Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (55 page)

  
44
What they all wanted
John Lennon’s affection for Dr Pepper was recorded by his girlfriend, May Pang, in her biography,
Instamatic Karma
(New York: St. Martin’s, 2008); the preferences of the other pop stars were ferreted out by the
Smoking Gun
website. Hillary Clinton relates her experiences with Dr Pepper on the road in her autobiography,
Living History
(New York: Scribner’s, 2004). These and other Dr Pepper trivia have been compiled in an online digest run by Christopher Flaherty,
The Highly Unofficial Dr Pepper FAQ
.

  
45
Dr Pepper began to slip
“Top-10 Carbonated Soft Drink Companies and Brands for 2002,”
Beverage Digest
, February 24, 2003.

  
46
“If we are to re-establish”
“Dr Pepper President: Red Fusion Designed to Add ‘Excitement’ and Appeal to Non–Dr Pepper Users,”
Beverage Digest
, May 24, 2002.

  
47
He boosted sales
Howard R. Moskowitz and Alex Gofman,
Selling Blue Elephants
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing, 2007).

  
48
as many as sixty thousand
The Food Marketing Institute, a grocers trade association, says the number of items in grocery stores ranges from 15,000 to 60,000 depending on the store’s size, with an average of 38,718.

  
49
Supermarket real estate
Herb Sorensen,
Inside the Mind of the Shopper
(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing, 2009).

  
50
“I’ve optimized soups”
Howard Moskowitz to author.

  
51
They devised sixty-one
Interviews with Moskowitz and Michele Reisner, along with Dr Pepper project records.

  
52
“If all of a sudden”
Howard Moskowitz to author. Michael Moss, “The Hard Sell On Salt,”
The New York Times
, May 30, 2010.

  
53
As he told a gathering
Howard Moskowitz, Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) 2010 meeting, Chicago.

  
54
The military has long been
The reporting on Natick was greatly assisted by interviews with several Natick officials, including Jeannette Kennedy, project officer for research on MREs. The military’s field rations program is also detailed in the document, “Operational Rations of the Department of Defense,” Natick, May 2010.

  
55
“The problem in the military”
Herb Meiselman to author.

  
56
Sensory-specific satiety
Steven Witherly,
Why Humans Like Junk Food: The Inside Story on Why You Like Your Favorite Foods, the Cuisine Secrets of Top Chefs, and How to Improve Your Own Cooking Without a Recipe!
(Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2007); Barbara Rolls, “Sensory Specific Satiety in Man,”
Physiological Behavior
27 (1981): 137–142; Marjatta Salmenkallio-Marttila et al., “Satiety, Weight Management, and Foods: Literature Review,” VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, Esbo, Finland.

  
57
This colleague
Author correspondence with Balintfy’s son, Joseph, a spokesman for the National Institutes of Health. Among other instances, Balintfy cited the term
bliss point
in a 1979 presentation to the Society for the Advancement of Food Service Research.

  
58
The company, plagued by bureaucracy
See especially the Harvard Business School critique Toby E. Stuart,
Kraft General Foods: The Merger
.

  
59
“one of the great ho-hummers”
Ibid.

  
60
Maxwell House
This reporting benefited greatly from interviews with Howard Moskowitz and John Ruff, a General Foods research and development official in the coffee division. Moskowitz,
Selling Blue Elephants
.

  
61
The precise ingredients
Dr Pepper declined to discuss specific ingredients beyond those that are listed on the package, calling the formula proprietary.

  
62
By 2006, the company’s CEO
Transcript of the February 23, 2006, presentation by CEO Todd Stitzer to the Consumer Analyst Group of New York.

  
63
In the spring of 1946
Al Clausi to author.

  
64
coined the phrase
Al Clausi recalled hearing Mortimer use the expression “convenience foods” in a speech to employees in the early 1950s that Clausi believes may be the first time the phrase was used. “He said, ‘General Foods is not just a packaged food company, General Foods is the convenience foods company,’ ” Clausi told me. “And that signal went out to everybody, in marketing, in technical. That we now need to look at what we’re doing and ask, ‘How can we make it more convenient?’ That was the beginning of the era of instant this, instant that, powdered this, powdered that.”

  
65
This one took years
Clausi to author. His creation of instant Jell-O pudding is also memorialized in the beautifully illustrated large-format book published by Kraft Foods,
The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese
, which draws on company records and interviews to chronicle the role of food technicians and scientists in creating many of the company’s iconic products while steering clear of the more controversial aspects. The impetus for creating this book came from John Ruff, a former Kraft senior vice president, who wished to honor the oft-overlooked labors of food technicians, and I am grateful to him for providing me with a copy. Anne Bucher and Melanie Villines,
The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese: Stories of Kraft Food Inventors and their Inventions
(Kraft Food Holdings, Northfield, Il. 2005).

