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[UIUC] MACS364: Food Networks - S2014

Anita Chan, Author

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ExerciseVoyantVisualization_Chloe

Part A
Back to Business - Ebsco
-Article 1, Kraft Makes Bigger Better, Advertising Age, goes into the brand's back-to-school mega-promotion that occurred shortly after the two companies combined. The words this article's word cloud produced included "kraft," "nabisco," "brands," and "back-to-school." 

A Healthier Kraft - IFT
-Article 2 regards the Kraft's decision to increase the amount of whole grain content in certain products. For this word cloud the most prominent of all the words was "grain." After that many of the words were very similar in size, however "wheat," "crackers," "nabisco," and "grain" were all close behind. 

The Brand That Spends - Ad Age
-Article 3 considers Kraft's purchase of the British confectioner Cadbury that cost over $19 billion in the name of internationalization. This article's word cloud consists of the words "kraft," "company," "cadbury," "developing," and distribution." 

Financial Report
Kraft Foods Annual Report & Word Cloud

While the word clouds were all very similar, what I noticed from the comparison between the annual report and the articles word clouds was that the key words for the articles were more than often simply the names of the companies, while the annual report focused more on major key words regarding what it wanted to get across like "operating," "income," and "plans." The word clouds for the articles often couldn't let the viewer know what the article was about without having to look at the actual article itself, while the annual report's word cloud almost told a story that allowed the viewer to not even really need to read the report to know what the company was trying to convey. 


Part B
In Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma he begins right in the introduction to explain one of the main roles corn plays in the contemporary food system which is that it is a "bushel of commodity." He then elaborates on this first thought in the second chapter by discussing his visit to George Naylor's farm to find that the item is used to feed much of the meat and other products produced by animals we ingest and is not simply a vegetable option. Corn is also used in the process to make corn starch, corn oil, and corn syrup which are practically irreplaceable ingredients in most foods. Pollen states in this chapter that of the some 45,000 items in the average American supermarket, over a quarter of them contain corn. Corn is even used in plenty of nonfood items as well. The second role corn plays is it's adaption to the new industrial regime that was founded because of discovery of synthetic nitrogen. The plant consumes large quantities of fossil fuel energy and "more than half to all the synthetic nitrogen made today is applied to corn" which in turn makes better use of the plant by producing more food in a smaller amount of time from these hybrid strains. The third role corn plays in the contemporary food system is its economic benefit. It was used to buy and sell for the government which "helped both to pay for the farm programs and smooth out the inevitable swings in price" Pollen states. However he does go into detail about how corn is usually more economically friendly for the government than it is for the farmers themselves. Corn's fourth role is to produce energy in the most efficient way. This energy is used in all kinds of formats inside and outside of the food system.


Part C
I chose the first chapter name because the article is about back-to-school promotions and I figured it showed that the brand was getting back to business to get kids and moms to buy the product for back-to-school. The second chapter title is based on the article being about Kraft adding more whole grain to their products to show that they are trying to be a more nutritious brand. The third chapter name is based on the fact that Kraft/Nabisco made such an expensive decision to buy out Cadbury.
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