As the "Pepsi Generation" turns into the "Pepcid Generation," the boomer consumer continues to shape the food and beverage market. According to Matt Switzer, Slack Barshinger and Partners, Inc., the search for the fountain of youth for this segment is fueling new product development. Now, where'd I put that Joint Juice...?

   —Lynn A. Kuntz

Just as the baby boomer generation is opening their mailboxes to find AARP registration mailings (my mother was devastated when she received hers) the food and beverage industry has seen an explosion in products geared towards thinning, cutting, slimming and trimming the aging, yet seemingly health-focused population. Accompanying this invasion of products is an influx of marketing with health-conscious messages.  

The food and beverage industry faces a conundrum with the consumer stampede for healthy products. While one can draw some similarities between the two, health-focused messages for the general consumer population are not directly complimentary with those geared towards the aging boomers. Before entering or re-entering the market with new or reformulated products geared specifically towards boomers, the advantages and disadvantages to the current market demand must be considered:

Pros of marketing to Boomers

• One out of every four Americans is a boomer (Metlife Mature Market Institute)
• Boomers have been identified as being less healthy than their parents’ generation, and are thus becoming more conscious of their health
• Boomers are a wealthy audience with an estimated annual spending power of over $2 trillion (Spending Power of Baby Boomers, Mintel, February 2007) and are willing to spend a few extra bucks for a premium product
• The combination of healthy characteristics of these new products and the desire for control of health in the baby boomer generation appears to be a perfect match

Cons of marketing to Boomers

• Fierce competition―the market is flooded with products geared towards this audience
• There are some specific challenges that are exclusive to boomer-focused product development (e.g. health claims, use of nontraditional ingredients, potential interactions with medications that are frequently used by this segment, etc.)
• Reformulation is expensive and time-consuming

Marketers must create messages that convey how their products meet the nutritional needs for this particular life stage versus focusing on the decline of this segment’s health

Formulators must look at their product segments and ask themselves, “How much of the total market is comprised of boomers?” And even more importantly, “Does the potential for profit exceed the cost of development?”

Once you’ve decided to make the investment into releasing a new product geared towards baby boomers, you are going to need to devote the time and money necessary to make sure that the product you are putting out into the market has not only the flavor profile to achieve more than just an initial purchase but the health and wellness benefits to turn your first-time-buyer into a long-time customer. Consider focusing on some of the hot button issues in today’s food market like bone health, anti-aging and heart health, to name a few.

To sum it up—there is a huge opportunity for food and beverage manufacturers to take advantage of the public demand for better-for-you products, BUT it is not a win-win scenario. Invest the time and efforts in making your products they best they can be—combine that with an aggressive public relations and marketing campaign and voila!

   —Matt Switzer

The USA Today headline reads: “FDA to allow food producers to irradiate spinach, lettuce.” And actually the article itself is straightforward and factual, something not often seen in consumer press. But if you want some interesting reading, scroll down to the comments section for a cross section of public opinion ranging from the informed to the absurd. Apparently-germ infested poop is magically rendered sterile if it falls on your locally-grown, organic, hand-picked heirloom crops.

Listening to the evening news, it’s not hard to figure out where some of the absurd comes from. One FOX News commentator announced the decision by saying something to the effect that if you see your salad glowing, it’s due to this new FDA decision. There’s no dearth of misinformation out there.

I haven’t closely followed the recent irradiation saga. I know there are pros (a relatively quick, cheap, noninvasive way to kill all those nasty lurking microbes) and cons (some loss of quality, nutrition and perhaps some other odd chemical reactions promoted by the treatment). The most vocal opponent over the years seems to be Food and Water Watch, “a nonprofit consumer rights organization based in Washington, D.C. that challenges the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources.” (Interestingly, out of the staff of 30-plus rife with law and social science majors, only one person has a degree in the “hard” sciences—biology—unless environmental science counts.)

Since I’m not an irradiation expert, at this point I’m inclined to believe the statement sent out today by the GMA, “In addition to the FDA, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association all agree that more than 50 years of research demonstrate that, at approved doses, low-dose food irradiation presents no health risk.”

