Cranberries: A victim of souring trade relations?

The secret of the cranberry’s success has always been stealth. After two centuries of cranberry-free Thanksgivings, the fruit became a holiday staple thanks to US general Ulysses S. Grant’s [1864 holiday feast](. It slipped into lunch sacks across America by pioneering juice boxes, and craftily came to dominate grocery juice aisles by commingling with apple juice. A little shape-shifting allowed dried cranberries to infiltrate baked goods and trail mixes. And in recent years, it crept its cryptic creep over to China. Now, the bitter red bog berry finds itself in the midst of the burgeoning US-China trade war: China is considering a 40% tariff on American dried cranberries, according to the [latest list](. The cranberry industry needs new sources of demand to keep growing, and China now represents a $45-million market. A trade war could cost the US its comparative advantage in a tiny, but irreplaceable, symbol of American commercial ingenuity. Ultimately, as sipping and snacking sensations go, the cranberry is an unlikely one. It has managed to succeed by taking [advantage of the forces of globalization]( its secret weapon cuts both ways. 🌐 [View this email on the web]( [Quartz Obsession] Cranberries April 18, 2018 The tart truth --------------------------------------------------------------- The secret of the cranberry’s success has always been stealth. After two centuries of cranberry-free Thanksgivings, the fruit became a holiday staple thanks to US general Ulysses S. Grant’s [1864 holiday feast](. It slipped into lunch sacks across America by pioneering juice boxes, and craftily came to dominate grocery juice aisles by commingling with apple juice. A little shape-shifting allowed dried cranberries to infiltrate baked goods and trail mixes. And in recent years, it crept its cryptic creep over to China. Now, the bitter red bog berry finds itself in the midst of the burgeoning US-China trade war: China is considering a 40% tariff on American dried cranberries, according to the [latest list](. The cranberry industry needs new sources of demand to keep growing, and China now represents a $45-million market. A trade war could cost the US its comparative advantage in a tiny, but irreplaceable, symbol of American commercial ingenuity. Ultimately, as sipping and snacking sensations go, the cranberry is an unlikely one. It has managed to succeed by taking [advantage of the forces of globalization]( its secret weapon cuts both ways. 🌐 [View this email on the web]( By the digits [$340 million:]( 2017 revenue from US cranberry exports—a 38% increase from 2012, thanks in part to the EU’s relaxation of import duties during that time, and Chinese consumers’ growing appetite for the fruit [14,000:]( Acres of Massachusetts covered by cranberry crop [31%:]( Share of total US cranberry sales sold as exports [7%:]( Share of exports sold in China [400 million:]( Pounds of cranberries consumed by Americans per year, with 20% eaten during Thanksgiving week [200:]( Berries in each can of Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce [0.5:]( Percentage of the 40,000 commercial cranberry bogs that are organic. Cranberries are vulnerable to fungi and mold, often combated with chemical sprays. [16:]( Months it takes for cranberries to mature from the setting of their flower buds [19:]( Episode of Sex and the City in which the first Cosmopolitan—the infamous cranberry, lime, vodka, and Cointreau cocktail—is ordered (by Samantha) Charted Pour some sugar on me --------------------------------------------------------------- Have you noticed that cranberries, in their unadulterated state, are pretty much inedible? Ocean Spray, the world’s largest cranberry cooperative (composed of 700 farmer-owners) certainly has—but boy, are they ever keen to protect their bitter bog berry’s reputation. A quarter-cup of Craisins, Ocean Spray’s signature dried cranberries, contains seven teaspoons of added sugar, while a cup of Cranberry Juice Cocktail contains about five and a half, similar to the sugar content of a Coke. The American Heart Association recommends a maximum of six teaspoons of sugar daily for women, and nine for men. Sour fresh cranberries may be a health food, but by the time they’re processed, they’re essentially candy. [In a 2014 letter to the FDA]( which wanted to clarify the amount of added sugar in cranberry products, Ocean Spray argued that it should be exempted from including teaspoon units of sugar on its label, because cranberries are “unpalatable” without sugar. There must have been much rejoicing in the marshlands when the [FDA agreed with their logic](. Quotable “Cranberries taste like cherries who hate you. Cranberries taste like what a raspberry drinks