I like this story mainly because it’s about a company named “Sara Lee” that makes sausage named “Jimmy Dean.” I mean, how can you not love companies with such cheerfully personified identities, even if they are about to raise their prices dramatically:
Sara Lee, maker of meat products such as Jimmy Dean sausages, said costs would compel it to push up prices on meat lines by up to a fifth later this year.
“We will be taking price increases on the vast majority of the protein products in this calendar year,” said C.J. Fraleigh, Sara Lee’s chief operating officer for North America, in a recent interview.
“Meat products” and “protein lines”. Doncha just love the way these people talk?
John,
They have to talk this way. Long ago, sausages were made entirely from pork or, sometimes, from beef, liver, or blood plus some spices.
Now they are made from pork plus other meats (in aggregate, ‘meat products’). If the company calls them ‘pork sausages’ the FDA fines the company.
Similarly, if the company adds beans or soy to a product to increase the amount of protein, the resulting product is no longer composed of just ‘meat products’ and is a new member of the ‘protein lines.’
The changes are the modern food science equivalent of making a pie and calling it a pie, instead of just chewing on grains and berries and calling it ‘indigestible, low shelf life, bad tasting, teeth destroying, wheat and strawberries’, a contrarian product name.
Just my two cents. ( Maybe a cent and a half. 😉 )