The Lempert Report LIVE

Deadly Diet, Veggie Junkies, Oscar Mayer Weiner Pops

September 11, 2022 Phil Lempert Episode 45
The Lempert Report LIVE
Deadly Diet, Veggie Junkies, Oscar Mayer Weiner Pops
Show Notes Transcript

On today’s The Lempert Report LIVE:

  • We look to the future of local – some say its doomed, is it?
  • Parents’ breakfast guilt
  • Is the US diet really deadly?
  • Three food delivery services that are free – and the impact
  • Junk foods move into plant based territory 
  • On the Bullseye another brand – this time its Oscar Mayer – overreaches. 
Phil:

Welcome to the Lempert Report LIVE. Hey, we got a special announcement. Sally, yesterday, celebrated 21 years with Consumer Insight and SupermarketGuru.com. Sally, thank you so much for all your intelligence, all your hard work and sticking with us.

Sally:

Thank you, Phil.

Phil:

On today's broadcast, we look to the future of local. Some say it's doomed. Is it parent's breakfastGuilt? Is the US diet, really deadly three food delivery services that are actually free. And the impact of that junk foods move into plant-based territory and on bullseye yet another brand, this one Oscar Meyer overreaches. Let's get started. So Sally there's this report that comes out that says that local food that was spurred by the pandemic, the sales may be short lived. What do you think about that?

Sally:

Phil, this is a great report and I think there's a lot of interesting points in it. It was published in the journal agribusiness and what they did is they looked at 1,650 participants and they asked'em to reflect on their time during the pandemic and how willing they were to buy food locally. Now, what they were expecting was that during the pandemic, people felt a bigger sense of community, I guess, and bonding together, but they found exactly the opposite. They found exactly the opposite that they had anxiety and they had lost their sense of community. However, they were buying more local food products. So the question is why were they buying more local food products?

Phil:

And maybe it's just that, that was the only thing that was available to them during the pandemic. But you know, when I see reports like this, it really has me concerned because what we're gonna see is we're gonna see a whole bunch of people saying,"oh, local food is over". Local food is not over. What we really need to do is we really need retailers in particular to work with local producers, not only for the local community, not only for the benefits that we're gonna get from a nutrition from a health standpoint. But bottom line is what we discovered during the pandemic is relying on long haul transportation, bringing lettuce, and I've said this a million times, bringing lettuce from California to New York, that's absolutely absurd. You know, there's no way that it's affordable, we've got more food, safety problems and stuff like that. So my hope is that we look at this and it's a wake up call to the industry, whether it's a local producer, whether it's the government to help local producers with grants and with loans. And certainly with retailers to say,"we want more local". There's no question about it.

Sally:

Yes. I agree with you. They do need more support. And I think we also have to recognize that the idea of wanting to support your community and wanting to buy products that serve the planet better may be important to customers, but they can't always afford it. And, price is going to affect that choice.

Phil:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So on a personal level, you ever feel guilty about serving the kids breakfast?

Sally:

All the time?

Phil:

No, no. Well, General Mills has a new survey that came out that talks about the guilt and pressure that parents feels when it comes to breakfast time. 92% of parents agree. It's important that their child eats breakfast every day. Oh and 37% of them, a third, feel guilty about their child's overall eating habits. What they find is only families who have higher incomes can afford to provide nutritious food options for their family. I sort of disagree with that. And 65% are concerned about their ability to provide a healthy breakfast due to inflation and rising grocery costs. And, oh, surprise, it's a General Milsl survey. So they say, but there's a simple solution, kids already love cereal. So give your kids cereal. This is one of those surveys, in my opinion, that shouldn't be published. That shouldn't be out there. We shouldn't even be talking about this. Bottom line is this is self-serving. These are, you know, dramatic numbers that drive people to say,"oh, well, let's do cereal". And you know what we find at the same time, that General Mills is doing that, Kelloggs is doing something really cool. They've partnered with the Grain Foods Foundation. And what they're doing is they want to build a better breakfast made with whole enriched or fortified grains. They're calling it cereal mashups. So you combine, you know, your own thing. This is not a new product. You take one box here, one box here, you pour it together. Frosted mini wheats and special K or twisty crispies, which is Kellogg's rice crispies and Kellogg's Coco crispies. You know, I'm not sure I like those combinations, but I like this whole mash up idea and, you know, go beyond just Kelloggs. But look at some of the healthier cereals that are out there and, you know, forget the Lucky Charms, forget Fruit Loops, stuff like that, but just healthy cereals that you could blend together and m ake your own mash u p. I think that's a cool idea, but this survey, I mean, for me, that's just horrible.

