Until it all changed. It was time to make decisions about feeding my son and I wasn’t sure where to turn. For the first time ever, I thought about pesticides in food – pesticides that damage or potentially kill things not incredibly smaller than my own small child.

That’s when I started looking at food through a different lens, probably not that unique or different from other new parents. We all want what’s best for our children, right? But should it be so much work? Back then, I had to really hunt down information that is readily available everywhere you now. Organics and natural foods weren’t sold at mainstream grocery stores so we made our own baby food, and later cooked, steamed and chopped up our own toddler foods.

Today I’m thankful to have two wonderful children who love almost all fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods. I’ll never know how much of an influence all of our efforts were but I’d like to believe that “nurture” goes farther than “nature”.

My wellness story centers on my children. I want to provide the very best I can for them so that they’re prepared for a long, healthy life. I also want to eat healthy and take good care of myself, and my husband so that we’re around to share and enjoy the special milestones ahead in their lives.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Get fit Portland on their PDXfm radio show about my wellness story.  We talked about a variety of topics like healthy school lunch ideas, how my kids eat a rainbow every week, and the excitement when we see “mommy’s computer” (a Fresh Ideas Center kiosk) at the grocery store. If you have a few minutes, check it out.

Then share your wellness story.

One thing that hasn’t changed: consumers want information. They want information on the solutions you offer to the problems they face. Depending on the product, or the need it satisfies, they may also want to know what their friends, or experts, think about this product too.

Earlier this month, Whole Foods caught my attention with this podcast on their blog about a topic important to us at Aisle7: Choosing Supplements for Kids.  Like our own content, they share an expert’s perspective on when a child might need to supplement their diet with vitamins and minerals, and how to go about selecting the right ones. While the content was insightful and potentially helpful, there was not much stated that offered a new perspective on the topic.

But, it was delivered in a new, unique way.

And that’s why it caught my attention. And I bet their customer’s too.

There’s a long list of benefits from using new media that go beyond cutting through the information clutter we see out there – building loyalty, enabling sharing of your branded content, supporting purchase decisions, reinforcing post-purchase decisions…the list goes on.

The question for retailers is: how can you help your customers find answers to their questions, or information that adds value to your relationship by utilizing new media?

Here’s a simple question: what’s the number one source for news in the US? Chances are you said NBC or maybe Fox News. And you’d be right if the question was limited to broadcast or cable news. But unless you answered Yahoo! News you missed a huge market and, arguably, America’s top source for news.

According to collected number of sources, Yahoo! News is by far the most frequently visited website for news, boasting some 70 million unique visitors in the course of a month. CNN, whose cable ratings are taking a well-publicized beating, came in second. MSNBC, Google news and Digg rounded out the top five. (Television ratings and newspaper sales don’t approach anything near 70 million.)

But read those stats again and think of this: Digg gets more internet traffic for news than NBC, the New York Times, and Fox News. And Digg doesn’t compare to Yahoo! (That’s their exclamation point, not mine. And take a visit to Digg, a news website where content flows entirely from the readers. I have a feeling we’ll hear more about that for years to come.)

It reminds us of two key lessons.

First, when we think about competition, we all have a tendency to think of the competitors we know. Yet many times the market place has hidden surprises lurking. That’s how unexpected category killers have had such an impact across retail through the years or even – if you can remember it – how a mass merchant from Arkansas became the biggest seller of food (among other things) in just about a decade.

And that means we have to keep our eyes open for all forms of competition, though it may be the last thing we want to do. Everyone’s time is always so pressed, yet we have to find a few spare moments to visit the other stores in the strip mall or downtown or wherever. If we don’t do that, we miss the line outside the cupcake shop selling a dozen for nearly $30, which makes no sense in the midst of a recession, but keeps happening.

The second lesson is equally important and it takes us back to the beginning of this column. Do we really know what we think we really know? Too often, I’m afraid, the answer is no.

While I really like Yahoo! News, I never thought it could possibly be the leading supplier of internet news. Yet a recent Newsweek article about the Huffington Post (a top 10 news website itself) featured that shocking news. (The Newsweek article actually listed CNN as the most popular web news site, with Yahoo! coming in second. Most other internet information sources I found reversed the ranking.) That means when Yahoo! reports, as it customarily does, about a host of shopping, cooking and eating trends, a huge number of people are reading along. It means that, like it or not, Yahoo! is an influencer.