  
66
A competitor, National Brands
National Brands obtained two patents relevant to the production of instant pudding, the first in 1952, patent no. 2,607,692, and the second in 1958, patent no. 2,829,978. Clausi’s own patent was issued in 1957, patent no. 2,801,924. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has an online database where patents can be retrieved using various search criteria, including the patent number, the name of the inventor, and the company to whom the patent is assigned.

  
67
“Quick! Easy!”
Bucher and Villines,
Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese
.

  
68
When Mortimer emerged
Charles Mortimer to the dinner session of the Conference Board’s Third Annual Marketing Conference, New York City, September 22, 1955.

  
69
Post introduced a string
This reporting on the development of sugar-coated cereals benefited greatly from Scott Bruce,
Cerealizing America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal
(Boston: Faber & Faber, 1995), a delightful and well-researched account of the cereal industry pioneers. See also Kenneth Corts, “The Ready-To-Eat Breakfast Cereal Industry in 1994” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School, 1995); and Raymond Gilmartin,
General Mills
.

  
70
General Foods at the time
Stuart,
Kraft General Foods
; “Modern Living: Just Heat and Serve,”
Time Magazine
, December 7, 1959; Bucher and Villines,
Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese
; “A Chronological History of Kraft General Foods,” KGF Archives Department, Glenview, Illinois; “General Foods Plans to Buy Oscar Mayer,”
The New York Times
, February 5, 1981; “General Foods Corporation: List of Deals,” Lehman Brothers Collection, Harvard Business School; “At General Foods, Did Success Breed Failure?”
The New York Times
, June 11, 1972.

  
71
“We thought it would be attractive”
Al Clausi to author.

  
72
“They would drive”
Al Clausi to author.

  
73
As a child
“Modern Living,”
Time Magazine
, December 7, 1959. Charles Mortimer, “Purposeful Pursuit of Profits and Growth in Business,” McKinsey Foundation Lectures; “Expert Offers Marketing Tips,”
The New York Times
, May 14, 1959; “General Foods Chief Describes ‘Benign Revolution in Kitchen,’ ”
The New York Times
, September 12, 1962.

  
74
“Today, consumer expectations”
Charles Mortimer to the dinner session of the Conference Board’s Third Annual Marketing Conference, New York City, September 22, 1955.

  
75
“Who says the only food”
As recounted by Al Clausi to author.

  
76
“My daughter”
As recounted by Al Clausi to author.

  
77
“That was a mind spreader”
Al Clausi to author.

  
78
The Tang project had started
Al Clausi to author.

  
79
“Are you working on anything”
Bucher and Villines,
Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese
; Al Clausi and Domenic DeFelice to author.

  
80
Bloomquist said that people
Al Clausi to author.

  
81
“We started in Beijing”
Al Clausi to author.

  
82
“low-residue” food
Bucher and Villines,
Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese
.

  
83
“Tell NASA we’re honored”
Ibid.

  
84
as much as 19 grams
The amount of sugar in a teaspoon is most commonly estimated at 4.2 grams per teaspoon. Thus, 19 grams of sugar is 4.5 teaspoons.

  
85
When sales flattened out
Kellogg’s advertising unit and its agency provided a case study of the 2003 Pop-Tarts campaign to the Effie Awards, which bestowed the company with a gold award in 2004.

  
86
“The 30 million tweens”
Kellogg Effie Award case study.

  
87
“It was teaching the basics”
Betty Dickson to author.

  
88
Dickson belonged to
Digitized copies of the American Home Economics Association publication
Bulletin of American Home Economics Association
, later renamed
The Journal of Home Economics
, are available through the Mann Library at Cornell University. Starting in 1914, they provide insightful reading not only of the association’s endeavors but also the social history of meal preparation as it evolved.

  
89
the food industry undertook
The Journal of Home Economics
, volumes in 1956 and 1957. See for example, vol. 49, no. 3 (March 1957), which includes an announcement by General Foods that its Consumer Service Department was being renamed “General Foods Kitchens.” This growing division of the company had six test kitchens where it prepared newly developed products and created recipes for using them. The kitchens were backed by a small army of photographers, writers, and correspondents who answered the thousands of letters General Foods started getting from homemakers, as well as food publicists, who delivered products to newspaper food writers and editors.

  
90
“You will find that”
Susan Marks,
Finding Betty Crocker
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005).

  
91
In 1957 alone
Journal of Home Economics
49, no. 3 (March 1957): 246.

  
92
“When I joined General Mills”
Marcia Copeland to author.

