Will "Alternative" Foods Go Mainstream?

Since Whole Foods built a new store in Highland Park in 2001, I have been a regular at the store. Despite higher prices, I was attracted to a much higher level of cleanliness, a thorough description of food content and the option of no and low fat foods. In the meantime, I watched Tom Thumb close down a recently remodeled store and asked myself, "why don't they sell some of those Whole Food products?"

The recent purchase of 84% of Tom's of Maine by Colgate-Palmolive (stock symbol:CL and founded in 1806) for $100 million points to movement in that direction. Tom's of Maine was started in 1970 by Tom Chappell as a "natural" product category company with deodorants and toothpastes. Last year sales were about $50 million. In light of Tom's high profit margins, it doesn't appear that CL overpaid. Rather, Tom's will get heavyweight distribution and CL will begin to get that product line that Tom Thumb lacked. Winners all around?

Not likely. It looks like Whole Foods may be the ultimate loser through franchise erosion. As production and distribution gets more efficient for Tom's through CL's efforts, other food chains will have the ability to carry such products. While Whole Foods may argue that Tom's should not diminish its brand by selling through inorganic, animal-haters, CL will logically argue that if Tom's is good for the world, why limit its distribution?

My First Prayer - a genuine "placebo"?

While taking my family on a trip through central Europe, I was stricken by the enormous energy peoples had put into defining their relationship with God - buildings built, armies launched and societies structured. This experience caused me to think about how my relationship with God started: my first prayer.

I was 8 years old and staying at my grandparents' home in rural Minnesota. It was summer and I had been riding an oversized bicycle. I lost control of it and landed with my crotch on the handlebars. I was in severe pain. I ran inside their home to lie down on the living room couch. Over the couch hung two large religious paintings. I looked up and prayed a 100% earnest prayer - "Please help me. I will be good."

Suddenly, the pain completely went away. I looked around nervously. I did not know what to do. Clearly the pain was gone and that was good. But I was uneasy about my situation. Had the pain gone away by itself? Had I imagined that God had helped me? Or had I really reached into the realm of God and been helped? Was I helped because I asked? Or was it because I had said that I would be good?

Since that time, I have read about pain management and been impressed by the "placebo" effect. "Placebo" is from the Latin word meaning "I shall be pleasing." The body has inherent pain relief mechanisms that can be triggered. Religious approaches have proven effect - as do fake medicines. Is it possible that this is what occurred in my sincere attempt to be pleasing? Is this impetus the underlying drive for these enormous social commitments I observed in Europe?

Biblical Rules

The Bible has so many rules that it is tempting to simply ignore them and pay closer attention to the stories. But I find that examination of these rules often yields high rewards. Chapter 19, verse 14 of Leviticus (or in Hebrew, Vayikra) reads "You shall not curse the deaf." I thought to myself, "Why? Because they already have it bad enough?" A commentator got me to revisit the verse.

Generally, prohibitions remind us about the harmful side of our selfishness. They help us grow an awareness others and the importance of respecting the needs and rights of others. So when we read a prohibition, our automatic response is to look for the pattern of our selfishness making a victim out of someone else. But apparently this verse is different.

A deaf person is the only person who really can't be damaged by a curse. The verse does not read, "do not curse," but specifically forbids cursing the one person who can't hear a curse. That is why the commentator's insight hit me: I become my own victim. When I curse someone else who can't hear me (because their windows are rolled up and their stereo is blaring), the relief I feel is false - I am actually feeding my ego and moving away from God. I guess I did have something to work with after all.

Power of Midot

Midot is the plural form of the Hebrew noun mida often translated as "character trait" or "value." (Interestingly, a company named Midot Systems provides integrity diagnostic systems.) Paralleling this Biblical focus on character traits is the sixth step of 12-step programs which reads,"we were entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character." How is this done?

The origins of the word midot provide a clue. Midot actually means "measurements." Over time, its meaning evolved from "measurements" to "character traits." The evolution of midot implies that the way a situation is measured or sized up gives rise to a response. Over time, these responses pattern into a character trait.

A violent behavior can be measured as scary or pitiful (or both), depending on how it is measured. Some behaviors viewed as scary might give rise to anxiety that could evolve into a fear-based character trait. The same behaviors might be viewed as pitiful and give rise to sympathy that could evolve into a love-based character trait. The measurement is the key to character and remeasurement allows for character change.

Proper American Icon

While studying the photos of the latest Muslim bonfires, I noticed KFC signs more than once. Then I came across this comment in a recent New York Review of Books article which discussed madrasas - the fundamentalist Islamic schools: "Pakistan..banning the public performance of music and depictions of the human form. The one exception to this, bizarrely, is the image of Colonel Sanders outside the new Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Peshawar. This was apparently because the Colonel was judged to be sporting a properly Islamic beard."

Being Honest with Ourselves

Warren Buffett once said that the problem with fooling others is that you might start fooling yourself. It is probably more difficult to be honest with ourselves because we rationalize behaviors that we don't want to change.

I came across a story on shemayisrael.com that properly illustrates this issue. A rabbi saw a former student of his and was surprised by his lack of observant living. He asked him why he was no longer observant. The former student replied that he had found too many doubts.

The rabbi asked the former student, "if I can answer all of your questions, would you then return to being observant?" The student said, "Absolutely, but I doubt that you will be able to since my questions are very strong."

The rabbi guaranteed him answers, but first needed an answer himself. He asked, "When did these questions develop in your mind? Before you stopped being observant or after?

