Compiled 25 May 2024, updated 23 May 2025.
I spoke about this some time ago. This was, unfortunately, especially true for the South.
The signs are renewed by the following factors :
- Discounts at 40% in some regions of the South(and the effects of discounting on food can be seen, and how!)
- Fruit and vegetables increasingly less nutritious and tasteless
- the far west of fruit and vegetables
- monstrous’ recall (20 brands) for iceberg salad with listeria
- Chicken full of fat
- Veterinarians cannot deny that chickens branded Amadori, Fileni and Aia, as well as those sold under the brand names of Esselunga, Coop, Conad, Aldi, Lidl, Eurospin and Md, are sick. These are animals that have passed all hygiene and health tests according to official procedures, so they can be eaten safely, but remain sick
- Sales growth of first-price private label products over 40.6%
- Lidl ‘s first-price line in France
- Rampant shrinkinflation (I personally had to change brands of some products that had become inedible).
- The convenience channel (discounters), reneging on its genesis, has made a considerable leap forward in the incidence of sales under promotional pressure, exceeding 17% incidence.
- Prices are falling for thousands of items at Target and Walmart but also Amazon , as the results of US retailers ‘indicate the fatigue of some consumers’ after three years of high inflation the latest available data from Walmart seem, thankfully, to disprove this assumption even if – rightly – one analyst points out that the rest of the US market is not doing so well(Macy’s, for example, has declining sales and Target has lower growth than Walmart).
- blanket promotions are never a good signal for the food market. And this is probably also true in Italy: Esselunga is extending its 10% discount on all shopping after July into August. The same, I think, applies to Unicoop Firenze (note well what is happening in France: consumption at -0.4% in July 2024 confirms deflation).
- The worst listeria epidemic since 2011 is underway in the United States, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some cold cuts produced by the Boar’s Head company are at the source. So far, nine deaths and 57 people have been hospitalised in 18 different states
- Swine fever and bird flu. Recurrent animal diseases, if not dangerous to humans, can generate inflationary spirals that penalise the poorer classes.
- Crisis in intensive salmon farming
- disturbing signals coming from the world of intensive meat farms (I only managed to see a piece of this terrible documentary) and PFAS, present in water but also in fruit and vegetables.
- Bottled water is massively polluted with plastic nanoparticles
- Inflation forcing menu changes in fast food restaurants (e.g. McDonald’s. Below are some insights from Inglobando)
- McDonald’s, one death and 49 cases of Escherichia coli in the USA
- The use of red mush – mechanically separated meat – for frankfurters but also for chicken
- The downgrading of the quality of olive oil.
- Increasing reports of commercial fraud, counterfeiting, adulteration and food alerts in the European Union
- EU, One Health Report 2023. Listeriosis, salmonellosis and other zoonoses on the rise
- Bird flu in North America worries epidemiologists: three people have been infected with the H5N1 virus without a source of contamination being detected
- The ocean defence association Bloom has had nearly 150 canned tuna analysed and is using these results to argue that the permitted levels of mercury in the meat of this fish, the most widely consumed in Europe, have been lowered.
- The use of dark kitchens, run by the big delivery chains, is worsening the quality of restaurant food.
- The Nestlé water crisis in France. There is talk of over ten years of fraud to the tune of €3 billion(some springs are allegedly contaminated with pesticides or Escherichia coli bacteria and the only way to use the water is to purify it). And a recent inspection at the Perrier production site highlights a lack of ‘traceability’ and a ‘critical point of loyalty’, reveal ‘Le Monde’ – of 16 October 2024 – and Franceinfo.
- Among the many things Nestlé did to conceal the fraud: removing from official documents ‘the list of pesticides (herbicides, fungicides) that have been banned for some of them for 20 years, such as atrazine. No more PFAS, chlorates and other perchlorates. Above all, there is the table quoting the frequency of detection of E.Coli bacteria and intestinal enterococci in the period 2020-2023′.
Nestlé can try to design ‘all the world’s healthiest or anti-ageing food it wants’ but perhaps, first, it needs to settle the issue of the healthiness of its water, where it has had to settle. Or that of the death of two children from contaminated pizza, also in France.
A positive signal on water: A decree is coming to limit Pfas pollution of drinking water
Below : Le Monde classifies Nestlé as a producer of junk food (“malbouffe”)
| 5$ MENU AT McDONALD’S
chris Kempczinski the CEO of McDonald’s recently spoke about how the company sees increasing difficulties in its lower spending customers starting June 25 and for about a month, McDonald’s will offer a full $5 menu in America
an organised group of franchise shops wrote a letter to the parent company. These are the key points:
among those who have contributed is Coca Cola, which has allocated its own budget to support the initiative The Financial Times reports on the strategy of the big ultra-processed food producers, who, with the slogan ‘Deny, denounce and delay’, spend twice as much on lobbying in the USA as tobacco and alcohol producers combined. An extravagance, which until now had safeguarded their turnovers, to the detriment of the health of their consumers. Now, however, their turnovers are ‘threatened’, read about it: USA: Mc Donald’s, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Pepsi, Starbucks report volume declines due to inflation and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. P.S.: Mc Donald’s $5 menu operation is not working (further confirmation can be found here : USA : Target : sales down, Mc Donald’s too. For the moment Walmart is holding up) |
