Supermarkets have shown they’re keen on using renewable materials to make and remake their stores. That’s a great step, but for many companies this is still a new frontier, and so it doesn’t hurt to look abroad for inspiration.

In this case, we’re talking way abroad — out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, somewhere near the Line Islands that sit halfway between California and Australia. That’s where Plastiki, a boat made from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles, is currently plying the waves.

If it sounds like the eco version of the movie “Up”, well, that’s because it is. Inspired by Kon-Tiki, the primitive boat that carried Thor Heyerdahl across the Pacific Ocean in 1947, Plastiki is on one of the longest eco missions in history. It set out from San Francisco in March, with hopes of reaching Sydney Harbor by July. That timeline may be a stretch, as the crew conceded in an interview with The New York Times (revelation: it’s a slow boat), but that doesn’t tarnish the overall goal of raising awareness about recycling, the need for sustainable energy, and all the stuff we throw away — much of which, in fact, can be found in the Eastern Garbage Patch, a watery landfill twice the size of Texas that Plastiki navigated through.

Determined to go against the spirit of waste that created “the gyre”, Plastiki is a marvel of renewable engineering. MORE…

Ever since the launch of LocalHarvest back in 1998, the local food movement has positively blossomed online. The success of that site, which connects consumers with growers in their area, helped spawn others like it as well as buy-direct online farmer markets like Foodzie and Goodapples.org.

And now, the trend has taken a turn towards retailers and restaurateurs, who have worked hard over the past couple years to source locally. FoodHub, which launched in January, is an online forum connecting growers and food buyers throughout the northwest. It’s like a craigslist for the local food world — members pay a $100 annual fee, which sets up a profile and grants access to forums where growers and buyers link up.

Most useful, perhaps, is a search tool that helps buyers find exactly what they’re looking for. Type in “sweet potatoes”, “raspberries” or “rutabaga” to find the folks that grow them.

Or “pickles”, which one recent poster is currently craving.

We currently go through approximately 30 gallons of dill pickles and I would like to source out a local and more creative pickle to offer our customers at our 4 locations around Portland.

Pretty neat, huh? For supermarkets, a tool like this could be a real leg-up. Buyers want to source local, but they often don’t have the time or know-how to establish relationships with area growers. MORE…

With so many different apps and gadgets springing up around the supermarket industry, it’s only appropriate that we get this, an interactive map detailing just about anything you’d care to know about food availability, our eating habits, and how depressingly obese we’ve become.

It’s called Your Food Environment Atlas, and it’s courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture as part of the Obama administration’s drive to get Americans — and especially kids — eating healthier. Earlier this month Michelle Obama launched Let’s Move, a nationwide effort to increase availability of healthful foods for kids, and to get them exercising more. The administration also announced it plans to spend $400 million to help eliminate food deserts.

The new food atlas is incredibly detailed, and that makes it a fun, useful tool for consumers and food industry insiders alike. Go ahead, play around with it for a while. Want to know what U.S. county eats the most pounds of fruits and vegetables? How about the regions with the highest density of fast food restaurants? I was interested to see the distribution of farms that sell directly to consumers.

Other than being a diversion when things get slow at work, the USDA’s atlas is a definitive guide in the drive to make America healthier. That might sound overblown, but information is power, and this much information can go a long way. The food industry has stated time and again its commitment to helping people lead healthy lives. Well, now they have a good idea of what they’re up against.

Most of the attention at food shows goes to the fun, “around the plate” foods like chocolates and cheeses, teas and olive oils. “Center of the plate” offerings are usually few and far between. But this year, I am already noticing a handful of companies offering items that answer the daily question, “What’s for dinner?”

One company in particular caught my eye and piqued my interest with its steamable, sustainable seafood entrees like Japanese Black Sesame Wild Ahi Tuna, Veracruz Style Tilapia and Wasabi Ginger Wild Salmon. These are not your chemical-feast TV dinners of yore; instead, they are all-natural, flavorful meals with seafood as the protein of choice. These products were in trays, but more and more steamable meals are popping up in grocers’ freezers in bags that perform the same function.

Another company out of the Chicagoland area is producing restaurant-quality meals much like you can find in high-end European retailers like Picard in France. They are starting with high-quality ingredients to produce an upscale meal — also in a steam bag — that you would be proud to serve to your family and friends.

Interestingly enough, this steamable technology cropped up first in private label offerings from Europe before it was adopted by frozen vegetable producers. The frozen veggie manufacturers have been on board with steam-in-the-bag offerings for the past few years now, so it’s a natural transition that the entrée manufacturers would follow suit. Now that most households in America cannot “cook” without a microwave, we’re seeing new item introductions with microwave-only instructions. The day of the dual microwave or oven tray seems to be a thing of the past. MORE…

Almost every supermarket website I’ve seen includes a page devoted to wellness. The depth and breadth of the information presented varies from chain to chain, but at the very least, there are sections that focus on gluten intolerance, diabetes and dieting — kind of the holy trinity of supermarket whole health marketing.

As the wellness movement has gained momentum, retailers are beefing up their online offerings, too. They add advice and columns from their dietitians; or they might work with a third-party provider like Aisle7 to really develop an information library that can be customized and updated.

I mention all this because a new survey out shows that more than half of Americans looked up health information on the internet last year. The poll of more than 7-thousand adults ages 18 to 64 was conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“As the percentage of adults in the U.S. who use the internet continues to grow, the internet may become increasingly important as a source of health information for consumers,” stated the center. MORE…

It’s no secret that the snack food market isn’t just about greasy potato chips and candy bars anymore. With the growth of the natural and better-for-you industries, people now have the option of choosing pita chips, fruit-and-nut bars, and other baked, low-sodium, all-natural versions of the munchies they love.