Now, I like to pride myself on keeping up with trends and knowing stuff like this. Yet I never saw this coming, even though my homepage includes Yahoo! News and I find myself checking it frequently.

The bottom line is the change was right in front of my face, but I was missing it because I wasn’t looking. I’m willing to bet I’m not the only person in business to ever have that happen.

And now I have to worry about Digg. Great.

Editor’s Note: Michael Sansolo, Aisle7 board member, Retail Food Industry Consultant and former SVP of the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), has a weekly column on MorningNewsBeat called Sansolo Speaks. You can read today’s news here MorningNewsBeat or reach Michael direct at msansolo@morningnewsbeat.com

So imagine my shock when I read a column in the Washington Post about the melee that summarized the event with: “Looks like progress to me.” I couldn’t believe anyone could say that about such a shocking event, until I read on and learned that there were some who actually saw a silver lining.

The point made by the columnist, Courtland Milloy, was that while the fight was awful, its result wasn’t. There were no deaths and only four of the 70 people involved needed medical attention because the weapons of choice in this fracas were only fists and feet. In sharp contrast to the sometime shocking outbreaks of gun violence in DC, this fight actually wasn’t that bad.

Honestly, it’s a point of view I would have never considered. I saw the fight as awful, fearful and a black-eye for a city that has more than its share of issues. But while I may not subscribe to Milloy’s point of view, it was enlightening to read it and therein, I think, lies a big lesson for us in business.

I’ve written before about our need to listen to opinions that differ from ours, to understand that all stories have another perspective, even if we hate it. It pains me today that I know so many people who receive all their news and commentary from only one side of the political fence, in essence only reinforcing and not challenging their own views. There was a terrific column about this by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times on how college students now can select their freshman roommates by finding like minded people on places like Facebook.

Dowd’s point applies in business. She argues that students lose out by not taking the chance to live with someone with different likes, dislikes, backgrounds, values and goals. They might find some new tastes in everything including music, fashion, political leanings and, of course, college eating habits. None of that happens when we pick people who are just like ourselves.

In business, we have to heed those warnings. Our customers come from all different backgrounds, with different needs, values and goals. If we only hire people like ourselves we can miss out on understanding all the differences and diversity in our communities. If we only hire people like ourselves we run the risk of becoming too self-congratulatory and fail to understand where we might be falling short.

Dowd’s article is worth reading by anyone in the business of hiring. Make sure you aren’t only selecting people who reflect your views and values; sure you want good workers, but you don’t want clones. Challenge yourself and challenge your team to think outside the comfort zone. You never know what you’ll learn.

As a last point, consider a recent column by John Renesch in the Christian Science Monitor about the impact of monolithic thinking. Renesch wrote: “We are building silos of ideologies, isolating ourselves into factions, and preaching to our choirs about the faults and defects of ‘the other.’ Each silo is suffering from ‘groupthink’ – reinforcing its own dogma and avoiding any feedback that disagrees with the party line.”

Such behavior is damaging our entire political dialog; in business it could be fatal.

Healthnotes Newswire (August 12, 2010)—In the August 2010 issue of Consumer Reports they write about what they see as potential dangers in the supplement industry and specifically of certain products (the so-called “Dirty Dozen”). However, their focus on potential risks ignores the value of supplements and discounts much of the scientific evidence that has been developed over the past fifty years.

Are supplement users protected at all?

Consumer Reports points out that the supplement industry is legally allowed to sell “products without first having to demonstrate that they are safe and effective,” unlike medicine manufacturers who have to follow stricter requirements.” This statement ignores a number of important facts:

First, supplements have been widely used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide for decades. Second, supplements have an excellent track record of safety, whereas drugs (both prescription and over-the-counter) have many instances of recall for safety reasons. In fact, since the 1950’s more than forty drugs have been removed from the market due to patient deaths and side-effects—including Thalidomide, DES, Vioxx, Bextra, Diethylstilbestrol, Methaqualone, and Fen-phen. Third, supplements are regulated like food, and like food are expected to be safe, regardless of where the ingredients come from, and manufacturers must now follow current good manufacturing processes (cGMP) as regulated under DSHEA. Finally, because supplements are not patentable it is not reasonable to expect commonly used products that sell for pennies to undergo the same level of scrutiny as powerful drugs that can be extremely dangerous that, if approved, can generate billions in profits.

