[bratticus]

Earnings Famine For Kraft, Sara Lee
Food makers trim their 2009 outlooks after posting weak quarterly profits.

Miriam Marcus
Forbes
February 4, 2009

Kraft Foods and Sara Lee are losing market share in their top business brand categories, according to one research report, and the food makers are trimming their outlook asconsumers turn to private-label brands in order to make their thin budgets last.

Kraft Foods (nyse: KFT - news - people ) posted a steep decline in fourth-quarter profits on Wednesday, missing Wall Street's expectations, as a stronger dollar squeezed international sales and U.S. consumers increasingly turned to less-expensive, private-label brands amid a weak economy.

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Yeah, but how much is due to the recently unemployed having time to cook (plus less money for prepared foods?)

[POAlex]

I was reading awhile back that SPAM was making a comeback.

[vision-master]

I learned how to make my own soup.

[Sixstrings]

I learned how to make my own soup.

I know, isn't it amazing? I used to think Chunky Soup grew on trees. What a shock I had when I boiled some water one day and thew some stuff in.

Just teasing you vision, congrats.

As for people cooking more, I really don't know. I think a shift to even less expensive food is likely the cause.

[cipi604]

Frozen dinners suck big time. They taste a la crap if you compare them with real food. If you want to eat like a king , you have 2 choices:
1. go to a restaurant
2. learn how to cook

I'm doing both

[MarkJ]

Inflation and stealth price increases caused many people to become price-aware, shop for alternatives, buy in bulk, shop at discount grocery stores, shop for loss leaders, use coupons, wait for sales and make fewer impulse purchases.

Now that people have modified their shopping habits, discovered many different stores and discovered many different brands, many are likely to continue shopping at these stores and buying these brands in the future. Fewer trips to the mainstream stores equals fewer purchases of name brands.