I heard about this story while driving to work the other day. Something that’s not mentioned in the article above is a quote from Monsanto’s director of product development, in which he expresses concerns that the vegetables he’s able to buy in the store just can’t compete on taste when compared to those he can grow in his home garden. > more
Organic Responsibility
by Joshua Lynn on April 13th, 2009
Organic junk food is still junk food
by David Poole on March 25th, 2009
Demand nutritional value with your Refractometer
Clearly, all the Pure Branding team members do is read The New York Times coverage of the organic industry. This is the newspaper’s third article on the topic in the past week! That in itself is noteworthy. How fantastic that organic is getting such high profile attention.
In the latest piece, food columnist Mark Bittman debunks the notion that organic food is intrinsically healthy. He touches on the purist-pragmatist debate and the notion that the allure generated by the purists has compounded consumer misconceptions around organic as nourishing.
So what’s the solution? I think there’s great potential in objective measures of nutritional value, like use of the Brix value to measure the nutritional content of fruits espoused by the Real Food Campaign. I see a future of informed consumers combing farmers’ markets with their refractometers in hand. > more
Raising food consciousness
by Dan Mishkind on March 24th, 2009
Yesterday’s New York Times ran a thoughtful article entitled “Is a Food Revolution Now in Season?” making a whirlwind of connections, from the success of Expo West to a sneak peak of the documentary Food Inc., to the political shifts evidenced by Obama’s appointment of Tom Vislack to Secretary of Agriculture, to Alice Waters and Michael Pollan (even suggesting that Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is on the night-stands of an amazing number of members of Congress), to thoughts from industry leaders like Gary Hirshberg.
I can feel the winds of change in the air, can you? A new consciousness is building that’s connecting the dots in ways that never seemed possible before. > more
Our Town
by Dan Mishkind on March 21st, 2009
The New York Times recently featured a write up and photo essay on our little rural town in Western Massachusetts.
Warning: The writer is a bit guilty of a few romantic notions and factual errors about our little town of 1,746, but captures some of its quirky and idealistic spirit. I’m told that since the article appeared there has been an influx of queries from New Yorkers to local real estate agencies. > more
Happy Spring, Time for Organic Gardening!
by Joshua Lynn on March 20th, 2009
What a way to start my morning on the first day of spring! Sipping my coffee on the drive into the office, listening to NPR as usual, I heard a follow up to a little story I’ve been keeping an eye on for a while now: The White House announced groundbreaking for it’s South Lawn Organic Garden. > more
Greenwash Me! Part II
by Joshua Lynn on March 19th, 2009
My first post about greenwashing sparked an office-wide conversation about the effects it has on our clients: the Natural and Organic Products Industry. Frustrating as greenwashing may be, I believe there’s a hidden benefit for us here too. > more
5+ Takeaways from Expo West
by Joshua Lynn on March 19th, 2009
Natural Foods Merchandiser published this great article with 5 key takeaways from expo.
I would add one more: Cause Marketing. I’d like to attribute it to the down economy – consumers are pinching pennies but still want to do something that makes them feel good on a moral level. Two that stuck in my mind were Alacer’s Emergen-C Blue and Castor & Pollux’s Free Kibble program. > more
Recession: Catalyst for Natural Products Growth?
by Kevin Williams on March 17th, 2009
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it; however, those who learn from history can reap the benefits. Many of today’s household brands realized the greatest gains in market-share during economic downturns. GE, P&G, Kellogg and Chevrolet all established market leadership during the Great Depression. > more
Greenwash Me!
by Joshua Lynn on March 16th, 2009
Greenwashing, as defined by the be-all and end-all of scientific resources, Wikipedia:
“Greenwashing was coined by NY environmentalist Jay Westerveld in an essay regarding the hotel industry’s practice of placing green placards in each room, promoting reuse of guest-towels, ostensibly to “save the environment”. Westerveld noted that, in most cases, little or no effort toward waste recycling was being implemented by these institutions, due in part to the lack of cost-cutting affected by such practice….”
The thing about greenwashing is that it always gets a bum wrap. We imagine the big fat CEO at his unsustainably-forested-mahogany desk, sitting in his inhumanely-harvested-leather office chair smoking a cuban cigar rolled by enslaved 4 year-olds — his feet are up on his desk, his laugh > more