I understand there may be legitimate concerns for public health anytime we undertake a large-scale feeding study where we all become the lab rats. And it’s always possible that the cumulative effect of ingesting some radiation-generated molecules might somehow add to the cumulative effect of the millions of other natural and synthetic molecules we ingest and/or breathe, and result in some significant—or insignificant—potential health effect. However, given the current system of food production, preparation and consumption, if irradiation works, why not give it a try? Sure there’s some potential risk, but on the other side, the CDC says “Foodborne diseases cause an estimated 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year.” Given that, I’m not sure why it’s such a bad idea that we try to kill the microbes before they kill us.

 —Lynn A. Kuntz

Umami seems to be a hot button across the entire swath of the food industry, from gourmet kitchens to scientific institutions. Last week, Kim Decker, a long-time colleague and writer par excellence, wrote me a note (this delightful dissertation being Kim’s idea of a “note”) about a umami symposium she recently attended. Many thanks for sharing the experience; but next time, don’t forget to include the doggie bag.

   -Lynn A. Kuntz

One of the pleasures of writing about the food and beverage scene is that even months after I’ve put an article to bed, new developments surface that cause me to look at an old topic with fresh eyes.

Such was the case several weeks ago when I attended “New Frontiers of Taste,” an umami symposium organized by the Umami Information Center and scheduled to take advantage of some coinciding events—namely, the 100th anniversary of umami's “discovery” (or, perhaps more accurately, its elucidation) by the Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda, and this year's International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste (ISOT), held here in San Francisco from July 21 through 26.

I had treated the topic of umami in a piece several months before and hadn't quite gotten it fully out of my system, so seeing as how the event was only a BART ride away and promised to gather a panel of sage voices to discuss umami past, present, and future—AND seeing as how it was followed by a luncheon prepared by several chefs playing at the tops of their games—I went. I know: poor me.

It was a wise decision—and not only because I got to meet my friend Brendan Naulty, president of Ajinomoto Food Ingredients’ U.S. operations, when he rescued me from missing-press-pass purgatory, but because I also got French Laundry chef Thomas Keller to autograph my luncheon menu. (He was responsible for the sous vide lamb rib eye with confit byaldi, roasted fennel, and pickled shallot sauce that served as our main course.) But best of all, the symposium offered me the chance to consider angles on umami that I didn't get to cover in my earlier exploration.

For starters, the discussion, ably moderated by Kathy Sykes, Ph.D., a British scientist and communicator who's appeared on the BBC series “Ever Wondered About Food...,” roamed a deep gastronomic territory that we rarely get to explore, save for at the edges. One of the panelists was Kunio Tokuoka, executive chef at Kyoto’s Kitcho restaurant, who, with more than 30 years experience in Japanese kitchens, has an intuitive feel for the role that umami plays in balancing a meal both aesthetically and nutritionally. And if there’s anything that Japanese cuisine is, it’s aesthetically and nutritionally balanced. In fact, Chef Tokuoka cited the taste of umami as a potential tool for improving the sensory appeal of dishes that are otherwise short on the fat and salt that we love but could stand to use less of. As more Japanese diners drift away from their country's traditional cuisine, Chef Tokuoka is working with the head of Japan's diabetes society to review umami-based strategies for getting them to eat better.

Nearby on the panel was Master of Wine Tim Hanni. I was excited to hear from him, as I’d read about his work relating people’s tastes in wines to their number of taste buds. He’s also been investigating the relationship between wine and umami (among the other four tastes) and, here again he left us considering the importance of balance. If I understood correctly, Hanni has found that, like sweetness, too much umami makes a wine taste more acidic, bitter, and tannic, while diminishing its fruit character. He likened the effect to that orange-juice-after-the-toothpaste phenomenon and proposed as a corrective that we keep the salt and acid on hand (and in the recipe) to balance the sweet and umami. Who knew you could tame a big Cab with a salt rim and squeeze of lime?

Harold McGee, the author and New York Times “Curious Cook” who’s made food science cool for the masses, was on hand and helped bridge the gap between the foodies and the scientists on the panel, among whom were McGee himself, as well as John Prescott, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at the University of Newcastle in Australia, and Gary Beauchamp, Ph.D., director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center.

