Pity the Potato: The Humble Spud Falls From Grace in the U.S

[FWS]

Pity the Potato: The Humble Spud Falls From Grace in the U.S.

Consumption Declines as Americans Cook Less and Fear Carbs

By Andrea Gallo
Wall Street Journal
Aug. 12, 2014




Bryon Reed, a potato farmer in Idaho, says a recent drop in prices caused him to lose about $250,000 in one three-week period. Taylor R Glenn for The Wall Street Journal

The potato has had a great run for most of the past five centuries. But these days, the humble spud has fallen on hard times.

A darling of American dinner tables since before the nation's founding, potatoes have lost favor in the U.S. for the past two decades. Consumers have shunned the starchy side dish in a race away from carbohydrates and toward greater convenience, two factors driving broad changes in how Americans eat.

Total annual consumption of all types of potatoes has fallen by nearly 25% since peaking in 1996, to 52 pounds a person in 2012, the last year for which the U.S. Department of Agriculture has data. Consumption of fresh potatoes—the kind that are baked, chopped, mashed or hashed—has been dropping even further, to about 27 pounds in 2012, down more than 40% from about 47 pounds in 1970.

Time-pressed Americans, who are cooking less and less, can hardly spare the roughly 10 minutes it takes to microwave a whole potato, let alone the hour needed to bake them in conventional ovens.

Diana Dahl, a 47-year-old consultant, said she grew up eating potatoes in all forms, but now avoids making classic potato dishes to save time. "I prefer to have them made for me," Ms. Dahl said.

While she also eschews fattening french fries, she does allow herself potato chips as an indulgence, she said, as she picked out rice chips and quinoa cheddar chips in a Plum Market grocery in Chicago.

Health concerns started eating into potato sales in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The backlash against carbohydrates early last decade, with the rise of the South Beach and Atkins diets that heavily limit starches, darkened the tater's reputation.



Potatoes are still big business. The raw potato crop was valued around $4 billion in 2012, according to the USDA, but processed products are worth much more. Sales of potato chips and crisps totaled $7.5 billion last year, estimates research firm Euromonitor.

Companies are trying new products, promotions, and flavors to reheat potatoes' popularity, such as healthier versions of french fries and gourmet options like the petite fingerling variety.

"We're gonna bring the sexy back," said Chris Wada, marketing director for Wada Farms Marketing Group LLC, an Idaho-based grower, shipper and marketer of potatoes founded by Mr. Wada's grandparents in 1943.

Wada is about to launch a line of Smalls Artisan Mini-Potatoes, bite-size red or gold spuds specially packaged to cook in a microwave in five minutes.

The U.S. Potato Board, a Denver-based industry group, is running advertisements in lifestyle magazines to polish the potato's image as a health food. Past ads carried luscious photos of potato dishes with captions like, "just because it looks sinful doesn't mean it is." New ads direct readers to the Potato Board's website, which features potato-based recipes (some being "guilt-free"), nutritional facts and other resources.

A medium plain fresh russet potato has about 168 calories, 37 grams of carbohydrates, virtually no sodium or fat, and plenty of potassium and vitamin C, according to the USDA.

Prices for fresh potatoes are highly volatile, and have fallen especially sharply this summer, for reasons that aren't clear. Russet-Burbank potatoes in Idaho that were fetching as much as $8 per hundredweight (100 pounds) at the end of May were selling at between $3.25 and $4 by early August, according to Paul Patterson, an economist at the University of Idaho's Idaho Falls Research and Extension Center.

Bryon Reed, partial owner and grower at DB Reed Farms in Idaho, said the recent plunge is the sharpest he has seen in 40 years of farming, causing him about $250,000 losses in one three-week period.

Still, he says overall he is seeing healthier demand in recent years, thanks partly to fingerlings and red potatoes. He says fingerlings cost about seven times more to grow than the standard Russet-Burbank variety, but sell for an even higher premium. "They're not healthier," he said. "They're just more unique."

It wasn't always so tough for taters. The Incas cultivated potatoes for millennia. Spanish Conquistadors began the spread of the tuber's popularity in the 16th Century when they brought them to Europe. Then European emigrants took them back across the Atlantic, planting in 1719 the first potato patches in what is now in New Hampshire.

Farmer Bryon Reed, shown in his Idaho workshop, says the recent plunge in fresh potato prices is the sharpest he has seen in 40 years.

