Turkey Talk, NOSH Live & The Moral Ambiguity of Influencer Marketing

0:00This week on the NOSH podcast, Thanksgiving traditions, NOSH live preparations, and the FTC's stern message to influencers and industry trade groups.

0:20Hi everyone, I'm your host Carol Ortenberg. On the NOSH podcast, we go inside the business of natural, organic, sustainable, and healthy food. Today, the team discusses Thanksgiving traditions, a preview of Nosh Live, and why some influencers have attracted the attention of the FTC. Joining me today, we've got reporters Adrienne DeLuca. Good morning, Carol. And Lucas Southard. Gobble, gobble, everyone. That's turkey talk today. That is turkey for holo. Yeah. I find that a little disturbing, Lucas, considering what's about to happen to these turkeys. Oh, mine's already dead. It's brining in some buttermilk in my, well, in my parents' fridge right now.

1:06So, you know, rest in peace, dear turkey. I think that gets us off on the right foot or claw. I'm not sure what turkeys exactly have. Talons? I was going to chime in with talons. Okay. Yeah, what do you call it? Turkey talon sounds right. Like turkey or chicken feet. Are they just feet? Well, when you eat them, it's chicken feet, but I've never heard of people eating turkey feet, so I don't know. Yeah, it's not a foot, though, because it's like a talon. It's like a dinosaur thing. Anyway, we don't eat the turkey feet in my house. What are your Thanksgiving traditions then, Lucas? Not eating turkey feet.

1:51Usually we grill our turkey, something my dad has been doing most of my life. um this year i'm i i took it upon myself to brine it in buttermilk as i said just uh you know try something different and we're this is the first family thanksgiving we're having here at my house uh so that will be that will be fun and my brother's in town so he gets to take care of my kids which is extra fun for me but uh yeah i mean it's you know we don't we don't have like a lot of like traditions traditions like it's it's pretty standard fare we have like a a stuffing recipe that we all swear by we do a turkey oh i did order in some some um fresh oysters to be delivered because oyster stuffing or or no just to eat i just want to eat oysters i just haven't had oysters in a while and with enough adults here we could order and you know like 50 oysters and it wouldn't it wouldn't be weird i mean i'm gonna not it might still be weird yeah it might still be weird why is that weird there's there's five adults here where you know a lot of oysters that's 10 oysters a person it just sounds like you're throwing turkey out the window you guys are just eating oysters i mean because let's be honest turkey's not very good i know you can't relate to this adrian but turkey's turkey is super overrated the only one in my family who really loves turkey is my mom who eats the least amount of anyone in the family.

3:21I have had some smoked turkey that was smoked over rosemary bushes. That was quite good in New Orleans for the holidays every year. My family friends deep fry a turkey and I'm not going to lie, that's pretty delicious as well. I like the buttermilk idea, Lucas. I know one of the New York Times top recipes for turkey is mayonnaise slathered turkey. Nope. Nope. You know my response to that is going to be hard nothing on the mayonnaise. You take your mayonnaise and you leave it in the condiment aisle. It's got a ton of good reviews. But I like what you say about everyone bringing different things.

4:05There's an influencer I love called Landon Talks. and he shares like how you know your hierarchy in the family depending on what you get asked to bring for Thanksgiving and how you can get upgraded so like if you're cups and paper plates you're basically at the bottom and you move up to like salads and stuffing but if you plan to mess around with any of that stuff you have to bring two is his point you you can't go wild on like stuffing or mac and cheese and not do the classic version as well my mom always does the stuffing my dad always does mashed potatoes which you know i can take it or leave it i'm more oh my god i love mashed potatoes i just don't like if they're just like standard mashed potatoes and i'm like just give me like some sweet potatoes at least you know no not sweet potatoes and like cheese covered potatoes.