Sally:

Yes, it is. It is very misleading. And, you know, we wanna make sure that our kids are getting fruits and vegetables in them and the whole grains. So, you know, sometimes cereal isn't going to always cut it. But I do love the Kellogg's idea of making that a little bit better. I also feel like I'm gonna go back to, we talk about retail dietitians a lot, and I'm gonna go back to saying that this is a great opportunity for RD's to educate their shoppers on creative ways to make breakfast for their kids. You know, something interesting that happened to me when my son wasn't eating breakfast, I went to the pediatritian with him and I said,"he's not eating breakfast". And she said, what's his favorite food? And, I said sushi. And she said, well, then give him sushi for breakfast. So that's a difficult thing to do. And we don't do that. But the point being that it doesn't have to be a breakfast food.

Phil:

Absolutely. And you know, you talk about not having sushi for breakfast, but, you know, as I've traveled over these years, there's a lot of hotels, you know, outside the US that for breakfast have a Japanese breakfast. They have the regular American breakfast buffet with the eggs and the pastries and all the stuff. And then they've got a Japanese breakfast with sushi, with soups and so on. And I've gotta tell you probably half the time I've tended to go to that Japanese breakfast buffet instead of the American buffet that's, you know, with the Danish.

Sally:

I love it.<laugh>

Phil:

So the US diet is deadly, says NPR. What they find is diet-related deaths out-ranked deaths from smoking. About half of the US deaths from heart disease, nearly 900 a day are linked to poor diets. So 450 people are dying a day because of poor diets. The good news is that the Biden administration is holding for the first time in 50 years, the White House conference on hunger, nutrition, and health on September 28th. We're gonna be reporting about that. But let's talk about these seven things that this committee has come up with as ways for us to combat this deadly US diet.

Sally:

Yes. And you know, some of these, we have been seeing this happening. So number one, for example, treating food as medicine, we are starting to see more and more people in the medical field that are learning in medical school, how to treat patients with food. We are seeing new programs coming out of pharmacies and out of retailers that are supporting food prescriptions. So, you know, I think we gotta keep the ball rolling on that one. More of that.

Phil:

Absolutely. And our friend Marion Nestle has always talked about number two, which is a focus on the quality of calories, not just the quantity. And that's something, whether you're, uh very upscale, you eat well, or you're on SNAP benefits. It's the quality of what those calories are. That's the way you've gotta think of not just empty calories. Number three is to expand access to dietary and lifestyle counseling to your point. That's what the Retail Dietitian's Business Alliance(RDBA) is all about. You know, educating and empowering people in the store on how to eat. Number four, I really like, supporting food entrepreneurs. This task force is reaching out to the federal government saying let's help these startups that, frankly, are creating new healthier products. Forget about funding junk food companies. Let's just fund this. Also number five, increase the number of new farmers that are growing healthy foods, using regenerative farming techniques, make school meals free for all students is number six. Number seven, I disagree with. I've heard this for my entire career. Establish a federal Food Czar. The term Food Czar itself is a turnoff. You know what we do need is we do need consolidation. If we take a look at the$150 billion a year that the government spends that's across I think, 21 different departments. So yes, we do need somebody that's in charge of all this, then that can coordinate it. Frankly I think that's Tom V ilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, but let's say he's too busy with everything else. But let's not call it Food Czar, let's get rid of that vernacular. The same reason that other other phrases, whether it's GMO or other things go south. Irradiation, which is probably one of th e b est technologies we've got, you know, it's scary. Why can't we just call it, you know, Head of Food or something that people can relate to and not be scared of Food Czar. Come on, get a better term. The Motley fool, one of their services called the Ascent, has announced three food delivery services that we can get for free. What are those? And are they really a good deal? And are they really free?