Consumer Reports does not tell the full story. Their concerns, some of which are certainly justified, do not mean that there is no regulatory oversight or no evidence that these products work and are safe to use when taken in amounts that have been shown to be well tolerated. The Food & Drug Administration has complete authority to pull unsafe or adulterated products from the market—and it has done so in the past. For example, the ingredient ephedra was banned from supplements by the FDA in 2004. Moreover, with the FDA’s involvement, manufacturers withdrew the Total Body Formula product described in the Consumer Reports article from the market.

The Consumer Reports article classifies all but one of the ”Dirty Dozen” list as “possibly” or “likely” unsafe. This classification does not address either effectiveness or recommendations for safe use. Almost anything, taken incorrectly or at too high a dose, can be unsafe.

Because of the low barriers to entry, Consumer Reports raises valid concerns about the ingredient chain for supplement products. This is an issue that should be addressed by all manufacturers and distributors, and be something that consumers are aware of. However, under DSHEA the FDA does have additional tools to regulate and survey supplement manufacturers by ensuring dietary supplement current good manufacturing practices (cGMPs) are met.

Do supplements even work?

The supplement industry sells many products that through research, traditional use, or both are known to be safe and effective. For general health, supplementing with vitamins and minerals has been shown to help prevent or compensate for many deficiencies of the established US Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) nutritional requirements for health. In addition, there are over twenty thousand studies, including many well-designed double-blind, placebo-controlled human studies published in respected peer-reviewed journals, which have shown a range of evidence for many supplements that suggest some safe range or route of administration (orally vs. topically, for example). Even so, to help avoid confusion between supplements and drugs, federal law does not allow supplement manufactures to make any health claims about their product.

Fortunately, research detailing supplements’ potential limitations and benefits has been growing exponentially over the past two decades, and reported risks and side effects of the products such as described in the Consumer Reports piece have been well documented by organizations that track this information, such as the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database (used to inform their article) and the Aisle7 Healthnotes database. Getting that information into public hands is therefore critical to consumer well-being.

Best practices for picking supplements

Supplements can be an effective option when considering how best to prevent and manage health problems. Any person considering supplements should talk to their pharmacist or healthcare practitioner in order to understand the risks and benefits. It is worth repeating recent comments by Alan R. Gaby, MD, chief science editor at Aisle7, published in a related Healthnotes Newswire story on supplement safety: “While it is important to identify the purest sources of vitamins, minerals, herbs, and other natural substances, the majority of the evidence indicates that the benefits of taking recommended amounts of dietary supplements for proven benefits outweighs the risks.”

Fortunately, many products and brands on the market are already created and sold by credible retailers and manufacturers that take consumers’ health seriously, and demand for high-quality products forces less conscientious groups to follow in kind. To get the most out of all the healthcare resources at our disposal, there are plenty of things that you can do to choose your supplements safely:

• Research before you buy. Avoid “miracle cures” by learning what you should realistically expect from supplements. Look for unbiased, science-based resources (online and in-store, such as those provided by Aisle7) that can help you make informed decisions on whether supplements are right for you and what is safe to take with your medications.

• Understand the potential risks. Supplement users sometimes mistakenly assume that “natural” automatically means “beneficial” (or at least “nonharmful”). Take supplements with as much care as you do your medicines, and discuss your options with your doctor first if you are already under treatment with medicines.

• Read product labels carefully and rely on credible third-party information to help you to interpret the message. “This product helps lower blood pressure” does not mean the same thing as “This product supports heart and vascular health.”

• Do not listen to anyone other than your doctor who recommends you take a supplement in place of your medication. (“Take red yeast rice instead of your atorvastatin cholesterol medication.”)

• Consider the source. Buy only from reputable and established companies. High-quality companies manufacture according to FDA regulated “good manufacturing practices,” which require thorough record keeping, quality testing, and standards consistent with the manufacture of drugs. Buying from these companies helps you buy with confidence.

In these days of soaring healthcare costs, it is reasonable for consumers to take advantage of every safe, affordable self-care option at their disposal. All health recommendations—diet, exercise, mammograms, flu shots, fats, carbs, all of it—is constantly changing, and whether policy changes with it or not, people need to take charge of their health and base their healthcare decisions on objective information that helps them minimize potential risks and optimize potential benefits.

Copyright © 2010 Aisle7. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of the Aisle7® content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Aisle7. Healthnotes Newswire is for educational or informational purposes only, and is not intended to diagnose or provide treatment for any condition. If you have any concerns about your own health, you should always consult with a healthcare professional. Aisle7 shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. AISLE7 is a registered trademark of Aisle7.

