Related: Bogged Down in Lies
Yeah, how quickly the agenda-pushing paper forgets we did not have a summer last year.
"A little red berry takes on the world; Cranberry glut fuels a global push" by Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff | August 7, 2010
The lowly cranberry, Massachusetts’ bitter little bog fruit, already has a global following....
Now, a massive oversupply of cranberries from Massachusetts and other parts of the United States and Canada is forcing marketers to look for new ways to sell the fruit abroad.
It's hard to sell a sour berry just like it is hard to sell a sour war.
The Cranberry Marketing Committee, a quasi-public arm of the US Department of Agriculture, plans to market cranberries in the Middle East, Turkey, and India — places where cranberries are so foreign there is not yet a word for them.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS at WORK, America!
Why were they not used to keep you in your home?
“We’re always looking for the next potential market for cranberries,’’ said Dave Farrimond, executive director of the committee. “Growers are not going to stop growing so we need to find new outlets for products.’’
The current cranberry glut — with record production levels in 2007 and 2008 — is primarily due to new plants that can produce double and triple the yields of a decade ago. The United States grows 90 percent of the world’s cranberries, with Massachusetts second only to Wisconsin in production....
Oh, I'm so proud, pffft!
Oh, yeah, wait until you see what they do to your poop (I've choked them down in the past, readers).
That is giant growth for a berry so acidic few eat it raw.
You get a lot of linguistic acid here, readers.
Yet one of the cranberry’s biggest selling points has not been its taste but its much-heralded health benefits. It can help prevent urinary tract infections and reduce harmful bacteria in the urethra, mouth, bladder, and kidneys, and also acts as a powerful antioxidant with antiaging effects, the industry claims.
Related: The Boston Globe's Ghostwriters
Well, it is a corporate paper.
While fresh fruits are a staple of any good diet, researchers are still determining the exact health benefits of many fruits, including cranberries.
What, the paper hasn't gotten the all clear from government to tell you fruits are good for you (as long as they are not laced with pesticides and chemicals)?
But
But, yet, still, sigh....!!!
If I had a nickel for every time those crap qualifiers were in the paper I could pay for it and my morning coffee and have money left over for lunch.
what often makes the cranberry appetizing is sugar, the opposite of a health food. Lilian Cheung, a faculty member in the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, said a 12-ounce cranberry cocktail, for example, can contain as much as 12 teaspoons of sugar, more than the 10 teaspoons found in the same amount of soda. Excess sugar consumption can cause weight gain, Type 2 diabetes, and heart disease....
That's what helped get it down my throat all these years.
The cranberry committee spends its $3 million annual promotions’ budget introducing new and novel uses for the berry to foreign audiences in advertisements, contests, and recipes in women’s magazine.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS at WORK!
(Recipes include cranberry borscht in Austria, cranberry pumpkin pilaf in Australia, and a cranberry club sandwich in Korea.)
I'll pass on those dishes,
Tobias M. Stapleton, marketing director for the cranberry committee, said Poland and the Middle East are attractive new markets because they are “berry cultures’’ where fruits like forest berries or currants are diet staples.
Yeah, it goes with the poverty.
I don't see rich folk out there scooping them up and prolifically featuring them on the menu.
He said many are so taken with the berry in Germany that the committee has worked with pharmacies to help them begin selling 100 percent pure cranberry juice, an acquired taste.
Then I didn't get or have a love affair, pffft.
There have been marketing challenges. In Spain, cranberries are promoted as “arandano rojo’’ — which translates to “red blueberry,’’ Stapleton said.
Yeah, LYING NEVER WORKS when you are trying to SELL SOMETHING!
NOT ANYMORE!
“It’s not an ideal situation because it doesn’t taste anything like a blueberry,’’ he said.
No, it tastes like s***.
Marketers scored a victory this year in France when they managed to get a word for cranberry accepted in two dictionaries....
Yet Amaury Laporte, spokesman for the French Embassy in New York said cranberries have yet to catch on big in the nation.
“I think blueberries are probably better known than cranberries at the moment,’’ Laporte said.
Meanwhile, Ocean Spray of Lakeville is pushing its trademarked Craisins, dried cranberries, in places such as the United Kingdom, France, and Australia. Ocean Spray chief executive Randy Papadellis said the company will spend about $30 million on branding abroad to keep cranberry demand high....
Some growers hope that cranberries will succeed in parts of Asia as well as they have in Japan. Today, one of Japan’s leading whiskey makers has created a cranberry liquor marketed in advertisements before “Sex in the City 2,’’ and the nation’s largest pizza chain, Pizza La, stocks cranberry juice.
Always promoting the booze!
There are recipe contests sponsored by the industry and stores that sell cranberry powder additives for dog food.
That's where the berries are headed -- into the dog's dish!
Huh. He doesn't like them, either.
Chuck Dillon, chief executive of Decas Cranberry Products Inc. of Carver, one of the biggest industrial cranberry distributors in the world, said sweetened, dried cranberry sales to cereal and trail mix companies has been expanding as prices drop. The company, which sells cranberries in bulk, has expanded its marketing efforts in China, visiting the country regularly in search of business opportunities.
“A lot of people have their eyes on China, it’s a market you can hardly ignore,’’ Dillon said. “Cranberries are not a totally familiar taste and texture to the Chinese culture, but that was also the case in Japan 10 years ago.’’
How come they are never on you, American?
Was that a news article or a corporate flier for the cranberry industry?
Also see: Massachusetts a Disaster Area
Not this year, not out here.