The young man thought for a moment and then replied, "To be honest, Rabbi, all of the questions came after I became non observant. But that is irrelevant. Now I am bothered by them and if you can answer them, I'll become observant once again."

The rabbi said that he was sorry but he could not help him. The student was shocked and asked why he couldn't. The rabbi explained. "I do have the answers. But they are answers for questions. You don't have questions. You have answers. For answers I have no answers.

You stopped putting on tefillin because you were too lazy to get up early in the morning. You ate non kosher because you are a glutton. You stopped keeping Shabbos because you don't want to be restricted. But you once learned in yeshiva; so your conscience bothered you and you found that you still were not enjoying life. Therefore, you had to come up with answers to relieve yourself of those terrible, guilty feelings. These answers are what you call 'questions'. But they are not real and so I cannot disperse them intellectually. As long as you are not honest with yourself, you will never accept the truth, keeping your brain from working properly."

Reinterpreting the Exodus

The most famous Biblical line from the story of the Exodus is God saying, "Let my people go." It is regularly recounted as a statement about freedom. However, a closer inspection showed me that it's not about freedom at all.

In Hebrew, the phrase is: "shalach et ami vaya-avduni." The translation of "shalach et ami" could be rendered "let my people go," but the sentence is not complete. In all eight instances (with minor variations), the rest of the sentence is "vaya-avduni" which may be rendered as "to serve me."

Implicit in this sentence is the concept that God is not moving the Jews towards freedom (at least in its conventional sense), but is moving them towards a closer relationship with Him. This is consistent with the spirituality of twelve-step programs where freedom from the slavery of addiction is conditioned on moving to a God-centered rather than to a self-centered life.

Baumeister Study in Self-Control

Ever since a close friend told me, "the key is not will power, but surrender," I have pondered this counterintuitive wisdom. When moving through challenges, I have found his advice works and have wondered why. I came across some research that helps explain it.

Baumeister created an experiment to analyze self-control. Participants avoided eating for three hours before the experiment and when they arrived they were put into one of three groups.

The first group was taken into a room where chocolate chip cookies had recently been baked. This room also contained two trays: one laid out with the freshly baked cookies and other chocolate delights, and another full of radishes. This group was told they could eat as many radishes as they wanted in the next five minutes, but they weren't allowed to touch the chocolates or cookies. A second group was taken to a similar room with the same two trays, but told they could eat the cookies and/or the radishes. The third group was taken to an empty room.

The food was then removed and the individuals were given problems to solve. These problems took the form of tracing geometric shapes without re-tracing lines or lifting the pen from the paper. The problems were, sadly, unsolvable. However, the amount of time before participants gave up and the number of attempts made before they gave up were both recorded.

The results were dramatic. The group which could only eat the radishes (and had expended self control in resisting the cookies) gave up in less than half the time than the other two groups. (The no food at all group had the most long-lived persistence.) The first group also made half as many attempts at solving the problems as the other two groups before giving up. (The chocolate eaters were the group with the highest level of attempts.)

From this study, it appears that actively exercising will power is a depleting process. By surrendering and taking a decision out of the "will power" or self-control zone, it appears that more energy is retained for other decisions.

Media Disintermediation

Warren Buffett has long held media properties as part of that profitable "food chain" called branding. To be profitable, investments must slow the process of competing to zero profits that occurs with commodities. Brands help. Brands can encourage consumers to "pay up." But to create brands, media properties are necessary.

But media properties have been having investment problems of the same type. As I have blogged recently, newspapers, (as well as radios and televisions) are part of a disintermediation process driven by the Internet. As a result, media properties are losing their "tollway" characteristics. But a friend of mine argued that the "tollway" still exists because people need to trust their news source.

However, disintermediation is addressing the issue of trust in a novel way. Unlike the historical use of a gatekeeping media property separating companies from consumers, the Internet now allows direct linkage of company and conumer: whether through company website, or pdf file, or search engine or RSS feed. If interpretations are important, blogs can provide significant online and on-time commentary.

This thesis, persuasively made by David Meerman Scott in a complimentary ebook called "The new rules of PR," (and available at his excellent web log www.webinknow), appears financially confirmed: Buffett has purchased the company Business Wire for an estimated (by me) $500 million. Media disintermediation is at the core of Business Wire's growth. Formerly, Business Wire helped businesses disseminate information to the old "tollways" of the media world. Now, Business Wire helps businesses manage press releases in order to grow customer reach and direct branding. Further, new legal requirements for accuracy and timeliness on business releases help all involved. Business Wire gets more business because of heavier requirements and the businesses have releases which are considered more trustworthy - addressing some of my friends concerns.

As a financial aside, Business Wire appears to be already highly profitable. Business Wire charges $225 for each release. The top line of Business Wire is $125 million (yes, over a 1,000 releases per day!). The margins appear high, as the releases are already written. Business Wire has had a bottom line strong enough to allow former owner Lorry I. Lokey to donate $160 million over the past 10 years (mostly to schools: his alma mater Stanford and Leo Baeck Academy, a school in Haifa, Israel). At a contribution rate averaging $16 million per year, the business probably threw off at least $32 million of after-tax profit (most people don't donate over 50% of their income for tax reasons), leaving a pre-tax operating margin of nearly 50%. For financial types, I would estimate that Buffett paid about 8-9 times operating profit and comment that their largest competitor is London-based PR Newswire, a subsidiary of United Business Media, PLC.

T-shirt Spotted

I did some research today at the University of Texas at Dallas.  I had been hearing what a "geek" school it was. I saw a t-shirt that confirmed it. It read: "There are only 10 types of people: those who understand binary and those who don't."