• 🧠 IQBAR Refreshes Brand, Drops Keto Callout
• 🐔 VFC Becomes The Vegan Food Group
• 🥩 UC Davis Creates New Integrative Center for Alt-Meat and Protein
• 👉 Axios: Despite Strong Economy, Grocery Prices Point Toward Vibecession

Hi. My name is Monica Watrous, the new managing editor of Nosh, and I love food. I love eating food, sharing food, shopping for food, talking about food, reading about food and writing about food. 

👋 As a child of the ‘90s, a decade defined by diet culture, I was programmed to fear food, poisoned by messages like “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” and “A moment on the lips is a lifetime on the hips.”

🤔 A lot of therapy and more than a decade of reporting on the packaged food industry have helped me overcome my trauma, shame and guilt around food. So, I am concerned by the discourse (er, moral panic?) surrounding “ultra-processed food,” an overly simplistic, vaguely defined, fearmongering term that could perpetuate disordered eating while creating unnecessary distrust in our food system.

🗞️ Recent articles published in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post link consumption of ultra-processed foods to poor health outcomes and point to a classification system developed by Brazilian researchers to evaluate the level of processing of food, citing such “red flags” as containing more than three ingredients or stocked in the center aisles of the grocery store. Many companies we cover at Nosh manufacture, market and distribute products that are, by these measures, considered “ultra-processed,” regardless of nutritional content or health benefits.

👉 Not all ultra-processed foods are unhealthy, and not all unprocessed foods are healthy. As Jeff Grogg, president of JPG Resources, pondered in a WSJ piece, “Is lard now a health food because it’s a one-ingredient natural product?” Grogg further poked holes in the classification system in a LinkedIn post, noting, by its logic, “an organic, high-fiber cereal is the nutritional equivalent of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs because they are both made using an extruder.” 

🔥 Hot take: “Fundamentally, this use of processing or ultra-processing as a proxy for nutritional evil is a lazy and misguided attempt to reduce salt, sugar and fat intake by trying to make processing itself the bogeyman,” Grogg said.

🤝 Brand founders and operators can have a hand in shaping public opinion about the safety, nutrition and quality of processed foods, while also stamping out food fear and misinformation, by being transparent with consumers about how food is produced and avoiding problematic terms in marketing that demonize foods, ingredients and production methods.

📧 I want to hear from you! Email me at mwatrous@bevnet.com to share your thoughts, whether you agree or disagree with my perspective.

Functional bar and beverage mix brand IQBAR is rolling out a refreshed look across its three product lines this week – protein bars, hydration mixes and instant coffee. Notably, its low carb protein bars no longer carry a Keto callout on the front-of-pack.

💭 Founder Will Nitze said that while there’s plenty of data charting Keto’s plateau – “numerous category managers told us to please remove ‘keto’ from our packaging because their shoppers’ interest in the diet was waning.”

🆕 The branding updates will also bring simplified nutrition claims, include the addition of Non-GMO Project Verified and Certified Gluten-Free seals and see the adoption of a new tagline: “For Smart Mouths.”

Read the full story on Nosh for more on the pack changes and details on its recent distribution gains. 

KFC’s alter ego, Vegan Fried Chicken (VFC), has renamed itself to The Vegan Food Group as it pursues an even bigger alt-position – “imagine a vegan Unilever,” said chief mission officer Matthew Glover.

🤝 The U.K.-based company was founded in 2020 and despite pulling back its U.S. business in recent years, its portfolio grew in 2023 via acquisitions of Clive’s Purely Plants and Meatless Farms. 

🏭 According to the announcement, the new group has additional acquisitions planned for 2024 as it seeks to stream operations, seek cost efficiencies and optimize its supply chain between portfolio brands.

💭 "With consolidation required in the plant-based space, and early signs of a rebound, the Vegan Food Group is well positioned to capitalize on market conditions and supercharge growth in the UK and Europe​," Glover said.

The new Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein (iCAMP) will open at The University of California, Davis on Wednesday with a focus on supporting the commercialization and advancement of alternative proteins industries.

🍽️ iCAMP will research ways to enhance consumer acceptance of and preference for alternative proteins; the center’s work will cover cultivated meat, plant- and fungal-based foods, as well as hybrid products. 

🧑‍🔬 The center will be led by experts in fields including food science, sensory science, biotechnology, nutrition, animal science, plant sciences and agricultural economics. 

💸 In 2022, California legislature provided $5 million for research into alternative proteins at the University of California’s UC Davis, UCLA and UC Berkeley campuses. A portion of UC Davis’ $1.67 million share was used to launch iCAMP.

Although inflation has pretty much plateaued (the economists say), price levels currently sit a lot higher than 2020 rates and Americans are still pretty p*ssed off about what they are being charged at checkout, and in turn, the economy overall, according to the Axios Vibes survey, conducted by the Harris Poll. 

📈 Data from the Bureau of Labor statistics backs up this distaste – “food at home,” also known as grocery prices, have risen by nearly a quarter in the last three years. 

💸 According to the report, grocery price inflation peaked in August 2022, at 13.5%; in the last twelve months, prices have only risen 1.3% but that rate is compounded by already high costs. 

📉 The report notes that while there was a short period of price drops in Spring 2023, a noticeable decline would likely coincide with more concerning conditions like a recession or falling wages.