Perpetual Innovation

Category: healthy food

  • Panera, getting clean and serving up Krispy Kreme

    Panera, as you know, is the casual dining, yet healthy, place to eat out (and now with a lot of delivery). Now that we are not so concerned about the salt in the menu (sometimes up to 1,000mg for a meal) it seems Panera is really living the wholesome live and riding the healthfood craze. Early in 2007, Panera was talking about totally cleaning up its already pretty squeaky clean act. (See company press and this WSJ article.)

    This WSJ article has a good discussion of the buyout by a private conglomerate JAB of Panera. The company’s already well priced stock jumped almost $100 over a couple days to about $310 today. (See PNRA stock trend for a month.) Going private has lots and lots of advantages for a company. There’s all the reporting and restrictions of a publicly traded company. Plus, you need to tell investors how you have done and what you plan to do. Surprisingly, competitors read these same annual reports and utilize the public information to their competitive advantage.

    Apparently JAB Holdings will allow PNRA to run with relative autonomy, or so believes CEO Ron Shaich. They do expect some synergies with the sister companies, especially when entering other countries.

    JAB is a German family owned holding company that has acquired lots of companies including the coffee kup craze of Keurig Green Mountain and the sugary delight of Krispy Kreme.  The coffee thing with K-cups, Peets, Caribou and Mighty Leaf Tea all make a lot of synergy sense. But Krispy Kreme seems like a bit of a head-scratcher.

    You know how you have the diet craze with salad at the fast-food restaurant; something for the carnivore and the vegan — in the off chance they travel together. How about Krispy Kreme at the Panera restaurant; wholesome-healthy and the sinful-decadent? Something for both the angel as well as the devil in the family.

  • To Eat or Knot to eat Knot Weed – WSJ

    Pittsburgh Tries to Eat Its Way Through a Savage Weed – WSJ:

    What do you do, with Kudzu?

    Invasives like kudzu and Japanese Knotweed, can take over square miles. They really go wild in strip mines and disturbed areas, and completely take over. Once started, the weed pushes out anything and everything in the surrounding areas — an ugly mono-culture that disrupts entire ecosystems much like Melaleuca has done in Southern Florida.

    Melaleuca trees transplanted to Florida to attempt to dry up the Everglades is not the same type that is found in herbs, incense  and oils. Ours tree apparently burn toxic, so firewood is out. One of the best uses of it is to make mulch… A rather cool business model where there’s an endless supply, and land owners will typically pay you to take it. Getting paid twice for the same job, land owners and customers, while doing a good turn for the environment and society, has got to feel both good and green.

    One of the best uses of kudzu, that invasive vine that has taken over the South (all the way down through Georgia), is to feed it to goats. Goats will eat anything. Once they eat all the kudzu in a field, they simply have to rest a while while it grows back.

    Eating Knotweed is an interesting idea. It tastes a little like chicken, oops, no, that’s an invasive animal. It apparently tastes somewhat like rhubarb. There is a limit to how much garnish people are willing to eat, however. I’m not sure that we could get everyone in the US to eat a couple helpings of rhubarb each day. Knotweed might require three helpings a day.

    Unfortunately, knotweed often grows in disturbed soils like river banks and spent strip mines where the quality of the soil is not only poor, but often semi-polluted. Metals and heavy metals from coal dust/mines will make many knotweed harvests non-nutritious, at best. Modestly toxic at worst.

    One of the best uses of knotweed would probably be biomass uses that go directly to incinerate, or are processed into ethanol. But, yet another kick in the pants: transporting knotweed  to the refinery/incinerator when in bloom, will spread the seed of invasion into fresh new virgin territories.

    The weed is easily propagated from “cuttings” so 4-wheelers or trucks can readily spread the weed to places where it is not.

    As with most (all?) invasives, this is a gift that keeps on giving.

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  • FDA miss, more or less!

    Uncle Sam Just Told Us To Drink Water, Not Soda. You Might’ve Missed It http://n.pr/1TI2QUx

    The guidelines, and the pictures, should be, and could be, very simple.
    More… fresh fruits and vegetables. More water. More exercise.
    Less… Processed foods, red meat, and sugary soft drinks.
    Simple. And fits nicely into almost any diagram you want to make.

  • Fast 10 sustainability leadership tips | GreenBiz

    ‘Fast 10’ sustainability leadership tips | GreenBiz:

    There are great tips.

    I really like the “building a business case” tip.  If you can’t build a pretty good business case for something, then it makes a case for change that is usually hard, nearly impossible.

    Getting ahead means that you can play offense, not defense.

    Langert is from McDonald’s so he has had his work cut out for him. When McD has tried to introduce more healthy foods, the consumer usually hasn’t been buying it… they go to McDonald’s for BIG Mac and fries.

    McD really grew sales after the Great Recession. Until 2014, when sales slumped (same-store sales). Consumers have been going for healthier foods like Chipotle.
    * Check out the healthier Corner McCafe by McDonald’s.
    * Is Chipotle really healthier than McDonald’s?

    It would be interesting to see what Langert recommended for McDonald’s. Healthier fair would likely be slower fair, … and in a few weeks, it won’t be there.

    That doesn’t make Langert’s advise any less valuable. But in some places it is a whole lot easier to go more sustainable than in others.

    Makes you wonder what Hall and Knab (2012) would suggest related to how these 10 tips fit into the profile of a Sustainable Leader?

    Reference

    Hall,
    E., & Knab, E.F. (2012, July). Social irresponsibility provides opportunity
    for the win-win-win of Sustainable Leadership. In C. A. Lentz (Ed.), The
    refractive thinker: Vol. 7. Social responsibility,     (pp. 197-220). Las
    Vegas, NV: The Refractive Thinker®
    Press.
    (Available from     www.RefractiveThinker.com, ISBN:
    978-0-9840054-2-0) 

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  • Top 15 Contaminated Fish You Shouldn’t be Eating

    Top 15 Contaminated Fish You Shouldn’t be Eating:

    What’s the USDA recommendation for Mercury intake?

    If you eat some of these fish, you will exceed safe levels if you eat it more than once every couple weeks. Sharks and swordfish I new about, but others in the list are a real eye-opener.

    Biomagnification is where toxic chemicals such as mercury build up more and more as it moves up the food chain (to humans).

    This is a really good article with lots of good information on sustainability and safe eating levels of fish.

    Maybe salmon will move up on many people’s list. Sustainable, wild would be best, of course.

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