Convenience food as a weapon of mass destruction

Here is a great article deconstructing what is perhaps the single most deadly processed microwave “meal” ever to grace supermarket shelves, the Swanson Hungry-Man All Day Breakfast, which at least is partial Truth In Product Naming.

The All-Month Breakfast would be more like it. The front of its packing crate boldly shouts, “OVER 1LB. OF FOOD,” while the back of the box features a bulky, high-cholesterol male pointing threateningly at the viewer, along with this menacing quotation: “I know what I like, and I like a lot of it.” This is not subtle branding. There’s no Alice Waters making culinary magic from the freshest organic ingredients over at the Swanson plant. No, this is food as a weapon, as a threat: I will eat this stuff, and nobody’s gonna’ stop me, I will eat and eat and eat until I explode and take other people out with me. Or at least do my part in destroying the American healthcare system.

Get a load of the “nutritional” information of this beast: 1,030 calories, 570 from fat; 64 grams of fat (98% of your daily dose); 2,090 milligrams of sodium (87%); and a whopping 690 milligrams of cholesterol, or 231% of the upper-limit any sane person would consume in an entire day, all in one meal!

The article is accompanied by a bunch of gruesome product shots. In fact, the writer, “Matt,” offers this disclaimer: “Be warned, the pictures are of a graphic nature.” If you’re up to the challenge, read the article. Then write your congressperson–perhaps we can get a U.N. Resolution against this terror, and save thousands of lives before it’s too late.

“It’s Good to be Full”: fearing the above was merely the tip of the clogged artery, we dug up this Refrigerated & Frozen Foods magazine article [PDF] that goes into great detail about how Pinnacle Foods bought and resuscitated the dying Swanson brand, and a large part of the success has been the Hungry-Man line, where every meal was enlarged to “a full pound of food” or more.

So what does today’s hungry man eat for dinner, after the staying power of the All-Day Breakfast has run it’s course? Why, an “XXL” dinner of course (got to hand it to ‘em, even more truth in advertising here):

If bigger is better, then XXL must be stupendous. The new Hungry-Man XXL dinners, now shouldering their way into supermarkets, feature a pound and a half of food. The Backyard Barbecue offers two glazed chicken breasts, two barbecued pork ribs and a mountain of mashed potatoes….At a suggested retail price of $4.79, it will be regularly promoted.

This giant leap into bigger meals was not based on whim, however.

“We followed men around and talked to them in focus groups” explains [Andy] Reichgut [senior Hungry-Man business manager]. “Conducting focus groups with men is fun. They didn’t really want to talk to one another, except maybe about a ball game. Then we brought out the food. When they saw the XXL Backyard Barbecue their eyes lit up and they started talking to one another about the product. We could tell just by their reactions which meals were the right ones [to market].

“Our new tag line, ‘It’s Good to be Full,’ reinforces why men love Hungry-Man. And it resonates unbelievably well with consumers.”

It should be noted that since Pinnacle’s marketing makeover of the Swanson brand, sales of the Hungry-Man family have increased along with customer waistlines, by a whopping 20 percent.

Perhaps it is good to be full (beats starvation), but full of what? Sure, Swanson is bucking the growing trend of healthier eating, and marketing only to the insane, but hey, that’s still like, what, 55 million Americans? Not a bad niche business.