Americans are eating more spicy food, but it’s not due to a big increase in culinary adventure. Turns out taste buds start to go as we age–and when that happens, people eat spicier food. The Boston Globe explains that the Boomer age wave is driving a major increase in spicy food offerings on grocery shelves, and the popularity of ethnic restaurants featuring hot food:
“So far, few marketers or researchers have studied the link between boomers and spicy food. The industry is just now starting to draw the connection, food scientists say. Research in this area has been slow in part because the science of smell and taste is complicated and still emerging. What’s known is that at a certain age - after about 40 for most people - the number of nerve receptors in the nose and tongue that respond to smell and taste dim and decrease. As that happens, complex flavors become duller. Sweet and sour tastes decline sharply; salty and acidic tastes remain brighter for longer. The tastes that penetrate the fog most clearly come from another group of flavors called sensory irritants. These hit the body not through taste or smell, but through the chemosensory system, which conveys sensations like touch, temperature, pain, and pressure. A list of foods in the sensory irritant category reads like a roster of modern flavorings: habanero, jalapeno, black pepper, horseradish, ginger, cinnamon. All of them - generally lumped together as “spicy” or “high-flavor” - help kick up the overall sensory experience of eating.”
Evidence of the trend turns up in older Americans’ preference for more flavorful cheeses, visits to websites for spicy food aficionados, and growing use of the word “spicy” on restaurant menus. (Yes, there’s actually someone tracking this–MenuMine, a database maintained by the Foodservice Research Institute.)
AARP released it’s list of “Best Employers for Workers over 50″ list for 2007. Although S.C. Johnson topped the list of 50, what caught my eye is the dominance of health care and non-profits in the annual ranking. Companies apply to be listed, and AARP judges the applicants based on a range of human resources practices and policies, including recruiting practices, training, education, career development opportunities and flexible work arrangements. Retiree and health benefits are also considered. It’s interesting to see that business is under-represented here compared with other sectors of the economy. I threw the list on a spreadsheet and did a quick analysis; 52 percent of organizations listed are in the health sector; about a third were publicly-held or private companies like S.C. Johnson.
Business awareness of attracting and retaining older workers does seem to be on the rise; just 22 percent of last year’s AARP listees were public or private companies.
The Washington Post ran an excellent series of articles on aging in the D.C. suburbs that points to issues all big metro areas will face as Boomers age and stay in place. The first segment examines policies and programs of local government facing the “silver tsunami,” ranging from investments in fitness and health to transportation issues. The Post cites a Census analysis showing that the D.C. metro area’s 65+ population “will grow from 446,000 in 2000 to 1.2 million in 2030, or from 9 percent to 14.5 percent of the population.”
Steps being taken by suburban government, according to the Post:
In recent months, Fairfax, Montgomery and Arlington counties have launched large-scale efforts to plan for the coming surge. Montgomery is mulling a Cabinet-level “senior czar” to oversee expansion. Arlington finished its elder study in August, which included proposals for such trendy services as a concierge for apartment buildings with a lot of retirees.
Next month, the Fairfax Board of Supervisors will release its “50+ Action Plan,” making the county one of the first jurisdictions to present a road map for managing the population change. Among expected recommendations: a call-in transit information center, high-tech health monitoring in the county’s senior housing, increased efforts to involve boomer volunteers in the community, more English-language classes for immigrant seniors and help for caregivers.
My work revolves around media for the 50+ market–especially startups. Oddly enough, publications, websites and radio programs all require. . .names. That leads to marathon branding debates on this question: what words are best to describe people in middle age and beyond? This has become a tricky problem as Boomers hit midlife, since we’re so self-conscious about age and in a state of extreme denial. Clearly we are not seniors, elders, or old in any respect…and never will be. The best approach is to go “ageless”–just talk about the subject at hand, and interested audiences will turn up. But that doesn’t work in all situations.
How do people who write about aging for a living deal with the problem? Our friend Paul Kleyman of the American Society on Aging wanted to find out. So he surveyed the Journalists’ Exchange on Aging (which he runs). “This project started when about 40 reporters got into a vigorous discussion about the language of aging during the JEoA meeting held in Philadelphia in March 2005,” Kleyman reports in a recent issue of AgeBeat, his e-mail newsletter. The debate led to an online survey, with responses coming from about 100 journalists. The survey revealed the following preferred synonyms:
Boomers. OK to use, but not with baby (we’re not) and some worry that it’s an over-used term.
Elder. A good word but not for anyone under 65.
Middle-age. Use it descriptively (”those in middle age) but “avoid references to middle-aged, which tends to lump people with a group label.”
Midlife. “In his “On Language” column (May 6,2007), William Safire favors the word midlife, which he traces to the “impeccable coinage source, John Keats, in his 1818 poem “Endymion.” Safire anoints the term as not a euphemism but “a usefulism.”
Tom Mann isn’t backing down. A debate over humor in marketing and aging broke out here and elsewhere online a few weeks ago, with Mann’s Erickson communities taking a bit of a beating in the commentary. Unbowed, Tom is back this week with a new video spoof of Budweiser’s celebrated Wassup ad campaign, created by Erickson community residents and assisted by a video-savvy grandson. Kind of cute, I’d say…but let the debate continue….
Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn told his companies engineers recently that they need to start thinking more seriously about the global aging phenomenon and how it impacts their products. Quoted at the web site Monday Morning:
“There is no doubt that 10 years down the road, the average age of a human being living on the planet is going to be higher”, said Ghosn, who heads both Japan’s Nissan Motor Co and its French partner Renault. “The average consumer on earth is going to be much older. We know also that usually the purchasing power is with older people. [That means] more money in the hands of the seniors and more seniors on earth”, he said. Carmakers like Nissan must therefore develop more speciality cars with devices such as cameras that make parking easier and reduce the risk of a stiff neck, he told a forum of engineers at Nissan’s Tokyo headquarters.
, and the popularity of ethnic restaurants featuring hot food:
of human resources practices and policies, including recruiting practices, training, education, career development opportunities and flexible work arrangements. Retiree and health benefits are also considered. It’s interesting to see that business is under-represented here compared with other sectors of the economy. I threw the list on a spreadsheet and did a quick analysis; 52 percent of organizations listed are in the health sector; about a third were publicly-held or private companies like S.C. Johnson.
as Boomers hit midlife, since we’re so self-conscious about age and in a state of extreme denial. Clearly we are not seniors, elders, or old in any respect…and never will be. The best approach is to go “ageless”–just talk about the subject at hand, and interested audiences will turn up. But that doesn’t work in all situations.
and how it impacts their products. Quoted at the web site 
