OK so I can’t figure out if it’s supposed to be called “Ranch 99″ or “99 Ranch (Market)”.  People seem to call it Ranch 99 but all the signs say 99 Ranch Market.  Either way, it’s the best grocery store ever for three reasons.

1. Selection – They’ve got a great variety of food.  Probably not as extensive as Safeway unless you’re looking for a dozen types of Bok Choy, but definitely a wide selection of produce and other foods.  And some stuff you’ll never see at Safeway:

2. Value – The prices are really cheap.  Compared with Trader Joe’s or Safeway for fruit and vegetables, Ranch 99 is almost always a better deal.

“No clean the seeds with this price.”  Love the honesty, and totally worth it to de-seed this wonderful mystery winter melon yourself.

3. Entertainment – You will see awesome food you’ve never knew existed, and read fun signs.

“Preserved Vegetable – Chinese Specialty.”  Does not specify which kind of vegetable might be preserved inside.

“Sweet.”  Ha-Mi Melon for $0.79/lb?  My thoughts exactly.

These factors far outweigh the downsides:

• A certain “aroma” in the store.  There’s a lot of seafood…
• Not a ton of organic stuff
• Off-the-shelf “American” products like name-brand cereal or peanut butter won’t be cheap.

-Nick

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You can thank me later.

Well actually it was mom’s idea so thank her.

-Nick

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As a business nerd and as the primary grocery shopper for our household, I have some marketing suggestions for Safeway.  If I were in charge, here are three tactics I would implement today:

1.  Safeway Savers Club Card Wall of Fame

I think I dominate the Safeway club card specials.  I probably lead the league in percentage savings.  But how do I really stack up?  I’m sure Safeway is keeping these stats in a database somewhere, so why not share them.  They could track total dollar savings, percentage savings, and number of checkouts.

Each store could giveaway a small monthly prize to the winners and post their name on the wall or include them in their weekly ad.  They could post the top 10 or top 50 in the store.  Full-year winners could be added to the “Safeway Savers Wall of Fame” or something similar.

Customers could track their stats online or an a smartphone app.  Don’t think that would generate some customer interest and excitement?  Obviously a lot of people wouldn’t care, but I think it would lead to your best customers having more involvement with the store and generating some goodwill and positive word of mouth.

2.  Get Social

Piggybacking on the smartphone app they will have developed for #1 above, customers can elect to share with their friends when they checkout.  Imagine an auto-generated social media status-update: “Woohoo! I just saved 34% at Safeway.”  They could encourage Yelp, foursquare, and Facebook check-ins by offering certain specials or deals.

Similarly, when people donate to whatever your cause-of-the-month is, that could be included in their update.  “I just saved 34% at Safeway and made a donation to end breast cancer.”

3.  Get Green

Rival Trader Joe’s has a weekly (or maybe monthly) drawing for $25 worth of free groceries.  Customers get entered into the raffle when they bring their own re-usable bag.  There’s no reason Safeway couldn’t do the same thing.  My guess is it may actually save money; if enough people bring their own bag, Safeway could easily save $25 worth of “paper or plastic” for this raffle to pay for itself.  Plus, they’d generate goodwill and less waste.

Once these ideas are in place, we can discuss my consulting fee.

-Nick

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It took a while, but I finally finished Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.  You may recognize the cover with its lettuce and the book’s key advice: “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”  It was a very interesting read, thanks Chris for the recommendation.

Pollan believes our “Western Diet” is the root cause of our obesity epidemic and the ills that go with it: heart disease, cancers, and diabetes.  For centuries, humans around the world lived perfectly healthy lives on an incredible variety of local diets.  Then, food became a business, and the business became an industry, and the industry became a powerful government lobby, and everything changed.

The Western Diet is characterized by lots of processed foods, refined grains, dairy products, high fructose corn syrup and soybean oils, and cheap red meat.  As food became more industrialized, quality took a backseat to quantity, and we’ve paid for it with our health.  One interesting statistic Pollan cites is that in 1960 we spent 17.5% of our income on food and 5.2% on health care.  Now we spend just 9.9% on food but 16% on health care.  What kind of implications does this have for a government that heavily subsidizes industrial farming and now has to pass health care legislation partially to deal with the monster it helped create?

The above graphic is from TheSocietyPages.org.

The food industry has done an amazing job of producing cheap calories; Americans consume 300 more calories a day than we did 30 years ago.  The problem is these calories don’t supply much nutritional value beyond simple energy.  We are bombarded with 17,000 new food product launches each year and are no match for the industry’s $32 billion annual marketing budget.  Other cultures spend more on their food, feel less guilty about what they eat, and live longer healthier lives.

One thing I would have liked Pollan to address is how much the increased food production was out of necessity to feed a rapidly growing global population.  Not everyone can grow their own organic food, shop at farmer’s markets, and join local CSAs, as he recommends.  Some degree of mass production is required to feed 7 billion mouths.  Only eating food your great grandmother would recognize as food is another difficult recommendation to follow in today’s world; it’s a very different place than it was 100+ years ago.