Sally:

Well, this sounds really cool. And I'm surprised that I haven't heard of any of these yet, but I'm excited to see how they pan out. Joining GrubHub+ you can get a membership through them which normally costs,$ 9.99 a month. I think is what it is. But if you have the membership, you do not pay the delivery fee when you order. And you can get that if you are an Amazon prime member for one year for free. You can also get it if you are an eligible Bank of America credit card holder. So, you know, there's one way to do it. Now, just let's take GrubHub as an example for a moment. I did go through my GrubHub orders so far for this year, and I added up what my delivery fees were, and mine did not come up to much more than$12. However, the service fees on these orders, so there's the delivery fee, which is around$2.99,$2.49, but the service fee is over$6. You don't get to pass on the$6 service fee if you have the membership. So let's be clear about that

Phil:

And you don't get rid of the tip.

Sally:

Yes. And you still pay a tip. But you are saving on that$2.99 or that$2.49. Now there's another one that we saw in here that is from Uber. You can use your Disney+ subscription to get a free Uber One membership for up to six months. Now Uber's delivery fees can often be a lot better because they do this great thing on their website where they kind of list the ones that have the really low delivery fees in the beginning, you know, on the first columns, when you look at it. So when I looked at my Uber fees, the delivery fees were 99 cents, 49 cents. And it really didn't add up to again, much more than$12 I've spent on delivery fees this year. But if you are ordering a lot of Uber eats, then this could really help you out. You could save a lot of money. Another one that, we looked at is Door Dash and their Dash Pass membership is$9.99 a month. Now, if you have a Chase credit card, and I'm not sure specifically which ones, but an eligible Chase credit card, then you can get three months for free. Sometimes on some of them, you can get a year for the Dash Pass.

Phil:

And we're really starting to see, and I think Walmart plus, you know, has started this a few months ago. We're really starting to see a lot of these organizations trying to give more. When you do have membership, you know, probably every day, I'm getting an email from one of my credit cards offering me something. As far as a rebate, even my bank, Wells Fargo, now has, when I visit the website, probably about 12 or 13 different brands that if I use my debit card to buy something, I get a bonus or I get a discount or something like that. So it really takes some time to go through these, but it could be worth it. But ding, ding, ding, Hey, Mr. Food retailer, Mr. Grocery chain, why aren't you doing this? Why as part of your frequent shopper card program, are you not offering, whether it's six months of subscription to Disney+ or another streaming service or something, or even free delivery on your own delivery services. So I think that supermarkets are a bit behind on this whole concept and it's time for them to merchandise and get up to speed because everybody else is gonna pass'em by. Also there's a new report that came out of Medical News Today that says basically not all plant-based diets are equal. And now what we're seeing is a new trend, junk veggie foods, and how it's impacting health and by definition. And this is where they start ultra-processed foods or food products that contain minimal whole foods, high-end calories, added sugar, salt, and fats offer little nutritional value and have been processed with cheap industrial additives. And it looks like now a lot of those new plant-based foods are falling under that Ultrapro category.

Sally:

Yes, it makes me think of the kids recently wanted me to get broccoli tots or something. They were in the frozen food section, so we tried'em, they were okay, but they weren't healthy. Even if they had broccoli in them. And I think that that a lot of shoppers may think that some of these products are healthy because they are vegetarian. They are energy bars, or it's a healthy-looking vegan cereal. But it isn't necessarily better for you. And we've gotta focus more on those fruits, those vegetables, the whole grains and eggs and plant protein.