  
93
she was praised
Journal of Home Economics
72, no. 4 (Winter 1980): 13. Her students included both boys and girls in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades, with the foods curriculum described as “using small appliances for food preparation; developing shopping skills; and studying development of food habits.”

  
94
“Almost every bite”
“Modern Living: Just Heat and Serve,”
Time Magazine
, December 7, 1959.

  
95
“We taught skills”
Betty Dickson to author.

  
96
“Convenience is still”
Al Clausi to author.

  
97
Kellogg has gone so far down the road
In interviews and public statements, Kellogg staunchly defends the nutritional profile of its cereals. Acknowledging that some of its brands remain quite sweet, the company said it has numerous others with lesser amounts of sugar, and that an ongoing effort has succeeded in reducing the sugar in its cereals marketed to kids by 16%.

  
98
John Harvey Kellogg
“J. H. Kellogg Dies; Health Expert, 91,”
New York Times
, December 16, 1943; “Dr. John Harvey Kellogg,” Battle Creek Historical Society; Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, “The Simple Life in a Nutshell,” available from
Lifestylelaboratory.com
; John Kellogg,
The Living Temple
(Battle Creek, MI: Good Health Publishing, 1903); Bruce,
Cerealizing America
; “One Hundred Years: An Overview,” Kellogg Company.

  
99
a younger brother named Will
“Our Founder,” W. K. Kellogg Foundation; “Our History,” Kellogg Company; “The Good Old Days,”
Promo Magazine
, September 1, 2003; Rachel Epstein,
W. K. Kellogg: Generous Genius
(Danbury, CT: Children’s Press, 2000); “A ‘Flakey’ Patent Case,”
Stereoscope
, Historical Society of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, vol. 1, no. 3 (Fall 2003).

100
a marketing whiz
Kraft spun off the Post cereals brand in 2007 in a merger with Ralcorp Holdings, and in 2011 Ralcorp spun off Post Foods into a company. “Post Heritage,” Post Foods Company, Battle Creek, Michigan; Bruce,
Cerealizing America
; Nancy Rubin Stuart,
American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post
(Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2004).

101
Collier’s
magazine accused
Bruce,
Cerealizing America
.

102
By 1970, the Big Three
Corts,
Ready-to-Eat Breakfast Cereal Industry
.

103
they so completely controlled
“Not Enough Competition in Cereal Industry, Report Says,” Associated Press, October 2, 1980; “Cerealmakers Call Federal Study ‘Inadequate,’ ” Associated Press, February 13, 1980; “Bill Could Cripple FTC’s Case on Cereal Companies,”
Washington Post
, March 5, 1981, F. M. Scherer, “The Welfare Economics of Product Variety: An Application to the Ready-to-Eat Cereals Industry,”
Journal of Industrial Economics
(December 1979).

104
An enterprising dentist
Ira Shannon, “Sucrose and Glucose in Dry Breakfast Cereals,”
Journal of Dentistry for Children
(September–October 1974). This study by Shannon, an Air Force dentist, generated newspaper articles throughout the country. See, for example, “Sugar in Breakfast Cereal,”
Chicago Tribune
, October 30, 1977. He later wrote a book on his expanded research: Ira Shannon,
The Brand Name Guide to Sugar: Sucrose Content of Over 1,000 Common Foods and Beverages
(Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1977).

105
what made Mayer an industry threat
Jean Mayer, “Obesity: Physiologic Considerations,”
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
9 (September–October 1961); “How to Eat Right and Live Longer,”
U.S. News & World Report
, August 9, 1976; “Jean Mayer; Tufts Chancellor, Adviser on U.S. Nutrition,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 3, 1993.

106
“I contend that these cereals”
Jean Mayer, “Sweet Cereals Raise Labeling Issue,”
Chicago Tribune–New
York News Syndicate, December 17, 1975.

107
Sugar took center stage
Marian Burros, “And Now a Word from Industry,”
The Washington Post
, October 20, 1977.

108
“We never said”
Ibid.

109
The battle in Washington
Arthur Applbaum, “Mike Pertschuk and the Federal Trade Commission,” John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1981; Arthur Applbaum, “Mike Pertschuk and the Federal Trade Commission: Sequel,” John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1981; Howard Beales, “Advertising to Kids and the FTC: A Regulatory Retrospective that Advises the Present,” Federal Trade Commission, speeches.

110
“As with cigarette advertising”
Applbaum, “Mike Pertschuk and the Federal Trade Commission.”

111
“If you take on the advertisers”
Ibid.

112
formidable team of lobbyists
Ibid.