The more health-conscious we become, the fatter we get.  Pollan calls this the American Paradox, and warns against what he calls the growing cult of nutritionism.  Any food manufacturer can spin their product to make it sound like it’s good for you, so maybe it’s best to avoid packaged foods that make health claims.  When Lucky Charms can claim to be “heart-healthy” because of their whole grains, these claims have lost all meaning.

So all in all, very interesting read.  I found it a little academic in parts, but it touches on history, evolutionary biology (and suggests our bodies may eventually adapt to our new diet), business, economics, and politics, and covers a topic, food, that’s near and dear to my heart.

-Nick

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Switching up my lunch meal was another big shift for me.  I used to always have a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, an apple, some baby carrots, and some white cheddar Cheez-Its.

On a mission to reduce the amount of processed carbs I consume, I had to make some drastic changes, including getting rid of my beloved Cheez-Its and Safeway 15-Grain Bread.

Nowadays a typical lunch might involve Trader Joe’s Cumin and Chili Chickpeas (spicy and really good, and only $0.99!), cucumber, tomato, celery, almond butter, baby carrots, and hummus.  Since none of these items has as many calories as my delicious sandwich, I normally end up eating 2-3 smaller “lunch-snacks” throughout the afternoon.

Did you know that cheddar cheese was so high in saturated fat?  I had no idea.  And where I gained a ton of cholesterol from my egg at breakfast, I lost it at lunch from ditching the cheese and ham.  My new lunch was able to keep the total carbohydrates the same, but significantly increase the carbs from fiber, while reducing the carbs from sugars and “empty calories” in bread / Cheez-Its.

The percent of daily values figures are based on a 2000 calorie diet.  I’ve always consumed way more than 2000 calories a day so they don’t mean much other than as a proportional guide.  And even then, understand that the recommended daily values were established by a government body easily swayed by food industry lobbies and political pressures (at least according to In Defense of Food).  Do your own research and listen to your body.

Dinner hasn’t changed too much, aside from taking out a lot of rice and pasta, and substituting more veggies, beans, and lentils.  Spaghetti squash has become a new staple.  The first week was pretty tough; I think my body had been trained to need the fruit smoothie, cereal, and sandwich after having them 4-5 days a week for 2-3 years.  But after that it really hasn’t been a problem.  More of a lifestyle change than a fad diet I suppose.

And without any real end-goal in mind, I’m definitely not going to turn down a burger or some fried rice every now and then!

-Nick

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After reading The 4 Hour Body, I’ve made some changes to my eating habits.  I’m also working my way through In Defense of Food, which contains some similar (but not identical) recommendations.

Working from home, I ate a very consistent breakfast and lunch.  Some would call the lack of variety boring but I liked my meals.  For breakfast I would have a fruit smoothie and cereal.  The smoothie would have half a banana, frozen blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries, orange juice, milk, and a little bit of protein powder.  The cereal would be a little bit of granola, a generous pour of Honey Bunches of Oats with Strawberries, and the rest of the banana.

Both books rail against the evils of processed carbohydrates (bread, cereal, pasta, rice, etc.), and Tim Ferriss even argues that fruit and fruit juice contain more sugar than your body needs, so I thought I’d experiment with something new.

My new breakfast consists of a protein shake first thing in the morning.  This tides me over for a couple hours.  After that, I scramble 2 egg whites, 1 whole egg, and spinach, and then add some turkey bacon and steamed lentils.  Serve with a pile of salsa and enjoy.

There was no specific goal in mind.  I’m not trying to lose weight, and the abstract aim of “feeling healthier” is hard to measure.  (The other change I made was a significant decrease in running cardio.)  Over the past couple months, I can’t say I’ve noticed a huge difference in body composition, but there is a general feeling of better well being.  Could be 100% placebo, but maybe this dietary shift had some effect.

I don’t feel like I have more energy or less energy, which is significant given the sheer volume of calories taken out of my breakfast.  I rarely feel disgustingly full anymore, you know the feeling where you’ve eaten way too much.

It was really interesting putting together these numbers.  I’ve never really paid much attention (and have been known to select foods based on how many calories you can get for the price).  The new breakfast is lower in fat and sugars and higher in protein.  The big increase in cholesterol comes almost entirely from that one egg, and the potassium loss is almost entirely from removing that one banana.  Surprisingly, lot of the sodium in the new breakfast came from the salsa.

I think I’ll continue with my new routine, tweaking as I see fit.  We’ll take a look at lunch next.

-Nick

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Is Jell-O really made from ground-up horse hooves?  These are the kinds of questions the Internet is good for, since Jell-O definitely doesn’t list them as an ingredient.

I discovered that gelatin, the main ingredient in Jell-O, is created through a lengthy process that first involves boiling the bones, skins, and hides of pigs and cows.  The boiling releases collagen, which is then boiled, filtered, dried, and ground into a powder.

Although most people, including Uncle Sam, don’t consider Jell-O an animal product, strict vegetarians can’t eat Jell-O because of its animal origins.

