruits. Add nuts and seeds to salads, sauces and desserts.

10. Learn to cook. Cooking is NOT heating a canned soup or nuking a TV Dinner in the microwave. Really cook. you’ll be surprised how easy it is to prepare healthier and cheaper a tomato based pasta sauce when you do it yourself. Have the kids join and help you. There’s no shortage of recipe websites today, some include video tutorials.

Get Fooducated! RSS Subscription or Email Subscription