By Jon Berry
It’s never been harder to make money in the stock market. Millions of Americans need career help. The world is being tested environmentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s time to talk about food. 
The organic, holistic approach that has been showing up more in food aisles of the supermarket is represented on the list – Michael Pollen’s Food Rules.
But there are also books on calorie-busting indulgences – What’s New, Cupcake? and Steven Raichlen’s Planet Barbecue.
As well as tough-love books on losing weight – the bluntly-titled The Belly Fat Cure (ouch), This Is Why You’re Fat (double-ouch), and Extra Lean (ok, we get it). And the split-the-difference Cook This, Not That, which offers lower-calorie takes on high-cal restaurant favorites.
There’s also the obligatory celebrity cookbook. This week it’s Skinny Italian by one of reality-TV’s “Real Housewives of New Jersey.” Last week it was Home Cooking with Trisha Yearwood, the country singer.
Meanwhile, the current bestselling hardcover advice book, Women, Food and God, is about women’s relationship with food.
Given these conflicting directions (Comfort food! No, diet! No, locavore!), one might conclude that the marketplace could benefit from an hour or two on the couch with a good therapist to work out its relationship with food.
But within the bestsellers list’s mixed menu is a larger idea that we see in our market research on attitudes toward food – and see in particular in our research with Food Influentialssm, the 1 in 7 Americans who are most actively engaged in spreading word of mouth about food.
Call it the “It Takes Two” principle (with respect to the old Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell Motown tune). Consumers are 
responsive to more than one idea about food. Three in four Food Influentials, for example, describe themselves as very interested in foods from different countries. But two in three say they’re always looking for new snacks, like to be among the first to try new food and beverages, and “make a real effort to eat healthy” as well.
And Food Influentials are much more likely to describe themselves in these terms than the average person (by 14 to 30 points) — suggesting these cross-currents won’t be going away anytime soon.
If healthy eating is to grow, then, it should be “healthy-plus” — a healthy nutritional take combined with another food interest.
For some time, we’ve talked with clients about the importance of healthy foods tasting good and being convenient to on-the-go lifestyles. But our research suggests now that’s just the starting point. Healthy foods need to be interesting – offering people new tastes from other cultures, in new forms, with new formulas.
“It takes two” may not explain everything — for instance, the Trisha Yearwood recipe “Garth’s Breakfast Bowl,” named for her husband, country singer Garth Brooks, and combining eggs, frozen tater tots, sausage, bacon, packaged cheese, and garlic tortellini (“not for the faint of heart or high of cholesterol,” Publishers Weekly tactfully notes).
But I think “two” does offer a growth path for healthy foods. What’s next? How about healthy eating ideas from China, Thailand, Africa, or Latin America? Acai, from Latin America, this year’s hot antioxidant (“promegranate is sooo 2008″), may point the way. Or maybe healthier, international evolutions of snacks from energy bars to TV-viewing treats?
It just takes two.
(For more on Influentials, including details on the new Global Influentials research in the new 2010 Roper Reports Worldwide survey, which delves into influencers in a variety of catgories, click here).
Passing through Grand Central Station on the way to work over the holidays, I stopped by the Transit Museum to check out its holiday-tradition model-train display. It was great, as always, a Manhattan fantasia of trains coursing under and around the Chrysler Building and other landmarks. But what really caught my eye was the unassuming little tray of buttons I saw when I turned around to leave, each bearing the simple message “optimism.” I immediately, without thinking, bought $20 worth (18 buttons, with tax) and popped one into my coat lapel. I’ve been passing them out ever since.
