"snack food" news and stories

Last year, we told you that carrots companies were using junk-food marketing techniques to gain a foothold in the snack market. Now Fast Company has the whole story behind the meteoric rise of baby carrots.

Here are the Cliff Notes: About 10 years ago, somebody tried to figure out what to do with the leftovers that resulted from supermarkets insisting that carrots all be a uniform size. Baby carrots were invented, and they become more popular than the real thing. But when the recession hit, people went back to regular carrots because they were perceived as less of a luxury item.
Oh, dear, what to do?

Spend $25 million to hire the famously creative (and often controversial) ad agency of Crispin Porter + Bogusky (the agency behind Burger King's Delete 10 Friends and Get a Free Whopper campaign) to convince America that, far from being healthy, carrots were the ideal junk food (hey, they're already orange, the same color as Orange Doodles). The idea was to package them like Cheetos and pretzels, in snack-like bags, and to stick them into vending machines (see "like Cheetos and pretzels"). So far, sales are way up -- turns out we're all a slave to marketing. But in this case, that's a good thing.

Read the whole story at Fast Company.

Planning your Super Bowl party? Epicurious has a whole package of game day ideas, from recipe slideshows to a Q&A with Super Bowl chef Ron Krivosik. There are even special menus tailored team allegiances - a Southwestern-inspired buffet of margaritas, enchiladas, chile con carne, corn pudding, cactus and apple salad, and chocolate chimichangas for the Arizona Cardinals, and a hearty, Polish-flavored spread of lager, kielbasa, pierogies, creamy coleslaw, french fries, and banana split pie for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

There's also not one, but seven different chicken wing recipes - I'm keen to try the sticky sesame version. Plus, there's a tailgate recipe contest and a guide to gear (helmet snack trays or a football-shaped grill, anyone?).

What are you planning on serving for the Super Bowl this Sunday? Do you have any bowl traditions?

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Potatoes are the most popular vegetable in the US and most of them are eaten in some fried form, such as potato chips or french fries. One medium potato represents one of the five servings of vegetables that you are supposed to eat every day, and it doesn't take many french fries to reach the size of a single potato. Because of this, it is not impressive to hear that companies like Frito-Lay and Kraft want to add vegetable-based chips and snacks to their product lines. The potato chips are already vegetable-based!

Adding dehydrated vegetables to snacks like Roasted Vegetable Ritz Crackers is just a way of getting consumers to buy more by capitalizing on a trend for an increased awareness for healthy eating. This doesn't mean that people are necessarily eating healthier, but they think that they are/should be. They will opt for the chip that has some additional "vegetables" in it because it sounds like it might be healthier, regardless of whether it actually is. One trend tracking company said "this may replace the whole-grain fad."

And is there anything behind it? Probably not. A fried chip is still not health food, regardless of whether the chip is potato or carrot. And as for adding bits of veggies to other foodstuffs, nutritionist Cynthia Lair explained the benefits - or lack thereof - by saying "once you pulverize and powder vegetables, there's not much left."

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Anna, from Cookie Madness, made a great find the other day at her local supermarket in Austin: Dulce de Leche Oreos. These limited edition cookies aim to pair a slightly milky caramel-flavored cream filling with the classic chocolate wafer cookies of Oreos, though Anna said that the filling tasted mostly buttery with only notes of caramel.

For some reason, the limited edition cookies are not listed on the main Oreo website, though they do get a brief mention on the wiki entry for Oreos and I finally found them listed on the Comida Kraft site, Kraft's spanish-language counterpart, which may be an indication that the cookies are not going to be mass marketed in quite the same way that the peanut butter and mint chocolate Oreos were when those flavors were first released. And buttery or not, the chocolate/caramel combination still sound like a promising one for Oreos, so keep an eye out for them.

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