before its colonoscopy.” [— John Oliver]( AP/C.J. Gunther Origin story Out of the bog and onto the table --------------------------------------------------------------- Many millennia ago, at the end of the Ice Age, retreating glaciers pocked New England with what are called “kettle holes”—craters filled with dense, decaying muck and layers of wind-scattered beach sand. Cranberries [grew wild in these bogs]( with the chill rains that filled the kettle holes in autumn insulating the fruit from deep-winter frosts. The Wampanoag who settled the area more than 10,000 years ago harvested the berries, drying them to mix with deer jerky and tallow into pemmican—essentially the planet’s first energy bar. Pemmican kept for months, which made it a [vital commodity for fur traders](. Native Americans also ate them fresh and—presaging the cranberry health craze by many millennia—as medicine. European colonists, however, mainly used cranberries the way they used the similarly sour berries back home: in a sauce to moisten up fowl. Then, in 1622, the honeybee arrived in North America—and with it, a way to turn cranberry sauce from inedibly sour to merely tart. Until the 1800s, settlers plucked the wild cranberries that flourished in natural bogs—particularly in the peaty pits that flecked Cape Cod’s marshlands. Then, in 1816, a former Revolutionary War veteran named Henry Hall noticed that wild cranberries thrived when sand blew over them. Hall transplanted the berry’s vines into what he called “cranberry yards,” and dusted them with sand—and within a few years, was shipping his product [from Cape Cod to New York City](. Hall’s impressive harvests paved the way for commercial cultivation. The cranberry’s popularity surged, as trade—and the fact that sailors ate the Vitamin C-packed berries to prevent scurvy—spread its popularity. Throughout the next century, growers fanned out from Massachusetts to New Jersey, Wisconsin, and, eventually, the Pacific northwest. In 1864, Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant permanently associated the sauce with Thanksgiving when he ordered that the side dish be included in the holiday feast for troops at [the Siege of Petersburg](. Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters Pop quiz Which of the following does not biologically qualify as a berry? PepperStrawberryCranberryBanana Correct. In order to technically be a berry, fruits must develop from one flower that has one ovary. Strawberry blossoms, along with raspberry and blackberry blossoms, have multiple ovaries, so their fruits aren’t berries. Incorrect. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. Department of jargon The Algonquin name for the cranberry is sassamenesh, and the Wampanoag and Lenni-Lenape called it ibimi, which translates as “bitter.” Noting the beak-like petals of the shrub’s blossoms, German [colonists called them “kranbeere”—“crane berries.”]( Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters Brief history Berry innovative --------------------------------------------------------------- [1816:]( The first documented harvest of cultivated cranberries occurs on Cape Cod. [1900:]( “Cranberry Fever” sweeps the nation, and the industry takes off, with production buoyed by technological advances that speed up harvesting and preservation for shipment. [1912:]( Marcus L. Urann begins canning ready-to-serve cranberry jelly. [1930:]( Urann and other growers form the marketing cooperative that will eventually become known as Ocean Spray. Its first product was jellied cranberry sauce. [1959:]( Two weeks before Thanksgiving, the US government announces that an herbicide suspected of causing cancer had tainted cranberries (in fact, it only affected a tiny share). The great Cranberry Scare of 1959 drove the industry toward ruin, as crops were destroyed and prices tanked: Fresh cranberry sales totaled exactly zero, [according to the USDA](. [1963:]( Ocean Spray recruits Edward Gelsthorpe, the marketing genius behind [roll-on deodorant]( and soon unveils Cran-Apple, the [first mass-market blended juice](. Cran-Apple is an instant hit—and it creates year-round demand for the berry. Its popularity pushes supermarkets to create entire aisles dedicated to fruit juice. Soon thereafter, Ocean Spray revolutionizes these shelves with the [first-ever juice boxes](. [1966:]( The first clinical study evaluating the effect of cranberry on urinary tract infections is published. Studies have been inconclusive on whether cranberries fight UTIs, but the Narragansett have been using them for that purpose since time immemorial—and many women agree the (pure, unsweetened) stuff just works. [1990s:]( The sudden ubiquity of cranberry-orange muffins coincides with the company’s move to start shelving dried