The event being part of a meeting of taste and olfaction researchers, much of the talk turned toward the physiology of umami more than the tools we in industry can wield to enhance it. Nevertheless, the discussion whet the appetite, with Prescott mentioning his research into the role of umami in flavor recognition and liking. It seems that just as we can ease a novel flavor onto people’s radars by pairing it with familiar and accepted carbs and fats, we can also gain converts by delivering unusual profiles in the context of well-known and loved umami tastants.

I was really intrigued by what’s simmering in Beauchamp’s lab. He noted that umami appears to give a persistence of salivary flow, creating something of a mouthfeel effect—perhaps through tactile receptors in the taste buds—that, by my lights, would make it unique among the five basic tastes. Beauchamp aims to study how this mechanism works, and I hope he does. When he comes up with some results, maybe there’ll be another such symposium in which he can let everyone know about them. If I can score another autographed menu as part of the package, you can bet I’ll be there.

-Kimberly J. Decker

“Killer foods” stories abound, particularly in the consumer press. While the industry needs to pay close attention to the influences on the buying public, do certain headlines require a panicked response? I asked Dick Hanneman, president of the Salt Institute what he thought of the following headline “Too Much Salt Boosts Blood Pressure,” particularly in light of a piece of commentary more than halfway down the page saying that specific conclusions might be “oversimplification.” Here’s his response:

-Lynn A. Kuntz

The biggest "news" about the HealthDay story “Too Much Salt Boosts Blood Pressure” is: What’s the news?

Everyone has known that salt and blood pressure are linked. The Chinese knew it 4000 years ago. While nobody knows what causes “essential hypertension,” we know that salt is a major factor affecting blood pressure. Studies several decades ago at the University of Indiana clearly showed that about one-third the population would lower blood pressure on significantly lower salt and about one-quarter would increase blood pressure significantly on the same salt reduction. So, that's not news. Overall, scientists are in fairly strong agreement that the blood pressure is heterogeneous (it moves differently in different people and, in this case, in different directions). Scientists also agree that, overall, cutting salt by about two-thirds from our current globally-average intake level of 3,500 mg/day, population blood pressure would fall by 305 mmHg. No news here.

In fact, blood pressure is the wrong outcome to be measuring. Not that it’s not an important indicator. It is. But there are other indicators as well. What elevated blood pressure tells us is that SOMETHING is wrong in the cardiovascular system—a warning to figure out WHAT it is that's wrong. Thus, salt reduction treats the symptom, not the problem.

And the treatment causes problems itself. Low-salt diets cause elevated levels of aldosterone and renin -- both significant risk factors for heart attacks. It induces insulin resistance, impairing the body's ability to metabolize glucose and is a risk factor, itself, for high blood pressure and diabetes. And it stimulates sympathetic nervous system activity. In short, lowering dietary salt triggers changes—in both directions with regard to blood pressure.

Worse, the non-news story on blood pressure further cements the mistaken notion that restricting dietary salt will improve health. Models that assume that the risk profile of populations with natively-lower blood pressure will predict the risk profile of persons who reduce their personal salt intakes (or populations of such individuals) have no foundation in research. They are a house of cards resting on the unproven starting assumptions. You can't model outcomes; you have to show them with data. They haven’t.

When we donate a pint of blood, we reduce our blood pressure. It may improve our mental health, but does nothing for our physical health. We need to look at the health outcomes of the intervention, not the intermediate variables that are the several disparate risk factor changes. In short, the incidence of heart attacks, cardiovascular mortality and all-cause mortality are the proper metric. Only 16 health outcomes studies have been reported. Only one suggests the assumptions of previous models were correct. Fifteen reject that model. Four of them actually find higher rates of mortality and heart attacks on low-salt diets.

