Assignment 2

1a. Students in this class recognized the following motivations for food purchase and consumption—nutrition, taste, convenience, cost, “addiction,” “style,” and ethics. On your next trip to the supermarket, record your food purchases—and list each food item purchased according to your motivations for that particular item.

*I apologize the following format is in a complete mess. I just couldn't figure out how to paste a table in here, or organize in any ways. When I publish, it changes everything.

Items, Motivations, Ads influence
Tokoroten(Japanese noodles): Nutrition, taste, convenience, No
Pork: Nutrition, taste, No
Asian pear: Taste, No
Green beans: Nutrition, taste, No
Tomato: Nutrition, taste, No
Kefir: Nutrition, taste, No
Avocado: Nutrition, taste, No
Onion: Nutrition, taste, No
Dried bean curd: Nutrition, taste, No
Water bamboo shoots: Nutrition, taste, No
Dried seaweed: Nutrition, taste, No
Japanese sweet potato: Nutrition, taste, No
Nonfat milk: Nutrition, taste, No
Bell pepper: Nutrition, taste, No
Bean sprouts: Nutrition, taste, No
Green onion: Nutrition, taste, No
Taro potato Nutrition, taste, No
Shrimp: Nutrition, taste, No
Oyster mushroom: Nutrition, taste, No
Cucumber: Nutrition, taste, No

For all the food purchases, there are two key motivations: taste and nutrition. It is not always like this. I sometimes buy ice creams and potato chips, which are not nutritious at all. But at least 80% of food choice would be based on nutrition and taste. Nutrition and taste are key determinants for me. I don’t like separating these two. I’m sometimes choosing food just for taste, but that is a very rare occasion. If I get really busy, there will be more convenience food, such as canned soup, retort curry, or something like that. But I still pay attention to food and eat as healthy as possible.


1b. Do you think your motivations were influenced at all by some form of advertising or the marketing of that item? Note your response for each food item (The list is in the above).

Kefir (yogurt drink) and tokoroten (Japanese sour noodles) are the only things that have anything to do with marketing. However, the only method that each company uses is packaging. I haven’t seen any other form of advertisement for these products. Although it is not promoted from the company, I have seen a featured program for kefir. That is how I got to know what kefir is. However, the reason I keep buying this product is not because it looked good on TV, but rather I realized its health benefits through my body functioning, especially with digestive system. About tokoroten, it was only a spontantanous thought when I was at my home doing my homework ( I was not looking at any image of tokoroten or hearing anything about it.) For that, I don't consider any marekting clicked my apetite for tokoroten. It was only the taste I craved for, not any figures or sounds related to this product.

3. Now it’s your turn—flip side: choose one day and eat ONLY healthy whole foods or foods you process yourself (your definition of “healthy”). Record your food choices, taking note of nutritional content, where the food comes from, cost, taste and any other factors related to your food purchase. Also note how you felt at the end of the day.

Breakfast: (Menu & Origin)
　
Sabamiso: Mackerel (Pacific Coast ), Miso (Japan) Ginger (California)
Rice: Brown Rice (CA)
Tonjiru: Daikon radish (California), Carrot (U.S.A.), Pork (Oregon), Gobo (CA), Taro (CA), Miso (Japan), Mirin (Japan)
Sunomono: Cucumber (Canada), Seaweed (Korea), Vinegar (CA), Soy sauce (WI)


Lunch: (Menu & Origin)

Rice: Brown Rice (CA)
Nappa Miso Soup: Nappa (OR) Miso (Japan)
Kouyadouhu toji: Kouyadouhu (Japan), Shrimp (U.S.A.)
Green Beans stir fry: Green Beans (CA), Bonito (Japan)
Drink: Kefir (Maine)


Dinner: (Menu & Origin)
　
Rice: Brown Rice (CA)
Chicken stir fry: Chicken (OR), Bell pepper (OR), Tomato (OR), Onion (CA), Mushroom (OR)Wakatakeni: Bamboo shoot (China), Seaweed (Korea)


Nutritional content: It turned out my menus fulfilled most of the essential nutrition needed for a day. For example, I had 614mg of calcium which I need to have about 600mg. I had 531μg of vitamin A and it is only 9μg short from needed amount. I also had a plenty of vitamin D, E, K, B1, B2, and C. The calculation is derived from the database at http://www.nuis.ac.jp/~takagi/sql/masuno/eiyou.html.

Cost: One meal ranged from $5 to $6.5, which is about the same price as McDonald combo. So, it is quite cheap to eat organic foods I found. I usually eat less variety and quantity in a day, which drives down the prices even more.

Taste: All of them tasted good. Some of them were a little bit salty and some others needed more salt. I was overwhelmed from cooking all day and wasn’t able to keep paying attention for flavoring. But overall, they were all good.

How I felt at the end of the day: I was quite exhausted. My definition of healthy was to eat a variety of food, especially vegetables, so I cooked for every meal, instead of eating left overs of one meal. Every time I cook, I had to check where the food came from and its nutritional content. So, the effort to use a variety of vegetables had a counter effect to my well-being as it required more time to research for each ingredient. My day just flew away for cooking and researching about food. Though I was glad to eat nutritious and tasty food, I got tired from standing in the kitchen, taking notes, and so on. I’ve probably overdone it. There wasn’t significant difference in my energy level, functionability, and mood. This is probably because I eat quite healthy everyday. I surely like cooking whole foods on daily basis. I feel more comfortable and safe to eat whole foods. Through this assignment, I realized how little attention I pay regarding where the food comes from. I assumed almost all non-processed food comes from somewhere nearby, but they may not. I surely learned to be more conscious about food origin.


4. Take a personal field trip to either Whole Foods or New Seasons (or both if you have the time). Note what is different at these markets, as compared to People’s Food Coop. Think about scale, product offerings, customer satisfaction and marketing.