But no horse hooves?  No.  According to Snopes.com, Kraft (the maker of Jell-O) says hooves don’t contain the necessary collagen to make gelatin, so they are not used.  I get the impression Kraft would be happy to use the hooves, and it sounds like they’ve tried, but it just didn’t work out.

Did You Know?

• Jell-O has been around since 1897.
• There is a Jell-O museum in LeRoy, New York, where the company originated.
• There’s always room for Jell-O.

-Nick

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Bryn and I saw a recipe last week that called for pine nuts.  She warned me they were really expensive.  Sure, nuts are pretty expensive in general.

Then later, at Costco, we saw the pine nuts — for about $20 a pound!

They must be delicious.  But at that price, I’ll probably never know.

Are they super-scarce or what?  Or in super high-demand?  Neither really.  They grow on pine trees, which aren’t exactly endangered.  And at 28 years, this being my first interaction with pine nuts, I’m guessing they don’t have a waiting list to get some.  So what’s their deal?

Apparently it’s just a really labor-intensive process to harvest the pine cones and separate the nuts.  Pine nuts are high in protein and fiber, but can sometimes leave a bitter, metallic aftertaste for days or even weeks following consumption.  I say let’s leave the pine nuts to the squirrels.

For the sake of comparison, here are some items that cost less than $20 per pound.

• Other nuts: peanuts, cashews, almonds, all $5-10 / lb.
• Meat: $2-10 / lb, and a good source of protein.
• Veggies: $1-3 / lb, and a good source of fiber.
• Gasoline: about $0.37 per pound, and can propel a 3000 pound object into another city.

-Nick

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So there’s this bread I like to get at Safeway, the Safeway Select 15 Grain bread.  It’s pretty good and not too spendy.

However, I have two complaints I’d like to voice.  First, the bread comes double-bagged.  There’s the normal outer-plastic bag, and then a tighter inner-plastic bag made of a different more “crinkly” material.  What is the purpose of this inner bag?  The bread doesn’t last any longer than bread without the inner bag.  It pretty much just gets in the way, creates more waste, and adds unnecessarily to the cost of the product.

But the other issue is that the loaf comes with an odd number of slices.  What’s that all about?  Who eats just one slice of bread?

I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions so I asked Bryn one day, “Have you been eating like one slice of bread, maybe once a week, for a couple years?”  OK yeah, didn’t think so.

Sure enough, it says right on the label:

Service Size: 1 slice

Servings Per Container: 17

Come on!  Why not slice them to 16/17ths of the current size to create an 18th slice out of nothing?  Or slice them a little thicker and have 16.  Either way.  But 17 is poor form.

I guess I could start using the reject 17th slice as my starter slice for the next loaf, but by then half my sandwich is past it’s pull date.  Dilemmas of the stay at home dad.

-Nick

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Did you have Book It! at your elementary school?  If you didn’t, you were missing out, because they gave you free pizza each month.  Sure you had to read a little bit to earn your free pizza but it was totally worth it.  Besides mom and dad were probably making you read anyway.

Does this button look familiar?  You would collect the 5 stars along the top, and then get the final one coming out of the book at the end of the year after meeting your reading requirement.  The button was even semi-holographic, as an added bonus.  Thanks Doobybrain for the picture.

The program, which apparently is still going strong, is sponsored by Pizza Hut.  Those crafty marketers at Pizza Hut.  They’re such nice guys for promoting reading, aren’t they?  But Book It! is far more than a literary charity; it’s a genius business strategy.

1. Book It! is a 6-month program, that runs every year for grades K-6.  That means that Pizza Hut has the opportunity to get their brand name and product in front of impressionable youth 42 times before they’re 13.  And all it cost them was giving away a tiny kid’s size personal pizza each time.
2. Book It! is set-up as an incentive program.  It teaches kids that pizza is a reward and Pizza Hut is the all-loving provider of that reward.
3. No 7-year old goes to claim their reward pizza by themselves.  It’s a family night out!  By giving away one small pizza (estimated cost: $1), Pizza Hut gets mom and dad and siblings in the door and they buy pizzas and drinks and appetizers and play video games in the arcade.
4. Six times a year!

My favorite quote from the Book It! website, regarding the 30-day expiration window on the free-pizza certificates:

“The BOOK IT! Advisory Council feels that students who are participating in the program should be rewarded as soon as possible after meeting their reading goal so that the motivation to continue reading and meeting goals continues.”

See, they’re really only concerned about the students’ motivation for reading!  Love it.

Book It! is a tremendous win-win for marketers and educators, and if it encourages kids to read, what’s the harm in that?  I mean it’s Pizza Hut, not Philip Morris.

Have any other pizza chains or other restaurants thought to copy this model?  It must be hugely profitable for Pizza Hut, and would be fairly easy to imitate, especially on a local level.  Imagine if Joe’s Corner Pizza started Read It! at the local elementary school.  It would be a huge boost to their business if it caught on.

-Nick

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