So What, Who Cares (vol 2, issue 1) How all the trendy people will be exercising this year
Hello! If the subscriber numbers are anything to go by, we have all resolved to remain awesome this year by reading So What, Who Cares? It is the easiest New Year's resolution you will achieve.
In honor of the new year, I'm declaring this the second volume of So What, Who Cares?, so the numbering system starts all over again.
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If this is the year you decide you want to join your local "box" and start Instagramming pictures of your awesome biceps, do it because you love the very notion of intense interval training: the Crossfit cult is going to dwindle this year, claims Walter Thompson, author of the American College of Sports Medicine's Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends for 2015. He argues that fitness trends churn fast and the probability of injuries associated with Crossfit workouts will make it less appealing to easily-bored fitness fanatics.
Another factor that may affect exercisers' cooling love for Crossfit: Money. There are two likely pressure points: Obamacare and personal income. In the case of the former, the Affordable Care Act reimburses physicians for their help in counseling patients on fitness, which means money is likely to flow to certified health professionals and trainers who can be paid directly or indirectly via insurance. And in the case of the latter, it comes down to what exercisers can afford. Annie Lowrey notes that Crossfit is often pricier than low-end, no-frills gyms. As she reports:
“From 2010 to 2014, many small, low-cost gyms with few amenities and month-by-month contracts have fared well,” said an industry report by IBISWorld.
So what? It is a really great time to be a gym goer -- or to go shopping for membership. One fitness category that's in a slow-motion scramble for survival: Amenities-provided gyms. They have a tough business model right now -- they're being squeezed by the no-frills segment and the high-end boutique experience.
Who cares? This shakedown in the fitness sector is another facet of the widening class and cultural gaps in America: The rich can afford Soul Cycle at $34 per class; the rest of us are working out at a place that costs $39.99 per month. The stratification of fitness experiences echoes the stratification of retail or food industry experiences in the U.S. today.
Additional reading: This piece on the decline of golf in the United States is an enjoyable meander, Economist-style, through the state of the game today. But if you don't have time for a meander, here's why golf's putting in the rough in the States: The changed models for child-rearing in the U.S. mean it's less acceptable for Dad to unload the kids on Mom for an entire Saturday while he plays 18 holes and drinks 6 bloody marys; gold courses' elevated design standards now mean the game is harder and more challenging to play; Americans don't want to devote time to mastering the game; younger people prefer the gratification of Wii golf to the vagaries of the real thing.
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Mason jar salads sound more twee than Zooey Deschanel riding a bicycle with a bird perched on the handlebars, but they may help solve one of the biggest problems in quick-service foods: How do you make salad cheap and convenient? Farmer's Fridge is a start-up that sells pre-made salads tidily layered in plastic mason jars -- plastic jars because the salads are stocked in vending machines. They cost $7 apiece. The start-up has a few aims: Make money and see if people can/will buy healthy food if it is as convenient and ubiquitous as a Snickers bar, and see if they can make enough money to stock lower-priced salad vending machines in poor neighborhoods so fresh produce is accessible to all.
So what? Don't be fooled by the good intentions. The big problem with the typical American diet may not be a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables or the refusal to eat them. People of all incomes now eat about 30 pounds more vegetables and fruit annually than they did in 1970 -- but they're also eating more, period. In 1970, adults averaged 2100 calories per day; now it's 2500 calories. That means that every year, adults today are eating 146,000 calories more than their 1970s counterparts. And there's a small body of evidence suggesting that "food deserts" aren't the obesity factor they've been thought to be.
So the point here is not "We'll solve systemic food policy issues with cheap and ubiquitous vending machines." Rather, the reason to care about this story is because Farmer's Fridge could blow open a whole new class of fast food.
Who cares? Pinterest should, because Farmer's Fridge founder got his salad-packaging solution from a relative who mentioned that mason jar salads were kind of a big deal on the social lifestyle-clipping site.
But the people who should really care are fast food vendors. Farmer's Fridge faces some daunting growth challenges: It has to find and maintain a reliable workforce that's willing to start work at 5 a.m. every day so fresh salads are in machines by 11 a.m. and it has to have delivery and restocking mechanisms in place. There's a lot of infrastructure in place behind every mason-jar salad.
Know who has that infrastructure in place? Fast food companies, which are facing the dreaded spectre of Peak Burger in the U.S. (note: not to be confused with the gourmet burger trend that's still going strong in the U.S. -- and may well get even more mileage once foodies monetize the beef's authenticity and origin)
These franchises are looking for a way to revive fading sales without sinking too much labor into new fare. Jarred salads might provide a model for grabbing customers who want portable, affordable and healthy fare.
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Your pop culture note of the day: This comes to you courtesy of Two Bossy Dames, a weekly email curated by librarians-slash-women of taste Margaret and Sophie, and I will forever be grateful they pointed it out to me ...
The Weird, Lovely World of L.L. Bean Commenters. The debate over the color and consistency of maple syrup is beyond delightful, and the editor who approved this pitch is clearly a genius and should be put in charge of all sorts of strategic media initiatives.
Additional reading: You will recall that L.L. Bean duck boots have sold out for the year (vol 1, issue 63), but that only underscores the premise of "Big Moose Is Watching," which is that L.L. Bean is very, very good at using its vast troves of data to reinforce customer loyalty.
The story includes a delicious bit of trivia that underscores the idea that Other People Are Why You Don't Get Nice Things: Apparently, REI was compelled to ice its limitless, full-refund policy after a woman used it to return a stroller she had used until her children outgrew it. There's a fascinating conversation to be had on the ethics of refund policies and the relationships between customers and retailers.
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