Unfortunately, all are observational studies. We need a controlled trial. We asked HHS to fund such a trial many years ago and made a direct appeal two years ago this month. No action. What we get is more of the same. More studies of blood pressure. Why? Because the “official” policy is unlikely to be sustained by a controlled trial of the health outcomes of salt reduction. We have the methodology; the same intervention as we did for the Trials of Hypertension Prevention (Phase II). It should be Trials of Mortality Reduction. We need it badly and we need it now. We have pursued salt reduction and blood pressure reduction for 30 years. No progress through diet (though significant improvement pharmacologically).

Let's have a discussion about health outcomes, not a rehash of non-news about blood pressure.

-Dick Hanneman

One oft-heard company strategy in hard economic times is focusing only on core brands and axing the niche brands from the product portfolio. However, those who do not vet those niche markets may be throwing away a slice of the future.

Take the soy beverage category for instance. A recent report discussed market research showing that the category grew by 19.3% last year. U.S. retail sales went from $545 million in 2001 to $676 million in 2002—a 24% increase—followed by a 30% increase in 2003. In 2004, U.S. sales of soymilk and other dairy alternatives passed $1 billion, and in 2007 they reached nearly $1.7 billion. They’ve grown from a health-food-store specialty to a fixture in mainstream groceries with a respectable number of facings on the shelf.

The moral of the story? While those niche products might mean beans in today’s market, if you pick the right ones, and feed and nurture them, they just might have the potential to grow into something bigger.

-Lynn A. Kuntz

The New York Times reported on the USDA’s latest food availability data (the amount of food produced for the average American consumer, minus various measures of waste) which tallies up the total for 2006. According to the data, the average American ate approximately 18.2 lbs. of food a week, vs. the 16.4 weekly lbs. they consumed in 1970.

Let’s do the math: We’ll be kind and say only 30% of that additional 1.8 lbs. of food was fat; perhaps that will counterbalance any low-calorie foods eaten. That comes out to nearly 4500 additional calories per week times 52 weeks per year...need I say more?

 -Lynn A. Kuntz

PepsiCo just threw down the stevia gauntlet to Coca-Cola Co, announcing the imminent debut of a line of stevia-sweetened drinks. In a press release issued July 31, PepsiCo announced a partenership with Whole Earth Sweetener Company, a subsidary of Merisant, to introduce PureVia™, Whole Earth’s stevia-based sweetener in a new nutritionally enhanced PepsiCo beverage called “SoBe Life.” The drink will first be launched in Latin America, and according to the release, the tabletop sweetener “will launch in the United States this fall before expanding into drink and food products around the world.”

This follows a release in May, announcing Cargill’s introduction of its stevia-based sweetener, Truvia™. The company is marketing a tabletop sweetener and forming a partnership CocaCola to introduce new stevia-sweetened beverages. Waiting in the wings is Corn Products International and their partner Morita Kagaku Kogyo Company Ltd. Gearing up to market still another stevia-based sweetener, Enliten™. Then add the—what sounds like, though I may have misinterpreted all the extraction techniques—more-whole-product versions, like SweetLeaf® Sweetener™ from Wisdom Natural Brands.

To make things even more interesting, the current GRAS status of all these sweeteners is still a bit fuzzy: Sweetleaf appears to be operating under self-affirmed GRAS, Cargill and Merisant have separately petitioned FDA for GRAS status (for “Rebaudioside A purified from Stevia rebaudiana [Bertoni]) earlier this year. Additionally Cargill had commissioned stevia safety studies that were published in May. Corn Products hasn’t made much of their plans public at this point, and I wouldn’t mind being “enlitened” on the status of their product.

It’s all taken on the aspect of a “who’s on first” routine, with confident assurances of imminent FDA approval from everyone but the FDA.

Then there’s the whole application scenario: Apparently patents are involved; the GRAS petitions are for different uses; and, on a more-development-centric topic, I haven’t heard from anyone other than employees of the aforementioned companies that the licorice-y flavor issues are completely solved.

But I’m just an observer here, so I’d like to invite commentary from those in the trenches, suppliers and product developers alike. So, feel free to email me, call (or send samples, so I can weigh in on the flavor debate) and/or use the comment function below. What I do know at this time is that this is a hot topic in the industry, and we’ll be talking a lot more about it in days to come.

—Lynn A. Kuntz