The public doesn’t trust manufacturers like Kellogg’s and Kraft anymore. Earnings are falling, and dozens of Big Food companies’ stocks are down. One of the biggest food companies in the world, ConAgra, is even slashing its 2015 earnings projections. Is Big Food really over?
ConAgra is changing management – is it because their 2015 earnings projections are way are down and stocks took a plunge recently? The food giant owns brands like Hunts, Swiss Miss, as well as Chef Boyardee, among others. Do people really want to eat cancer-causing chemicals in a can anymore?
Kraft, the maker of Oscar Mayer deli meats, Jell-O, Maxwell House coffee, and Velveeta cheese also recently shook up top management and reported sluggish sales. Big Food company, Kellogg’s, has seen its sales plunge 5.4 percent over the past year.
Campbell’s Soup CEO has said:
“There’s a mounting distrust of so-called Big Food, the large food companies and legacy brands on which millions of consumers have relied on for so long.”
Do Americans finally realize what Yale medical researchers David Katz and Samuel Meller declared in a paper in 2013, that a “diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention.”
Read: GMOs, Monsanto’s Round Up Found in Kellogg’s Froot Loops
Eating minimally processed foods was even found to be more important than whether you are vegan or vegetarian, eat a paleo diet, or take part in any other specific diet like the ‘Mediterranean diet.’ Even eating meat, according to Katz and Meller, is O.K. as long as:
“. . . animal foods are themselves the products, directly or ultimately, of pure plant foods—the composition of animal flesh and milk is as much influenced by diet as we are.”
Big Food is simply floundering. People don’t want toxic chemicals in their beer, in their cereal, or in their milk.
Is this also why retailers like Target are doubling their organic and sustainable products, and organic food sales are expected to be over $35 million in 2015? Is this why farmers are turning to non-GMO seed, and people are turning to local food co-ops or even starting to grow their own food?
Is “American cuisine” finally going to mean something besides processed junk? It looks like Big Food is on a path to self-destruction – at least unless they make some serious alterations to keep up with what the people want. It’s about time we wised up.
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Article image photo credit: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
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