4:58Let's say it's Thanksgiving. Yeah, zhuzh me. My wife loves the sweet potatoes with the marshmallows on top. Oh, no. I've never really. I'm just like, it's too sweet. That's like a dessert. They just make sweet potato pie or something. And they evaporate kind of. They never really hold. It's definitely not good the next day. No. It's weird. Yeah. It's not a thing for us. Adrian, what do you eat instead of turkey? Some millet? definitely not i'm planning to make a delicious baked mac and cheese filled with some veggies we don't really do thanksgiving in my house so like turkey hasn't been on the table for i don't know a while is everyone no i'm the only one okay but no one's really like turkey my favorite part of becoming vegetarian when we still had turkey was like i finally got a cop out that like my mom wouldn't force me to at least have a bite.

5:52But yeah, we we've just kind of like given up on Thanksgiving. It's just my mom and my siblings and I. So we're planning to stay in our pajamas all day and just like make whatever food we really want. That's why the mac and cheese is, you know, first on my list. I really like mashed potatoes and stuffing. So I tend to make those some squash with like a lime vinaigrette dressing. Not super traditional. I do like our turkey. We soak cheesecloth in like a white wine butter mixture and you drape it over the turkey. It's quite good. That's an interesting idea. It works really, really well. And then I always make like one traditional dessert.

6:37I do a derby pie, which is a chocolate bourbon pecan pie. And then I kind of go rogue with the second one since I don't really like dessert. um last year I did like a cranberry lemon bar sometimes a cranberry tort things like that yeah those are good my wife did uh she already made the pumpkin cheesecake which I will allow like I'm take it or leave it on the pumpkin but any cheesecake goes goes very well with with my uh well it doesn't go well with my stomach but my stomach uh my my mind likes it my stomach sometimes doesn't. I tried making a pumpkin pecan pie where you layer the two and it was just a disaster that wound up in me crying like multiple times.

7:23It feels like you need some real expertise in doing something like that. They just would sink. It ended up being like a swirl pie. But when we have big family gatherings, I tend to make green bean casserole from scratch. I feel like lucas you would approve of that no condensed soup uh and then i made corn pudding which i found out is like not necessarily a northern thing but but when i brought it to a gathering once uh everyone was like oh this is so healthy it's corn no it has like a stick of butter yeah a thing of cream maybe three types of cheese in what world is corn like you know health food Yeah, it's not really like the most nutritious.

8:11Thanksgiving world, it's a vegetable. It's a vegetable. It's a vegetable, but it's just sugar, basically. It's a loose interpretation of vegetables. Everyone asked for the recipe, and I just like conveniently forgot to send it because I thought if they knew what I had put into this, I would be disinvited from any future Thanksgivings. It's terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying. Well, hopefully they're not listening to this podcast episode then. The cat's out of the bag now. Yeah. I definitely like Thanksgiving, but it's sort of taken on a new meeting for me where in addition to cooking, I spend a lot of time with Google Docs instead of Black Friday because it is always one week until Nosh Live.

8:57I'm excited for the event I'm you know it feels like it's been so long because we didn't have a summer event that this is like really it's going to be extra special this year so I'm excited to go I can't say my wife is very excited I'm going to be gone for a week but you know you'll have to bring her back some like interesting samples because all the attendees who come bring different products for us to try get feedback I end up stealing some of the Balani samples to keep in my hotel room and just like house for random meals, which is super healthy, I'm sure. But it's better than your. Yeah, it's better than beef jerky sticks.

9:39That's exactly what I was going to say. Your classic trade show meal. I need some protein. Give me some a little bit of any sort of jerky or meat stick I can find. We're at a new hotel this year, the Marriott Marina del Rey. And I don't know what I'm going to do though because Saturday or Sunday I usually walk to one of the local farmers markets from the Lowe's and pick up actual vegetables to keep in my hotel room. I'm gonna have to find a new farmers market. If anyone from LA knows one that's nearby that I should hit up, let me know because I will not survive Nosh Live and BevNet Live without some produce.

10:17I will like get scurvy or something. I'll come on a scout with you. There's probably an arrow on close. You can get some sort of really overpriced juice or, you know, smoothie or something. $20 Haley Bieber smoothie. Yeah. Why not? My husband is happy because I always bring back like a carry on of avocados from California. And there's so many avocados. There's the ones you can eat the skin. I learned there's oil like oily ones. There's water based ones. So many more than I can get in Boston. But then I wind up with like way too many avocados and I have food waste and I feel bad about it. So, and I always save them saying I'm going to take the pit and grow an avocado plant from it.