Phil:

So two points. Number one is this report also shows that vegetarians and vegans have lower level of certain nutrients, including iron, vitamin B12, calcium, vitamin D and omega three fatty acids. So if you are gonna go vegan or vegetarian or just all plant-based, you've gotta be careful of that, number one. Number two, they found that veggie meat replacement products are high in sodium and saturated fats. And you've gotta read those ingredients because a lot of those ingredients are GMO as well. And what really drives me crazy is you're talking about the broccoli tots,is that commercial for Velveeta, where the kids at the dining room table won't eat broccoli. So what does mom do? Mom covers it covers it with Velveeta and then all of a sudden the kids love it. They're smiling. They're happy. Okay. You're missing the point, mom. Also Kevin Hart, the comedian, just opened up a vegan fast food restaurant here in Los Angeles. It's called Hart House. It is vegan. However, while they do have plant-based alternatives for your favorite food meals, I wanna just get your impression Sally, on certain things. One product, the single burger, that's their signature product, 542 calories, 33 grams of fat, 14 grams of saturated fat, 3 1/2 grams of sugar, 774 milligrams of sodium,44 grams of carbs, 16 grams of protein, but it's vegan. So it must be healthy. What do you think?

Sally:

I love the idea of a vegan fast food restaurant. And I think that there are a lot of people that are gonna enjoy this trend if it continues across the country. But yes, we do have to recognize the fact that, looking at this single burger product right here, and this is with no cheese on it, that you could eat a McDonald's hamburger and might do better actually. This one exceeds the American Heart Association's recommendations for saturated fat and t doesn't appear healthy to me even if it is vegan.

Phil:

So it gets worse, their regular crispy chicken sandwich, which is made with pea protein instead of actually chicken, it's made, this is amazing to me, it's made with plant-based Mayo and pickles, pickles are plant based. They might not understand that. Here, 638 calories, 30 grams of fat, 4 1/2 grams of saturated fat, a whopping 1,510 milligrams of sodium, 67 grams of carbs. But it does have 25 grams of protein. It gets worse with their chocolate milkshake, 12 ounce chocolate milkshake, 478 calories. And I'm assuming that it doesn't have regular milk in it. It doesn't say that. They also offer strawberry and Oreo milkshakes, but this regular chocolate milkshake, 478 calories, 15 grams of fat, 12 grams of saturated fat, 64 grams of sugar. 64 grams... My teeth would hurt, 247 milligrams of sodium. That's not so bad. 81 grams of carbs, five grams of protein. Kevin Hart go back to doing TV commercials and comedy. Get out of the food business. We don't want you. I'm not, I'm not going to Hart Home or whatever it's called. So with that, On today’s Bullseye we have to wonder just what the folks at Oscar Mayer are thinking. On August 25 the brand introduced the“Cold Dog”– no its not eating cold Oscar Mayer wieners the way we did in college dorms, it’s a“hot dog” ice pop. Seriously? What is with all these iconic brands that are over stretching into the ice cream and frozen novelty case? Do they really think this is their future? If so, those brand managers better start looking for new jobs. I hear that McDonald’s is looking and now paying$16 an hour. The Cold Dog is supposed to have the smoky umami notes of the hot dog made from gelato and topped with a squiggle of“mustard”– the Cold Dog does not contain any meat but according to the company offers the familiar and delicious notes of Oscar Mayer’s hickory smoked hot dogs, tomato, onion and more”– their words, not mine. By the way, I’d love to see the ingredient list and nutritionals but can’t seem them find it anywhere. And you may not be able to find the Cold Dog either– its being sold just in Long Beach California, New York City(a city known for its hot dog street vendors….I can see it now–“Get your ice cold Oscar Mayer Cold Dogs here” being shouted on 42nd and Broadway!) Atlanta, Georgia, and New Orleans– and only while supplies last– thank goodness! Hope they didn’t make too many. And to top off this stroke of GENIUS(NOT!) they are taking the World Renowned Weinermobile and renovating it to be an ice cream truck for a temporary promotion. Seriously– brand managers– get back to reality. These gimmicks may get you social media likes and publicity– but think long terms– what are these doing to your brand’s image and future. You are becoming a laughingstock and your brand WILL suffer. Want that to be your legacy? By the way you can apply to your nearest McDonald’s at careers.mcdonalds.com– but please don’t try to make a Big Mac ice cream sandwich. Thanks for joining us. And don't forget, visit SupermarketGuru.com for our archives to post other articles. And we always wanna hear your comments. Till next Monday. Have a great food week.