cranberries, dubbed Craisins, in grocery-store baking aisles. [1994:]( More UTI research by Harvard Medical School (sponsored by Ocean Spray) helps cement the berry’s reputation as a health food, which will later be reinforced by the [discovery]( that [cranberries are high in antioxidants](. [2000s:]( Ocean Spray’s CEO notices colleagues compulsively popping Craisins in meetings. The idea strikes: What about marketing dried cranberries as snacks? Cut and dried Craisins conquer Asia --------------------------------------------------------------- The dried-cranberry craze couldn’t have come at a better time. Ocean Spray has been focusing heavily on low-calorie cranberry juices, but it has faced headwinds in recent years from health advocates who blame sugary fruit drinks—[including cranberry juice cocktails]( soaring childhood obesity rates. Thanks to growing concerns about the dangers of sugar, US [demand for fruit juice]( began slumping in the late 2000s. On top of that, thanks to the planting cycle and the higher efficiency of new cranberry cultivars, the industry has been growing far more cranberries than it can sell. In 2017, growers asked the US government to allow the disposal of a large share of inventories, mostly by composting, [reports Bloomberg](. The dried-cranberry craze has been vital in sopping up that oversupply—particularly in new markets overseas. That’s in no small part thanks to [booming demand from China]( particularly from young urban residents in search of healthy snacks. In 2017, China became American cranberry growers’ second-biggest export market. Demand from Europe has also proved essential to the cranberry industry, particularly since the European Union [suspended the 17.6% import duty]( on dried cranberries in 2011. 🐦 [Tweet this card]( Cheers! Very cosmopolitan --------------------------------------------------------------- Having won kids over with cranapple cocktail, Ocean Spray turned its attention to converting their parents into cranberry-drink consumers, too. In the 1960s, the company began adorning its juice labels with a [recipe for a “Harpoon,]( made of cranberry juice, either vodka or rum, a spritz of lime, and served “over the rocks or tall with soda,” according to Difford’s Guide. The cocktail is thought to be the [evolutionary forbearer of the Cosmopolitan]( the iconic pink drink made famous by the HBO series Sex and the City. (Ocean Spray’s other cocktail invention attempts—e.g. the [Pink Lagoon, the Firecracker, and the Boston Mist]( to take hold.) Between 1970 and 1980, the average American’s fruit juice consumption leapt 45%, according to a 2006 case study on the [cranberry industry](. Fun Fact! Irish rock group the Cranberries was originally named “The Cranberry Saw Us,” an auditive pun (for “cranberry sauce”—we had to look it up) that they ultimately shortened. Watch this! Most cranberries are harvested through flooding—the berries are knocked off their shrubs and float atop the bogs before being skimmed off. This process is tough on the little guys (they bruise easily), so wet-harvested berries are only used as ingredients in products like juice and jelly. (It gets especially tough if someone goes wakeboarding through them, like in this Red Bull video.) Berries sold fresh, which need to look perfect, are picked dry. Favorite form of cranberry? [Click here to vote]( Canned cranberry sauce is the perfect foodOnly with vodka involvedCrazy for Craisins The fine print Thanks to Obsession reader Doug for suggesting today’s topic! In this week’s poll about [tardigrades]( 52% of you said you’re “pretty sure these buggers are going to be our overlords soon.” Today’s email was written by [Gwynn Guilford]( and [Adrienne Matei]( edited by [Jessanne Collins]( and produced by McKinley Noble. sound off ✏️ [What did you think of today’s email?](mailto:obsession%2Bfeedback@qz.com?cc=&subject=Thoughts%20about%20cranberries.%20&body=) 💡 [What should we obsess over next?](mailto:obsession%2Bideas@qz.com?cc=&subject=Obsess%20over%20this%20next.&body=) 🤔 [What are you obsessed with this week?](mailto:obsession%2Bprompt@qz.com?cc=&subject=%0ATell%20us%20all%20the%20details%20and%20include%20links%20while%20you%27re%20at%20it!%20%20&body=) 📬 [Forward this email to a friend](mailto:replace_with_friends_email@qz.com?cc=obsession%2Bforward@qz.com&subject=Why%20the%20bitter%20red%20bog%20berry%20finds%20itself%20in%20the%20midst%20of%20the%20burgeoning%20US-China%20trade%20war%3A&body=Thought%20you%27d%20enjoy.%20%0A%0ARead%20it%20here%20http%3A%2F%2Fqz.com%2Femail%2Fquartz-obsession%2F1254695%2F%0ASign%20up%20for%20the%20newsletter%20at%20http%3A%2F%2Fqz.com%2Fquartz-obsession) The correct answer to the quiz is Strawberry. 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