by Marion Nestle

Currently browsing posts about: Snack foods

Jan 25 2024

Mind-boggling product of the week: Doritos spirit

I learned about this one from Beverage Daily:

Unexpected and bold: The iconic nacho cheese taste of Doritos imbued into a first-of-its-kind spiritThe Frito-Lay brand has collaborated with Danish flavour innovator Empirical to launch Doritos Nacho Cheese Spirit – a limited edition, multi-sensorial experience that really tastes like nacho cheese…. Read more

Limited edition bottles will be available in select New York and California markets for $65 for a 750ml bottle.

Now you get to have your ultra-processed snack and 42% alcohol by volume—all at once!

Oh no!  According to the company, the product is sold out.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Jan 24 2024

How grocery stores encourage snacking

A reader from Phoenix, AZ, Maria Zafonte, sends this from a local Safeway:

From her standpoint—and mine—this is a great way to encourage overeating.

As she explained, if she bought just one bag of chips, each would cost $5.99.

But if she bought four, the unit cost was only $1.97 each.

As she put it:

The problem is what am I going to do with four bags of Doritos?? The healthier choice is financially penalized. It is very frustrating!

Indeed, it is.

One of the hallmarks of ultra-processed food products is their enormous profitability.  You can bet that Safeway is not losing money on 4 bags at $1.97 each.

Even if this is a loss leader (a gimmick to get you into the store), it’s an incentive to overeat.

Caveat emptor.

Nov 16 2023

Food Science triumph of the week: silencing Doritos

I’m not a gamer but the mere thought of it brings out the sociologist in me.

I was riveted by this announcement: PepsiCo’s Doritos brand creates technology to ‘silence’ its crunch.

And even more riveted by its explanation: “The software, aimed at gamers annoyed by the sound from other players, used artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze more than 5,000 crunches.”

Right away, I had questions:

  • Gamers are annoyed by eating noises?
  • Gamers typically eat Doritos?
  • Doritos are noisier than anything else?
  • Somebody got AI to listen to 5000 gamers eating Doritos?

Here’s the explanation.

While PepsiCo’s Doritos chips are popular with gamers, the loud crunch they make has long been a source of frustration.The beverage and snacking giant estimated that 85% percent of U.S. gamers have consumed Doritos in the past three months. But at the same time, nearly a third of individuals reported that other people’s crunching distracts them from playing well and impacts their performance.To “help gamers keep the crunch to themselves,” Doritos is debuting what it calls “Doritos Silent.” Gamers download Doritos Crunch Cancellation software and when the technology is turned on, the software detects the crunching sounds and silences it while keeping the gamer’s voice intact.

I could not make this up if I tried.

Aug 17 2023

Need a healthy snack? Try this!

My distant* but dearly loved cousin, Michael Kravit, sent this from Taiwan.  Seems like a really good idea.

I’m working on a book chapter on snack foods (for an updated edition of What to Eat) and I counted the number of feet of shelf space devoted to snacks—chips, crackers, cookies, toaster pastries, candies, etc—in the Ithaca Walmart: 4,100 linear feet, or 0.8 mile.

OK.  Some of them are nuts or dried fruit.  But the great majority?  Mostly ultra-processed and highly profitable to their makers.

*Definition of a distant cousin: he’s the grandson of my first cousin, which I think makes him twice removed.

Jun 24 2021

Do product reformulation strategies make any nutritional difference?

That’s my question when I see what food companies are trying to do to reduce the content of sugar and salt in their ultra-processed junk food products.

To put it another way, does making an ultra-processed food or beverage slightly better for you convert it to a good choice?

We can argue about this, but companies really are trying hard, as this collection of articles from FoodNavigator.com indicates.

Special Edition: Nutrition and reformulation strategies

Most shoppers say they want to reduce consumption of products that are high in fat, salt and sugar. But many struggle to cut HFSS foods and beverages from their diets and reformulation efforts often face the headwind of perceived quality issues. Meanwhile, the fortified food market in Europe is expected to see a CAGR of 5.2% through to 2025. While reformulation efforts take out the ‘baddies’ is there also an opportunity to add positive nutrients through fortification?

Jul 31 2019

Junk food encourages overeating: the evidence piles up

I was fascinated to see this article about how offering kids greater amounts and varieties of snack foods encourages them to eat more and, therefore, take in more calories.  Snack variety has a greater effect than just larger package sizes (1).

This article immediately reminded me of the infamous cafeteria diet studies of the late 1980s.  The investigators fed rats all kinds of junk foods and compared the calories they ate to those eaten by control rats allowed only rat chow.  The cafeteria-fed rats ate more (2).

This, of course, is what Kevin Hall and his colleagues found when adults were allowed to eat as much as they wanted of ultraprocessed junk foods (3).

The message is clear: junk food encourages overeating; overeating means taking in more calories; more calories means more weight.  Eating a lot of junk food is a sufficient explanation for obesity.

References

  1.  Kerr JA, et al. Child and adult snack food intake in response to manipulated pre-packaged snack item quantity/variety and snack box size: a population-based randomized trial. International Journal of Obesity (2019).
  2. Prats E, et al.  Energy intake of rats fed a cafeteria diet.  Physiol Behav. 1989 Feb;45(2):263-72.
  3. Hall K, et al.  Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake .  Cell Metabolism 2019; 30:67–77.
Jul 18 2019

Snackification: a new word in my vocabulary

BakeryAndSnacks.com’s Special Edition: Snackex 2019 introduces the concept of “Snackification,” which as far as I can tell is the conversion of three square meals a day to all-day snacking.  Alas, snacks have calories; the more snacks the more calories consumed.  And most are ultra-processed, the term used to describe foods that are best consumed in small amounts.   The more snacks consumed, the happier the snack-food industry will be.  Hence: the push.

 

Jun 13 2019

Can Oreo cookies be sustainable?

We are seeing intense pressure on food companies to adopt more sustainable supply-chain and production practices.  But can an ultra-processed food ever be sustainably produced?  Or, is a sustainable snack food an oxymoron?

In BakeryandSnacks.com’s Spotlight on Sustainability, snack food companies say what they are doing to reduce their impact on the environment: