Cookies – Individual market expectations
It’s not easy making cookies for the whole world.
First, you’ve got to make a LOT of cookies. And then you have to be careful what you put in them because simple choices about ingredients that seem practical at the time may actually end up harming your customers.
You don’t want that.
Next year, cookie makers and other food producers in the U.S. will be required to list the trans-fatty acid (TFA) content in their products.
Trans fats are created by the hydrogenation of vegetable oil; a process that gives the oil a longer shelf life. So as you might suspect,hydrogenated oil is used extensively in the preparation of snack foods,fast foods and many baked goods.
The downside: Studies have shown TFA consumption to be associated with artery damage and a high risk of heart disease. (See the e-Alert “Doing the Math” 11/12/03, on our website at hsionline.com.)
In a recent article published online by MSNBC, a spokesperson for Kraft foods told writer Gersh Kuntzman that two years and “tens of millions”of dollars have been devoted to developing a TFA-free Oreo cookie that still tastes like an Oreo. Apparently it’s hard to get the crunch just right when avoiding TFAs.
But in a follow up article that appeared just last week, Mr. Kuntzman admitted feeling like he’d had the wool pulled over his eyes. It turns out that Europeans have been eating Oreos with no TFAs for some time now.
When Kuntzman asked a Kraft spokesperson for an explanation, he received what he accurately calls “corporate doublespeak.” Apparently the folks at Kraft are dedicated to delivering “individual market expectations.”
And each market has “unique consumer taste preferences” don’t you know.
Translation: European Oreos (brilliantly dubbed “Euroreos” by Kuntzman) taste different than stateside Oreos. Further translation: We wouldn’t really like them. And more importantly, we’d stop buying them. Or that’s what Kraft executives seem to believe anyway.
So if you love your Oreos just the way they are – cardiovascular risks and all – you’d better stock up. Come 2006, they just might crunch a little differently.
Sources:
“Corporate Cookies” Gersh Kuntzman, MSNBC, 6/28/05, msnbc.msn.com