113
Until then, the editorial board
“The FTC as National Nanny,”
The Washington Post
, March 1, 1976.

114
Thirty-five years later
“A Ban Too Far,”
The New York Times
, May 31, 2012.

115
the FTC itself nearly capsized
“Curbing the FTC,”
The MacNeil/Lehrer Report
, March 18, 1982; “FTC Ends Consideration of Rule on TV Ads for Children,” Associated Press, September 30, 1981; “Regulating the FTC,”
Newsweek
, October 15, 1979.

116
“It became a pivotal moment”
Bruce Silverglade to author.

117
“They have suppressed”
“Pertschuk Exits FTC with Guns Blazing,”
The Washington Post
, September 26, 1984.

118
“I don’t make any bones”
Ibid.; “New Head at FTC, New Era for Kid Ads,”
The Washington Post
, October 1, 1981; “FTC Chief Changes Role of ‘Nation’s Nanny,’ ”
Christian Science Monitor
, December 6, 1983.

119
The report ran 340 pages
“FTC Staff Report on Television Advertising to Children,” Federal Trade Commission, February 1978.

120
Dubbed “kidvid”
Jane Brody, “Personal Health,”
New York Times
, March 13, 1985; Dale Kunkel and Walter Gantz, “Assessing Compliance with Industry Self-Regulation of Television Advertising to Children,”
Journal of Applied Communication Research
2 (1993).

121
“It’s a marketing tool”
Lisa Belkin, “Food Labels: How Much They Do, And Don’t, Say,”
The New York Times
, September 18, 1985.

122
They began selling
Corts,
Ready-to-Eat Breakfast Cereal Industry
; “The Battle for the Cereal Bowl,”
Food Processing
, 2009; “Topher’s Breakfast Cereal Character Guide,” Topher’s Castle,
LavaSurfer.com
, 1998; “1991 Food Processor of the Year: General Mills,”
Prepared Foods
, September 1, 1991; Li Li et al., “The Breakfast Cereal Industry,” Cornell University, April 20, 2011.

123
General Mills broke
Corts,
Ready-to-Eat Breakfast Cereal Industry
.

124
“Sanger pushed”
Fingerman to author.

125
General Mills jumped out
“Repositioning Cereals as Snacks?”
Brand-Packaging
, March 2000.

126
“Getting a 0.5 percent share”
Karen Hoggan, “Kellogg, a Cereal Killing?”
Marketing
, October 31, 1991.

127
These rules, at one time
Bruce,
Cerealizing America
.

128
“You know how”
Edward Martin to author.

129
Launched in 1993
Corts,
Ready-to-Eat Breakfast Cereal Industry
.

130
advertising specialists from Leo Burnett
George Lazarus, “Burnett Drama Still a ‘How Done It?’ ”
Chicago Tribune
, March 28, 1997; “Leo Burnett USA: The Most Effective Agency in America,”
Market Wire
, June 8, 2007.

131
“When you pour”
Case No. 4453, Children’s Advertising Review Unit, Council of Better Business Bureaus, February 14, 2006.

132
“I was used to cooking”
William Thilly to author.

133
Jenness was no ordinary
“Clients Talk about Burnett,”
Advertising Age
, July 31, 1995; “Former Ad Exec to Run Kellogg,”
Chicago Tribune
, November 30, 2004; “Getting Settled in Battle Creek,”
Grand Rapid Press
, December 26, 2004.

134
“With the game we’re in”
Jenny Rode, “Aggressive But Steady Sells the Cereal,”
Battle Creek Enquirer
, March 7, 2006.

135
Post had reversed
Details on this advertising campaign are disclosed in the case study Kraft and its advertising agency submitted to the Effie Awards in 2006.

136
In an analysis
Likewise, Kellogg discussed its strategy in a 2007 submission to the Effie Awards for its Frosted Mini-Wheats campaign.

137
“Help your kids earn an A”
Kellogg announcement, March 12, 2008, included as exhibit in FTC complaint against Kellogg.

138
The scene was a classroom
FTC complaint against Kellogg, July 27, 2009.

139
These were the findings
Ibid.

140
plodded for more than a year
The FTC told me it needed the time to investigate and handle the case, and that its actions were prudent, given the agency’s limited powers. “While many companies will voluntarily choose to stop running ads during the pendency of an investigation, the FTC has no legal basis to demand that they do so,” Mary Engle, director of the agency’s Division of Advertising Practices in the Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in an email. “And, of course, in most instances a company will strongly defend its advertising, and persuading it to sign a settlement can be difficult. We typically only seek preliminary relief from the federal courts in cases we view as clear-cut fraud. Otherwise, negotiating a consent order under which the company agrees to stop making the challenged claims is the most efficient way to proceed.”

141
A resounding 51 percent
Case No. 4866, National Advertising Division, Council of Better Business Bureaus, June 17, 2008.