Based on ticket revenue, the odds are that many of you have seen this delightful film that targets kids and adults with a wonderfully winning story. (In fact, I’m willing to bet that it will be the second consecutive Pixar animated film to get a best picture nomination next winter.) But since many of you haven’t seen it, I won’t divulge any details of the plot.

This much I can share. When Kevin Coupe and I wrote The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons from the Movies, we hoped managers and employees could use the book to find new and easy ways to deliver lessons in the workplace. I don’t know if the message is working nationally, but it took hold with my most important audience. That would be my 20-something daughter, who is new to the workplace.

These days she asks me for the business lesson from every movie I see. After we went to Toy Story she did the same. While I talked about the impact of a negative manager, she did me one better and talked about how a well executed transition (in this movie between two kids and the toys) demonstrates how a great workplace can operate.

And she’s right. The movie delivers a wonderful story on how an exiting manager can speed a transition with energy and information that works for the new manager and the entire team. It too is a lesson that every manager should see and consider.

I guess those movies do have lessons.

I am the HR Manager at Aisle7 and one of my jobs is to notice the “feeling” of the office. I have not done a qualitative or quantitative scientific study but I would bet money on the fact that people at my office are happier when the sun is shining. There, I said it. Sun alters mood.

I pause after making this declaration because after reading a recent Healthnotes Newswire article, I wonder if my theory about people being happier in the summer is correlated ONLY to the sun. What else helps boost my mood? What role does food play on my mood? “Food is the substance that we put into our bodies in the largest quantity, so it makes sense that what we eat affects how we feel”. Maybe we are what we eat?

In the summer and spring months, more of us go to farmers’ markets to pick up the latest and greatest and most flavorful fruits, veggies and meat that we can get our hands on because we know once winter sets in, these things will be harder to get. When I look down the veggie and fruit areas at my local grocery store, I notice that the food colors are more vibrant, more appealing to my senses this summer season. The berries are overflowing from bins instead of being packaged neatly in plastic containers. Corn on the cob is spilling onto the floor instead of wrapped in plastic wrap tucked inside a styrofoam bed. The good for my mood food is everywhere!

Take a minute and think—how do you feel and act after you eat foods created in a laboratory? Chips? Skim milk? Pizza?

How do you feel and act after you eat foods that are as close to the way they are found in nature like raspberries, pistachios or fish?

If you have kids, how do they feel and act after they eat chips, skim milk, pizza? What about after they eat raspberries, pistachios, fish?

Although with the change of seasons, summer turning into fall and then winter, we will see a decrease in some parts of the country with the availability of fresh foods. If we plan now, we can freeze, preserve and can all of that delicious food and have a stock over the summer. I know what I will be doing this weekend—freezing berries—what about you?

We were intrigued by this recent post from well-known foodie, Mark Bittman on “Better Supermarkets” which encourages us to think about what would make a better supermarket, and what it would take to make that happen.  It begs the question: are there shoppers and retailers willing to participate in this discussion? To look at the trade-offs and help grocers determine what the future of food marketing should look like to meet needs going beyond the basics? Are you one of those retailers wanting to be a “better” supermarket?

From Mark Bittman:

Tony Naylor, from the Guardian, writes here about rethinking his relationship to Waitrose, the UK’s principled (and generally upscale) supermarket chain that puts Whole Foods to shame.

We should unquestionably support good supermarkets, but we should also be pushing them to:

-          carry sustainable seafood exclusively

-          carry ethically raised meat and poultry whenever possible

-          carry organic and/or local fruits and vegetables whenever possible

-          buy from suppliers who themselves have a conscience whenever possible

-          pay their own staff a living wage, with benefits

-          think about their energy usage, their waste, their community service

And so on. All of which will, yes, make food more expensive. It has to: crap is cheaper than real food, and treating your employees like indentured servants or worse saves employers (and consumers) money, as does treating the environment as a dumping ground and the oceans as if they were inexhaustible. Reversing these policies will raise food costs. (Though there is an argument that reducing food waste will allow us to raise quality while raising prices less.)

For consumers, the basic answer – unexciting as it may sound to some – is to buy and cook real food whenever you can. It isn’t about Waitrose’s (or anyone else’s) artichoke sauce, which is never going to be an item for someone on a budget – it’s about, as Mr. Naylor says, buying a more expensive chicken – one that actually tastes like chicken – and then making it last for three meals. It’s about choosing quality over quantity.