The spud gained a new friend in 1949, when a year-old outfit called McDonald's MCD +0.14% started selling fries with its burgers, spawning imitators across the fast-food industry. Forty-four years later, McDonald's Corp. started selling its signature side order in 7.1-ounce supersize portions, with 610 calories. McDonald dropped super sizes in 2004.

Some potato companies innovated to keep sales growing. In the early 2000s, PepsiCo Inc. PEP +0.07% 's Frito-Lay division started experimenting with new flavors for its Lays potato chips to add to mainstays flavors like classic, barbecue, and sour cream and onion. Frito-Lays' chip sales have grown, and it remains by far the biggest player, with nearly 70% share of the U.S. market last year, according to Euromonitor.

Much of the recent innovation around potatoes has been focused on calorie counts.

Burger King Worldwide Inc. BKW +0.72% last year started selling Satisfries, advertised as having 40% less fat and 30% fewer calories than regular fries.

ConAgra Foods Inc. CAG -0.28% 's Alexia brand of all-natural frozen foods has launched a line called Smart Classics featuring fries and frozen roasted potatoes with sea salt that are 98% fat free, 100 calories per serving and have no trans fat.

[FWS]

Butter Makes Comeback as Margarine Loses Favor

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and Country Crock Try New Approach as Natural Products Gain in Popularity

By Kelsey Gee
Wall Street Journal
June 25, 2014

Americans are expected to eat an average of 5.6 pounds of butter this year. Shown, packaged butter on the production line at Grassland Dairy in Greenwood, Wis. Tim Gruber for The Wall Street Journal

Changing views of nutrition are turning butter into one of the great comeback stories in U.S. food history.

Americans this year are expected to eat an average of 5.6 pounds of butter, according to U.S. government data—nearly 22.5 sticks for every man, woman and child. That translates to 892,000 total tons of butter consumed nationwide, an amount not seen since World War II.

Americans in 2013 for the third straight year bought more butter than margarine, spending $2 billion on products from Land O'Lakes Inc., Organic Valley and others, compared with $1.8 billion on spreads and margarines, according to IRI, a market-research firm.

The revival flows in part from new legions of home gourmets inspired by celebrity chefs and cooking shows with butter-rich recipes. Butter makers have encouraged the trend, using food channels and websites to promote what they say is their products' natural simplicity.

Butter's shifting fortunes also reflect the vicissitudes of thinking on healthy eating that rattle the national diet. Families for decades opted for vegetable spreads because of concerns about butter's high concentration of saturated fat, only to be told more recently that the trans fats traditionally contained in margarine are just as unhealthy. Many Americans also have altered their thinking on how important reducing all fat is for controlling weight.

Vegetable spreads have struggled recently with the perception that the products are "more manufactured and processed, and less wholesome and natural," said Douglas Balentine, director of nutrition science at Unilever ULVR.LN +0.27% North America, a unit of Unilever PLC, the biggest seller of non-butter spreads.

Courtney Shanower, a 33-year-old pizza-restaurant owner in Sugarcreek, Ohio, said she grew up in a family that bought tub margarine. "I didn't use butter for a long time because I was weight conscious," said Ms. Shanower, a mother of two. "When I turned 30 I started thinking about osteoporosis and calcium and thought I'm not getting the nutrition I need. So I stopped counting calories, and started thinking about nutrition." (See how you score on a quiz to select the smarter choices among these packaged-food match-ups.)

Similar oscillations have roiled other products. Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi and other no-calorie sodas became big sellers in the 1990s and early 2000s as Americans tried to cut sugar consumption, but their sales have fallen sharply in the U.S. recently as consumers increasingly worry about artificial sweeteners.

In May 2013, the Institute of Medicine, a government panel, said there is a lack of evidence that very low-salt diets prevent heart disease, raising questions about national dietary guidelines on sodium intake. A committee appointed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing scientific literature, but the agencies haven't issued new sodium recommendations.

Humans have been eating butter for millennia, valuing its ability to store longer than most meat and its utility as a flavoring. In the early 1900s, U.S. butter consumption averaged more than 18 pounds a person per year.

A French chemist invented margarine in 1869 in response to Napoleon III's call for a butter alternative. Initially it used fat from slaughtered animals that was cheaper than milk used for butter. Modern varieties using plant oils arose in the first half of the 20th century, when brands like Blue Bonnet and Parkay flourished. It gained more popularity around World War II, when butter was rationed.

