Published on Mar 1, 2013
Watch the entire interview with Michael Moss on Democracy Now! at http://bit.ly/Vi8XVi.
New York Times reporter Michael Moss recounts how in the 1980s, Oscar
Mayer won parents and kids back to eating their baloney products, which
had declined in popularity.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Lunchables, how they were invented, what they mean.
MICHAEL MOSS: I got to interview and see documents that were kept by Bob Drane, who worked for Oscar Meyer back in the '80s when the company faced a problem with its meat. People were cutting back on consumption of red meat because it has saturated fat and salt. And Mr. Drane and his team set about looking for a way to repackage those products. He was most interested in saving jobs, and he cared very much about the company. And they came up with the Lunchables, which, as you know, is basically a TV—a cold TV dinner aimed at kids for school lunches.
But it has two remarkable things beyond kind of the ingredients that they used—meat, cheese, crackers, typically. First they went after working moms, who work outside of the home, and designed it and marketed it as a way for moms to get through the crush of the—the 7 a.m. crush in the household where everybody's scrambling to get out of the house and off to school and work. But then they went after the kids with an amazing marketing campaign, because they realized that the Lunchables wasn't about food. It was about empowerment for kids. And they came up with this slogan: "All day, you gotta do what they say. But lunchtime is all yours." And kids went nuts for it. Pizza Lunchables, think about it. It's a piece of cold dough, cheese, tomato sauce, that the kids assemble themselves. But that meant everything to kids, and sales skyrocketed.
AMY GOODMAN: And then they added dessert.
MICHAEL MOSS: And then they added dessert, hamburger Lunchables, hot dog Lunchables, pancake Lunchables—some of them with huge loads of salt, sugar, fat. Kraft, to its credit, is now pulling back on those ingredients, and you can actually find some much lower amounts. But it opened the door to something really important, which is the fast-food industry has moved into the grocery store, so you no longer have to go to a fast-food chain to find problematic foods.
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AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Lunchables, how they were invented, what they mean.
MICHAEL MOSS: I got to interview and see documents that were kept by Bob Drane, who worked for Oscar Meyer back in the '80s when the company faced a problem with its meat. People were cutting back on consumption of red meat because it has saturated fat and salt. And Mr. Drane and his team set about looking for a way to repackage those products. He was most interested in saving jobs, and he cared very much about the company. And they came up with the Lunchables, which, as you know, is basically a TV—a cold TV dinner aimed at kids for school lunches.
But it has two remarkable things beyond kind of the ingredients that they used—meat, cheese, crackers, typically. First they went after working moms, who work outside of the home, and designed it and marketed it as a way for moms to get through the crush of the—the 7 a.m. crush in the household where everybody's scrambling to get out of the house and off to school and work. But then they went after the kids with an amazing marketing campaign, because they realized that the Lunchables wasn't about food. It was about empowerment for kids. And they came up with this slogan: "All day, you gotta do what they say. But lunchtime is all yours." And kids went nuts for it. Pizza Lunchables, think about it. It's a piece of cold dough, cheese, tomato sauce, that the kids assemble themselves. But that meant everything to kids, and sales skyrocketed.
AMY GOODMAN: And then they added dessert.
MICHAEL MOSS: And then they added dessert, hamburger Lunchables, hot dog Lunchables, pancake Lunchables—some of them with huge loads of salt, sugar, fat. Kraft, to its credit, is now pulling back on those ingredients, and you can actually find some much lower amounts. But it opened the door to something really important, which is the fast-food industry has moved into the grocery store, so you no longer have to go to a fast-food chain to find problematic foods.
Democracy Now!, is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on 1,100+ TV and radio stations Monday through Friday.
FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/democracynow
Twitter: @democracynow
Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/democracynow
Listen on SoundCloud: http://www.soundcloud.com/democracynow
Daily Email News Digest: http://www.democracynow.org/subscribe
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