Barry, could you tell us what the impact of sodium is on the consumer?
Well, certainly. You know, we started hearing about sodium most
prevalently when we are dealing with K-12, meaning kindergarten through 12th
grade education. We sell into that arena as well as campus dining, health care,
elder care, and of course restaurants and country clubs, caterers. Now, there's a
federal regulation out now that the schools have to get the amount of sodium
down in the breakfast and lunches that they're serving. A lot of the products
that they're using are prepared foods, and the manufacturers add salt to save
money because you can add salt to a product and it'll still taste okay, but
you don't have to put as much meat in then. You know, the aspect is
they're going to have to change. Well, RC Fine Foods heard about this and jumped
on it right away, and we started developing a line of products that would
meet that need also for health care, where in a hospital, for example, you've
got nutritionists and doctors asking the chefs in the hospital to lower the
sodium in the diet that's going out to them in their in their room, and so
the chefs are challenged because the food already has the salt in it a lot of
times. Right. So they ask again, can you reduce the sodium? So we had one chef in
particular came up with an idea that was wonderful, and that is our smart sodium
product. The reason that we came up with that idea is because when he would use a
low sodium product, we had complaints from the patient or from the customer, if
you will, that it's bland, it doesn't have enough salt in it. Right. And the
reason that they say that is because we all grew up eating salty products. It's
on everything. So he said, well, low sodium doesn't work. So what they were
doing is using low sodium and regular and mixing them 50-50 to get to where
they wanted to go. So he said, why can't you make that that way for us now that
we don't have to do that? So that's how come we came out with 400, the smart
sodium 400 line. Right. Now, while this was all going on, the Heart Association,
the National Heart Association, came out with a reduction in the amount of
sodium that's recommended as a daily allowance for us in our diets as adults.
And I want you to think about children, smaller bodies. Okay. And they're getting
full-size adult servings of salt. Okay. But back to us, 2,500 milligrams per day
was the regulation or the recommended daily allowance that the American Heart
Association said. Mm-hmm. They reduced it down to 1,500. Yeah. That's a significant
drop. Sometimes you'll go into a restaurant and just in one entree
serving alone, you'll get 4,500 milligrams of sodium. Yes. I mean, that's enough to
give you, well, never mind. That could do you in. So we're very, we're very aware of
it. The American Culinary Federation is aware of it. The Chef's Association,
they're trying to figure out how they can reduce the sodium but still have the
taste. Your sea salts are going to do a lot of work there for them because sea
salt doesn't have as high of a sodium level but has the salt taste that you
want. Exactly. There's other things that can be done. Our reduction in sodium here
of a seafood base, this is one of a kind. There's no one else in the country has
anything like this. The same goes, you had mentioned on our ham base, you know,
ham is always cured with salt. Right. So we use cure 81 ham in here, smoked cure
81 ham, yet we still manage to come in with low sodium on that one. Right. So this
is a choice for chefs that they can use now that gives them a really great
alternative to help meet those RDAs. And another thing about your product in our
discussion today that I learned is that for the seafood, you're actually using
the seafood meat. That's right. You're using the lobster meat and the clams
instead of the shell. Yes. So therefore the flavor is going to... More flavor. More
flavor. Less use. Yes. You know, the other thing that we come up with a lot of
times, I'll give you a quick example, when some restaurants will make a clam
chowder, they get these canned clams in that are in this water, which is salt
water. Exactly. They dump the whole thing in to the chowder. So let's assume you were
using a soup base, a clam base, before that to add flavor. Now you're adding
salt on top of salt. So when you start thinking about using a low sodium or a
reduced sodium seafood, you can at least get the salt out of it, even if they're
still going to dump the clams in whole can at a time. Now most of your
really good chefs are not going to use anything but fresh clams, of course. Right.
But what I'm saying is in an application where it's high velocity
needs, high production, they have no choice. They have to do that. So I think one
of the terms that people will be learning about and we'll be hearing more
about is the recommended daily allowance. So the RDA is something that we can, you
know, help our customers with, thanks to you guys. And I think that's going to
work out really well. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's something that we all
need to work at together. Yes. Because no matter how we look at it, we have to
change a cultural norm. People are used to salt. You know McDonald's and Burger
King are doing it. They're working on it. Yeah. We've already seen a lot of
inroads with all the different chain restaurant groups out there. They're
aware of it. The schools are on the move right now. They're doing a lot of work
with, especially with K-12. Some of the people that's work in schools need to
get aware of this because they don't know the difference. They haven't been told.
They haven't heard about it. They're just doing their jobs. It's not their
responsibility to learn all the nutritional information necessarily.
They're too busy getting a job done. Yeah. So now we have to help them. Right.
That's what we do. Good. Well, food is fun.
