So What, Who Cares (vol 2, issue 29) How the American diet is changing -- and how it could change more

Hello! Friends, I'm not going to lie: It's been a lengthy week and it's only Wednesday night.

When I'm tired, I'm prone to daydreaming about the pleasures and solaces of food, so this issue is devoted to matters of the stomach. What is your take on comfort food? And what's your preferred dish when you're tired and crabby and just want something to take the edge off your irritation? Dish it with me via email or Twitter.

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The American diet is killing Americans, says the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, a research group that meets twice a decade to compile the report that provides the scientific basis for the nation’s dietary guidelines. So what, specifically, is killing Americans? Higher consumption of red and processed meats, refined grains, and sugar-sweetened foods and beverages.

So what? The committee didn't just tell us all to layoff the refined stuff. It also issued several recommendations for the new, improved American diet, in an effort to address Americans' eating habits on a holistic level. These include: the news that moderate coffee consumption may be healthful (3-5 cups daily); fruits and vegetables have a veritable garden of evidence backing their healthful benefits; and eggs are not Satan's stealth artery cloggers and you can enjoy them ( "Available evidence shows no appreciable relationship between consumption of dietary cholesterol and [blood] cholesterol").

The committee is also going to be making recommendations that people consider the environmental impact of their food. We've covered this already (vol 2, issue 7).

Who cares? The Departments of Health and Human Services, and Agriculture, for starters. They still have to review these guidelines. Also, expect some political battle lines to be drawn over the suggestion that we consider how our dietary habits affect the planet.

On the plus side, now that coffee and eggs are A-OK, expect all manner of diner food features on food blogs, food TV shows, food magazines, etc. The intersection of "it's healthy" and "it's adorably down-to-earth and retro!" will be nearly impossible to resist.

Additional reading: If you have not already, go out and read Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I. Her account of farming chickens with her first husband is the ur-memoir from which all those "I eat what I grow"-type books spring, but it's no paean to living close to the land nor it is an exaltation of domestic work. Witness MacDonald's take on growing your food and then putting up preserves:

"Canning is a mental quirk just like any form of hoarding. First you plant too much of everything in the garden; then you waste hours and hours in the boiling sun cultivating; then you buy a pressure cooker and can too much of everything so that it won't be wasted."

The entire book is so wry and well-observed. It's one of my favorites.

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The American diet is killing Big Food. Or so says Big Food, which bemoans adult shoppers' trend away from packaged goods-type meals (i.e. your Hamburger Helper, your Stovetop Stuffing) and away from meals where the ingredients "whole" quality or minimal processing are part of the attraction. Quoth Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison, 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."

Campbell's not the only one in hot soup: Kraft's lost 40% of its market share in its U.S. businesses and ConAgra just lowered its yearly profit projections because people aren't bringing home the Chef Boyardee and Swiss Miss like they used to. Also notable: Big Food is saying that they're facing mounting pressure from alternative grocers, i.e. the Aldi's and Trader Joe's of the U.S.

So what? Americans' shifting breakfast habits have murdered cereal margins -- instead of sitting down to a bowl of Cheerios, people are more prone to pick out a protein bar or head to a fast food restaurant (a $32 billion annual business). Millennials' matter-of-fact expectations that their food should be fresh and minimally processed means they're more likely to skip buying frozen or boxed dinners and just get a burrito the size of their arm at Chipotle. The grocery game is changing -- the shakiness in shelf-stable foods now means market opportunity for other parts of the store.

But not, alas, for the candy aisle: Thanks to the one-two punch of curbside grocery pick-up and smartphones, consumers are either avoiding the checkout aisle altogether or zoning out on their phone. Thus the narrow corridor of temptation -- "A People magazine and a Snickers weighing as much as a kitten? Don't mind if I do!" -- is now a monument to a past with more challenges to one's impulse control.

Who cares? Companies whose growth strategies relied on inventing or acquiring new categories of packaged food to grab a share of the American food dollar. Uncoupling the "Big Food" associations from pantry staples like soup stock, fruit preserves or boxed pasta is going to be a challenge.

Also caring: Shoppers, who are likely to see Big Food deploy two sales-boosting strategies. First, expect sales and promotions on classic brands (I would also not be surprised to see a nostalgia play here too -- "Your dad ate Cheerios when he was stoned in the 1970s! Why not have them now when sober, Dad 2.0?") Second, expect to see a shift to the buzzwords that resonate with grocery shoppers today -- "high-protein," "all-natural," "just [X] ingredients," "made locally," etc.

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The pop culture moment of the day: For those of you who like email content because of reasons as outlined by the late David Carr:

[R]eaders have grown tired of the endless stream of information on the Internet, and having something finite and recognizable show up in your inbox can impose order on all that chaos

and:

An email newsletter generally shows up in your inbox because you asked for it and it includes links to content you have deemed relevant. In other words, it’s important content you want in list form, which seems like a suddenly modern approach.

... have I got a bonanza of new email recommendations for you! Creative Mornings' compilation of email newsletters, Out of the Ordinary Emails, showcases a collection of "exceptional newsletters about creative obsessions," and includes such admirably focused luminaries as Very Short List, Pen Parade (a weekly, illustrated review of different pens) or Sketchplanations (one illustrated explanation per week).

One of the selected newsletters in Out of the Ordinary Emails is The Message Is Medium Rare, where the authors eat a burger a week and talk about the lessons they learned from it, and a burger-based newsletter gives me a wonderful excuse to share one of my favorite blogs with you: Burgers Here And There.

Linda Monach wanted a way to introduce her plain fare-loving dad to the flavors of the world, and she decided the humble burger would be her vehicle. She's cooking her way through the 193 nations listed in the CIA Factbook by crafting a burger steeped in the ingredients and cooking methods of each country's cuisine. I get her blog via email; you can too.

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