Whenever a supermarket makes a good move, we should applaud it – it doesn’t mean we rush down to Walmart and buy organic milk or suddenly start buying all our seafood at Whole Foods. It means we say, “nice work, we appreciate that, and we’ll take advantage of it – but what’s next? There’s a farmer over here who’d love to sell you his corn, and there’s a single mom working your cash register who has no health insurance, and when are you going to stop promoting industrially raised chickens?”

Think back for to the recently completed World Cup soccer tournament and ask yourself this: Do you remember the vuvuzela?

I’m betting you do. For even if you caught only a second of a single game, you heard the vuvuzela. They are those annoying horns you heard buzzing loudly in the background of every broadcast. Apparently a single vuvuzela played properly can produce a somewhat pleasant sound. When tens of thousand are played together at a soccer game the effect is as obnoxious as if huge swarms of bees were buzzing next to your ears.

In other words, too much of a good thing can turn music into noise. More can be less. Now, remember that when it comes to your store, your services, your products and your customers. Too often, in our zeal to be special and please, we do everything possible. Every product is special and every service is stunning. But the effect can be like the vuvuzela. Too much can simply be too much.

It’s so easy to see this in a store. So many today emphasize virtually everything, which can pack far less impact than retailers thinking critically about the handful of areas that really create differentiation. It’s hard to imagine a retailer who wouldn’t be better served to think about the products, services or attributes that would get a customer to pass another store. Remember, you can better play up those things that are special by turning down the noise elsewhere.

We all know how nice it is to have one associate tell us to have a great day or offer to help. The effect falls apart when 10 people in a row ask me the same question. It ceases to be special and becomes somewhat annoying. Likewise, price specials can always pack a punch. But too often we see aisles featuring miles of price “special” tags that suddenly look anything but special. Emphasis is what stands out; overkill defeats everything.

My son, a student of classical music, is constantly educating me on how to be a more educated listener. (It’s a long, uphill struggle, but I’m trying.) One point he always talks about is the intensity of music. Many times what we think is loud is actually just intense. That is, the note is set up by a quiet period to build drama, attention and emphasis. If all the music received the same power, we’d miss the key phrases because there would be no key phrases.

It’s easy to see the parallel in business – points of distinction get buried unless there is some quiet around them. And the vuvuzela helps provide that lesson. None of us who watched those games had any appreciation for the noise. I have a gut feeling that many people watched the games as I did, with the sound turned way down to eliminate the buzzing. Of course, since I don’t know soccer all that well, it also meant I couldn’t hear any commentary, which might have helped my enjoyment. (And I can’t imagine how players coped with all that noise game after game.)

The bottom line is that without quiet, music becomes noise. Without quiet, the points that are special disappear. In short, less is more. But skip the cliché and simply repeat the following: remember the vuvuzela!

The Giants’ manager bolted on the field and pointed out the move to the umpires. In baseball, you see, a pitcher must be removed if a coach or manager visits twice in one inning. By walking off the dirt of the mound onto the grass and then returning, Mattingly has technically and unwittingly made two visits. Suddenly, the Dodgers had to remove a star pitcher for a lesser substitute and the Giants won the game.

Imagine the same scenario in business. Suppose a competitor left you a small opening to exploit by making a small mistake or misstep. What would you do? Would you jump on it or would you let it go? Sadly, too many let the moment pass and wonder why they lose or complain about competitors who they feel are far more ruthless.

The Giants didn’t win simply because of the mistake. They played well and put themselves in a position to take the game. Yet they also didn’t let their opponent’s mistake go unnoticed. They saw it and got a key player taken out of the game. That’s playing to win.

A number of sportswriters pointed out that Bruce Bochy, the Giant manager who noticed Mattingly’s mistake, capitalized on the same gaffe when it was made by an opposing manager several years ago when Bochy was managing the San Diego Padres. So he’s obviously good at capitalizing on other people’s mistakes. It also helped that Mattingly was managing the Dodgers at that point – the more experienced Joe Torre having been ejected from the game several innings earlier. But that’s what doing battle is, whether in sports or business – taking advantage of the moment.

Competition is rarely pretty or nice. The rules may not be as clear as baseball, but the intent is just the same. Winning requires preparation, planning and execution. And it also requires the winner’s instinct to seize the opportunity whenever it appears.

“Compete” is still a verb.