Supermarket checkout aisles have seen the change as $4 organic chocolate bars compete alongside Milky Ways, and now there’s another platform for this next generation of snack foods.

Healthy vending machines — sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Well, that’s what folks are calling the new outposts cropping up at hospitals, college campuses and health clubs across the country. Capitalizing off consumers’ desire to eat better without sacrificing snacking, companies have come out with eye-catching new machines that hold products like 100% juice, dried fruit and rice cakes. There are also organic and all-natural varieties of indulgent favorites, too, like sandwich cookies and gummi bears.

So maybe “healthy” doesn’t apply across the board, since sugar and calories can still be found en masse in some products. But hey, that’s the business these days. Putting apples and oranges behind Plexiglas isn’t going to generate sales, and it won’t drive awareness. You have to meet consumers half way.

And sales have been good lately for companies like Vend Natural, based in Ventura, California. Formerly involved in the traditional vending industry, president Gil Sanchez made the transition a couple years ago and now has more than 350 machines across the country. MORE…

I first saw health kits during a store tour of Ukrop’s Super Markets in Richmond, Va. Bobby Ukrop, the CEO, told me the chain was going to start offering five genetic testing kits, which would indicate a person’s predisposition to heart disease, diabetes and similar conditions.

That was 5 years ago — a lifetime in the field of medical technology (and the supermarket business, too. Ukrop’s has been sold to Ahold’s Giant-Carlisle). I don’t know if they’re still offering the kits, but plenty of retailers have implemented such services through their pharmacies and wellness centers. These exams, for a fee that averages around $100, are sent off to independent labs for processing, and the results are meant to be discussed with a physician or someone versed in wellness, like a pharmacist.

The key to these tests is that they are not a diagnosis or even a prediction. “But they are results that can be modified through diet or lifestyle changes,” is what Bobby Ukrop told me back then. The same is true today.

These kinds of test kits will likely get a big leg up in the coming year as NBC’s hit series, “The Biggest Loser”, prepares to use a new health risk assessment tool that identifies the contestant’s disease risk, as well as their “internal age,” life expectancy and estimated preventable medical expenses. MORE…

More than 1.5 billion Americans visited food web sites this year. It’s a tremendous number, with huge implications for the food industry. The statistic, from a poll conducted by our friends at Allrecipes.com, notes that these consumers went through 11 billion pages of food-focused content — everything from recipes to discussion boards to coupon offers.

While that’s an impressive (even intimidating) number, the real hook for retailers comes from another stat. The Allrecipes.com survey found that 43% of home cooks with smart phones “used the device while grocery shopping to look up recipes, create grocery lists, conduct price comparisons and look up coupons.” We’ve reported on retailers that have implemented pretty extensive online coupon programs to take advantage of this trend.

To get a glimpse of the extent of consumer use, Allrecipes determined that page views of its site from a mobile device increased five times the rate of other devices — desktop, laptop and the like — in the past 16 months. In November alone, Allrecipes,com received more than 1 million visits from mobile devices. That’s a lot of people on the move, who still need and want access to information and offers.

Against this rose-pixeled picture, however, we have another report indicating that the industry itself has lagged in applying many consumer-friendly concepts to B-to-B applications, frustrating clients and trade customers. Technomic Inc., which tracks foodservice and restaurants, found wide-ranging complaints within the industry centered on the lack of specific product information, organization and assistance on a majority of vendor websites. MORE…

Food companies have tried their hand at making voluntary changes to the way they market many of their products to children. Now, it looks like regulators are ready to take the reins.

Earlier this week, a working group that included officials from the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and several other federal agencies met in Washington to propose standards for how manufacturers market to kids. According to the group, foods marketed to children “must provide a meaningful contribution to a healthy diet” and should contain limited amounts of sugar, sodium and saturated fat.

Although these standards would be voluntary, they still represent a big step. Indeed, it would be the first time the government has asserted itself in the realm of children’s advertising.

Retailers and manufacturers aren’t too happy with government involvement, especially since, to them, progress has been made. Back in 2006 a group of companies came together and formed the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. The group assured everyone that they would promote more healthful items and cut back on promoting unhealthful ones. And a report from the Better Business Bureau, the third party organization that’s monitoring the program, says the companies are living up to their promises, having reduced, for example, the amount of sodium in “many soups and canned pastas” by 20% and 30%.

But the coalition’s yardstick doesn’t seem to be what regulators are interested in. Another report from researchers at the University of Arizona asserts that the majority of advertisements from companies in the coalition were, after three years, still for “nutritionally poor” products. Healthy foods, meanwhile, made up less than 1% of all ads. MORE…

You don’t have to tell this analog guy farming is tough. I read Grape of Wrath; I watched Green Acres (how anyone could run a successful farm with Hank Kimball is beyond me). That’s why it’s fascinating to learn that Zynga’s virtual FarmVille game on Facebook currently has more than 72 million players tilling the online soil.

I mean, in a digital world where you can play games that pit you against the Mob, space aliens and even terrorists, how could much fun could harvesting make-believe strawberries be?

The answer is plenty, if the latest numbers are correct. According to various sources, FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook. Players purchase land, seeds and equipment, maintain the farm and are responsible for getting crops harvested before they start to wither and die. In some ways, “playing” farmer is just as real as a flesh-and-blood farmer. There are pests to deal with, neighbors to help and crops to harvest. Each fruit and vegetable only stays fresh for a set amount of time before it starts to go bad, so participation requires vigilance and good timing.

The game is two-dimensional, but an awareness campaign launched very recently by the Animal Agriculture Alliance is helping to make farming very real. The group has released a video that depicts what it’s really like helping to feed the masses. MORE…