Food producers liked margarine's lower cost. Health experts further fueled its rise by raising concerns about butter's cholesterol and saturated fats linked to heart disease. By its peak in 1976, U.S. margarine consumption reached 11.9 pounds a person, according to USDA data.

Technically, both butter and margarine contain at least 80% fat. Butter alternatives made from vegetable-based oils, such as products from Smart Balance, are often referred to as "spreads" and tend to contain less fat. Typical margarine components, like soybean and corn oils, tend to be liquid at room temperature. To solidify them, manufacturers change their chemical structures using hydrogen. Partial hydrogenation can also produce trans fats, which have been shown to increase levels of harmful cholesterol in humans.

As butter consumption fell to a nadir of 4.1 pounds per capita in 1997, scientists increasingly were emphasizing that trans fats could pose greater risks than other fats for heart disease.

"The battle has been back and forth," said professor and food scientist Sean O'Keefe at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. "In the 60s and 70s, before trans fats were really thought to be bad, we looked at margarine and said it was healthier because it didn't have as much saturated fat. The opposite is the case today."

Margarine companies emphasize that their softer spreads today generally don't contain trans fats—although many stick margarines still do—and say their product is healthier because it typically contains less saturated fat and calories than butter. "Nutrition experts encourage intake of soft spread margarines over butter," the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers says on its website.

Trevor Wuethrich, vice president of butter producer Grassland Dairy Products Inc., in Greenwood, Wis., said he could sense the tide was starting to turn when margarine executives approached it in the 1990s about trying to develop a softer butter product that could spread easily like tub margarines. It turned out to be too expensive.

Grassland Dairy's sales doubled in the past decade as it increased output and acquired other butter makers, said Mr. Wuethrich, 40, whose great-grandfather founded the company. "For the first time in my life we are at a point where the demand for butter is so good around the world that we're not looking for new business," he said.

Butter companies leveraged the growing interest in home cooking and in the Food Network, launched in 1993, and its 2010 spinoff, the Cooking Channel.

"The explosion of food television culture has shown consumers many new chefs who are all trained to use butter," said Heather Anfang, vice president of marketing in the dairy-foods division of Land O'Lakes. The Arden Hills, Minn.-based cooperative is the nation's largest butter producer with about a quarter of total sales by volume.

Among Land O'Lakes' marketing partners is Pioneer Woman, a home-cooking site run by Oklahoma-based Ree Drummond, who also has a series on the Food Network.

Sales at Land O'Lakes' dairy-foods division—which also sells cheese, milk powder and some vegetable-oil spreads—rose 8% last year to $4.5 billion, outpacing the cooperative's overall growth.

Average U.S. consumption of butter in 2005 passed that of margarine, whose use fell to 3.5 pounds a person in 2010, the last year for which the USDA has data. Sales of margarine fell to $1.5 billion in the year ended May 10, 2014, down 11% from four years earlier, according to research firm Nielsen. Butter sales rose by a third to $2.3 billion in the same period.

Fighting back, Unilever, recently launched products for its I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and Country Crock brands that are made using yogurt, canola oil and salt and have "simple" in their names.

"Spreads are a mainstay of what Americans use to eat and cook, and we're making a major change to using simple ingredients to align with that trend," said Mike Faherty, a vice president of marketing at Unilever North America. "Consumers believe that butter is a simpler product that feels more natural, without understanding that it's an indulgence made from animal fats."

Some nutrition experts agree that the butter resurgence may not be healthy—nor likely to continue. "When you've been in the field long enough," said Alice Lichtenstein, nutrition researcher at Tufts University, "you know that if the pendulum swings in one direction, it can swing back in the other."

[trappincoyotes39]

Butter cost is much higher than other alternative spreads so that in itself is a limiting factor as food prices rise higher in the US. I buy Amish roll butter for baking and sauté yet buy a land o lakes spread for toast and such.

[bblwi]

I like my potatoes baked and those are the lower calorie options most times. The other options add lots of grams of fat and little to no protein.

Bryce

[PamIsMe]

If people would be more concerned about the amount calories they eat per day than carbs and all that other nonsense, the population would be a lot healthier. Everything in moderation seems to be a lost concept these days.

Cheers,
Pam