I went to New Season’s and People’s to make comparison. In terms of scale, there is a huge gap between People’s and New Season’s. New Seasons is more than three times bigger than People’s and offer far more variety of products. New Seasons have many in-store-processing-stations, such as bakery, butcher, and deli. The difference from other stores including People’s is that New Seasons prepares the food from scratch at where customers can see, and this transparency is probably quite appealing to their customers.

There are many local organic products at New Season’s, but there are many others that are neither local nor organic. This could be quite confusing to customers since they may assume everything in store passed New Season’s standard as their advertisement say “home-grown.” (You would have to carefully read into small letters to find out that it only applies to the products with yellow tags.) I, myself, used to think New Season’s has high standard of product selection before giving careful look to each product. A nice thing about People’s is that they don’t have this kind of misleading selection. Everything there is met the standard of healthy, organic, sustainable, humanly raised, and fair traded products.

In terms of product offerings, there are as many kinds of produce (fruits and vegetables) as in both stores. The difference is quantity. People’s use its shelf space quite wisely to offer the same variety in much smaller space. Except produce, New Seasons has far more product offerings than People’s. New Seasons has more of household products, snacks, milks, yogurt, and almost anything you can find at stores like Safeway, whereas People's selection is very limited to food and very little household products.

In terms of customer satisfaction, the atmosphere at New Seasons is less personal compared to People’s, even though New Seasons is a very friendly place compared to other stores in town. Busy traffic in parking lots, crowded space, busy customers, and long lines contributes to impersonal atmosphere at New Season’s. Surprisingly, at People’s, the same aspects don’t contribute to impersonal atmosphere. Traffic can get quite busy on 21st, the store can be very crowded, lines could be long, but People’s store still maintain peaceful and friendly atmosphere. I noticed that it is not only the sales clerks who are friendly, but also many customers are friendly and respectful to each other. There are more customers and sales clerks who know each other and enjoy conversations at People's, which increases homy atmosphere. This type of customer satisfaction is probably hard to measure, but it is definitely there.

Regarding marketing, New Seasons has definitely stronger marketing strategy and bigger budget. Its name appears on the outside wall, store entrance, store bags, and various advertisements. The visibility and exposure are much higher for New Season’s than People’s. Just comparing the size of the name board, fonts, lettering, and the combination of colors, New Season's logo is much more visually noticible than People's. New Seasons use catchy words very effectively, such as “home-grown,” “friendliest store in town.” Reflecting what I learned in my marketing classes, these are very effective promotions. The words often used at People’s like “organic” and “local” have been overused by so many and don’t stand out by themselves these days. Even comparing to some of the other coops appeared in “We Own It” on page 51, 19, and 22, it seems obvious that People’s store front and advertisement are less effective to catch eyes. People’s marketing materials, such as magazine advertisement, store signs on streets, store bags, don’t seem to have its purpose to catch peoples’ attention; they are just so small in fonts, skinny letterings, and bad use of colors. It would only help people who already know the store in very little way. Therefore, People’s marketing has very little effect to increase customers. Farmers’ market can be covering these weaknesses with more visiblity and noticibility, but it's only on Wednesday, once a week. However, if the intention is to avoid the influx of new customers, maybe it is better this way. People’s has very small store capacity. Though, if that is the case, spending time and money for marketing is just simply a waste in my opinion.

5a. What are the politics of the “food pyramid” as described by Marion Nestle?

According to Marion Nestle, food pyramid is the product of political wars over food. Meat industry consistently fought for the expressions about meet intake and the suggested amount. Compromise in wording such as: from “decrease consumption of meat” to “increase consumption of lean meat (p41),” from “eat less meat” to “avoid too much fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol (which come mostly from meat and dairy in American diet) (p46),” are the example of changes in expressions. The intake of meat was suggested to be 2-3 servings per day; however, the recommended range was extended to 9 ounces per day from the desirable upper limit of 5-7 ounces per day (p72).

There are far more political influences than meat industry into food pyramid. One is dairy product. It is at the second top in the pyramid as an essential nutrient (“must have” implication) even though it contains lactose that cannot be digested by most nonwhite populations (p.73). The current version of food pyramid does not refer to the fat content of dairy products (p79), so the “essential nutrient” could possibly be coming from heavy whipping cream in one’s diet (Actually, the picture of whipped cream is in the Daily Food Guide Pyramid under milk category on page 80.).

Nestle claims 6 out of 11 members of the Guidelines committee had significant ties to the meat, dairy, or egg industries and these members—all university-based academics—had received research grants from, lectured to, consulted for, published with, or served on boards of the organizations with commercial interests in specific guidelines and what was said about them (p73).

5b. Describe, in your words, the business ethics of Phillip Morris’ advertisement in illustration 5 on page24 of Marion Nestle’s Food Politics

Phillip Morris is informing its generous food donations for magazine readers using a mother and her child in the advertisement. Its title says “Katya’s mom no longer worries where her next meal is coming from.” This is a very questionable statement and I’m having a hard time to figure Phillip Morris’s intention. However, the words “no longer worries where her next meal is coming from” are obviously troubling. The good side of Phillip Morris’s intention is supporting low income family for their food supply, making their lives easier especially for mothers with small children. However, the negative side of this advertisement and the potential underlying intention is to brain-wash the audience to fool them the source of their food is nothing to worry about, though it should be for caring mothers. As described throughout in “Food Politics” and “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” where the food is coming from is something all Americans should pay far more attention to. There are convincing evidences in many researches that it is dangerous to assume food safety without careful examination. Many food industries spend millions of dollars to flip this image and implant subliminal impression in people about the safety of their products. This Phillip Morris’s advertisement can be one of those ill-intended promotion.