11:03And then I like three months later find a really sad avocado pit in the back of my refrigerator. So I just need to, you know, face facts about the fact it's never going to happen for me. I've tried to grow some Carol. It's not worth it. That's my, yeah, it, it, it's gross. Honestly, They get all algae. I tried to do it, yeah, and it didn't work for me. But then I found a sprout out of one in my compost. And I took it and I planted it. And it hasn't grown a whole lot, but it hasn't died. And it's been going for like two months now. So that was just like a fun surprise in my compost pile. Well, in addition to my buying too many avocados once Nosh Live is over, at the event itself.

11:49We have some great new speakers we've announced. We're going to have the VP of merchandising from GoPuff. We've got the Whole Foods team speaking. Wayne Wu from VMG will be speaking. No word if we get special pants, keeping my fingers crossed. And then we also added Sprouts for one-on-one meetings with brands in attendance. And they also will have the opportunity to meet with spins for some personalized data sessions. So all this plus the sampling that we just mentioned and networking means that this is just going to be an awesome Nosh Live. I feel it in my bones. I agree. I also caught up with Dario Willis, CEO of Tacombi and Vista Hermosa last week for Story on Nosh, but he's also going to be speaking at the event.

12:36So it was an exciting discussion about you know how he's built that business from a restaurant into a cpg brand and all the different directions they think they can go and really how we plan that out from day one yeah do you know if dario is gonna do you know if dario is gonna bring any um tacos for us because that'd be sweet we can ask i don't know if we're gonna get tacos but frozen burritos for my hotel room sounds yeah i guess the frozen could work yeah okay i'll get i'll i'll deal with that they usually have microwaves in these uh these hotel rooms right no i'm not sure where you've been staying yeah well if you're intrigued by the idea of all the speakers we've just discussed definitely check out nosh live.com for the full agenda and list of brands and uh investors retailers suppliers who will be in attendance but turning our attention to the news this week we probably should talk about the news as well Adrian, there was a little kerfuffle with some influencers in the FTC this week.

13:41I really just wanted to say kerfuffle. I'm going to be honest. What happened? You're correct, Carol. There was indeed a kerfuffle. The FTC sent warning letters to the American Beverage Association, the Canadian Sugar Institute, and I think it was about 12 dieticians slash influencers for videos and posts that were talking about aspartame in a promotional way, you know, talking about how it was still a safe ingredient. So pro aspartame. Yeah, totally pro aspartame, but not disclosing exactly where those sponsorships for those videos came from. So I believe a few of them had noted like hashtag ad in their, you know, captions and whatnot.

14:28But according to the FTC, you need to call out like who exactly is sponsoring that ad in both the video and the text that accompanies that post. So these influencers had not done that and it got them into a bit of hot water. And I think some of them did maybe like note ad, but it was also in the same color font as like the background. So it was a nice little like workaround where technically they did it, but no one could see that they actually did it. Exactly. It wasn't obvious to anyone. Yeah. And I think that that kind of drives back to what the FTC seem to be saying with these warning letters and kind of some signaling they've been doing recently about just like there needs to be a lot more obvious disclosure when you're being paid to, you know, to sponsor something or you're being paid, especially by a lobbying or a trade group.

15:23Like these are, These are registered dietitians. They have to, you know, people are going, they're, they're subscribing to their social media feeds to, to listen to advice from these people. And if the advice is coming as a result of being paid by a lobbying group that might have somewhat questionable reasons for putting it out there, it needs to be, the FTC is basically saying you need to be much more obvious that like you're speaking kind of on behalf of these lobbying groups. So not like mommy bloggers where the advice may be rooted in science or it might be like something you heard at the PTA.

15:58yeah yeah or you know even i think it it for me it it was a little bit it was interesting because it's not just like a influencer shilling for a brand and saying like hey you should go buy this you know this snack because it's really tasty it's they're they're kind of they're putting out information that's supposed to be educational for consumers that goes back to health risks as opposed to just like hey we were paid by this brand to you know to talk about how good they are I also thought it was interesting. A lot of the coverage and discussion around this news also mentioned the fact that the association, the trade group that backs a lot of registered dietitians has a very similar ethical code that aligns with what the FTC requires of influencers, that you need to disclose these things in both the videos and the captions.

16:50But there was, you know, a contrast to that where that trade group has also received a lot of donations from a lot of food industry groups. So the lines of conflict of interest in this case were a little blurry, blurry, maybe. Oh, yeah. Blurry. Blurry. Tenuous. It seems there's a few things going on behind the scenes that may have let this go on for the time that it did. And this is supposed to be across, you know, all brands. You're supposed to declare that it's an ad. I've seen a lot of food brands handle this in different ways. I've actually messaged a few influencers just like curious and said like, oh, I'm just wondering.

17:34And, you know, they've said, well, I love the brand myself, so I don't have to disclose it. Or, oh, it's an affiliate link, so I don't have to disclose it. And I always appreciate the ones that very clearly state at the top. There's a couple that will say, like, here's what I got from the brand in order to do this. So I received free samples to I was paid to post this. And I think I personally just trust those influencers a lot more. I'm not sure if I really would ever trust an influencer who's like, yeah, aspartame is good for you. Like, that's not why I look to Instagram or Facebook. I probably go to like a medical professional, though, Lucas, to your point, these were registered nutritionists.

18:25So supposed to be rooted in some science. I will say I went on a deep dive on the background of registered dietitians after going through this. And Marian Nestle had a great post, I think it was last week, just about the continuing education requirements for a lot of dietitians and nutritionists. And their requirements are shockingly minimal. There's a difference between dietitians, nutritionists, registered dietitians. We had a session on this during COVID on our virtual summer events. And there's definitely some conflict between the different groups about who has that science background is keeping up with their continuing education credits.

19:11And but that is part of the confusion, right? Because the average consumer doesn't understand that you could just take some – I've seen like Instagram boot camp classes advertised and then call yourself a nutrition expert. It does feel like there is a – there's a lot more work to be done in terms of like tamping down on how influencers, especially those like a registered dietitian, what and how they message to their followers. But I think, as you said, Carol, like it's it's like all things that involve social media and influencers and kind of the the economics of that those relationships that it's really hard to regulate.

19:55It's really hard to to kind of get your grasp on because there's a lot of influencers out there now. And it's that that whole economy is and this was said in a lot of the reporting on this FTC was like they just don't have the resources to patrol this in the way that they would like to. And that's part of the problem is like, yeah, they can send out these warning letters and hopefully that's like a lesson there. But for for for what they can really do is fairly limited. I always am really impressed by Primal Kitchen. Personally, we've gotten samples from them at the office and they actually include a letter with their samples that starts with free product.

20:34It says that you should post honest reviews about the products. And then it says, you must clearly and conspicuously disclose you received free product from Primal Nutrition. Clear and conspicuous disclosure means including the disclosure in the body of your post and in any video. For example, hashtag ad at the beginning of the post. Please also make sure, please also remember to not make any claims, including health claims about the Primal Kitchen products that were not provided by Primal Nutrition. So, you know, for brands, that's a simple addition that you can include in your sample packs that might assist with that.

21:18Granted, it's on you to follow up and make sure that these influencers are actually posting that. But I think it's a solid reminder that here is what the FTC wants you to do. And if the FTC does take note, it gives you some ground to say, hey, we are trying to encourage this behavior. It gives you something to point to at the end. But if the FTC does come back and someone violates that law or rule. You got a paper trail. Exactly. Okay, folks. Well, we'll have to keep an eye on this developing FTC kerfuffle. I just wanted to say it again, but we need to get back to writing and NOSH Live planning.

22:00So we'll have to close it there, but hope our listeners have or had a wonderful Thanksgiving, depending on when you listen to this. And we can't wait to see you at NOSH Live. That wraps up our episode of the NOSH podcast. We hope you'll subscribe, leave a review and continue to tune in next week on your podcast platform of choice.

22:26Transcription by CastingWords