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GOURMET NEWS MAY 2017 www.gourmetnews.com FROM THE EDITOR 2 WWW.GOURMETNEWS.COM PUBLISHER Kimberly Oser SENIOR ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Jules Denton jules_d@oser.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Carlos Velasquez carlos_v@oser.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Lorrie Baumann lorrie_b@oser.com ASSOCIATE EDITORS Jeanie Catron jeanie_c@oser.com Micah Cheek micah_c@oser.com Greg Gonzales greg_g@oser.com ART DIRECTOR Yasmine Brown GRAPHIC DESIGNER Jonathan Schieffer CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGERS Sarah Glenn sarah_g@oser.com Caitlyn McGrath caitlyn_m@oser.com CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Tara Neal tara_n@oser.com CIRCULATION MANAGER Jamie Green jamie_g@oser.com PUBLISHING OFFICE 1877 N. Kolb Road P.O. Box 1056 Tucson, AZ 85715 520.721.1300 Fax 520.721.6300 SUBSCRIBER SERVICES Gourmet News P.O. Box 30520 Tucson, AZ 85751 520.721.1300 G OURMET N EWS ® OSER COMMUNICATIONS GROUP FOUNDER Lee M. Oser MEMBER OF: Periodicals postage paid at Tucson, AZ, and additional mailing office. Gourmet News (ISSN 1052-4630) is published monthly by Oser Communications Group, 1877 North Kolb Road, Tucson, AZ 85715; 520.721.1300. Publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material or prices quoted in newspaper. Contributors are responsible for proper release of pro- prietary classified information. ©2017 by Oser Communications Group. All rights re- served. Reproduction, in whole or in part, without writ- ten permission of the publisher, is expressly prohibited. Back issues, when available, cost $7 each within the past 12 months, $12 each prior to the past 12 months. Back orders must be paid in advance either by check or charged to American Express, Visa, or Master Card. Gourmet News is distributed without charge in North America to qualified professionals in the retail and dis- tribution channels of the specialty foods and hardgoods trade; paid subscriptions cost $65 annually to the U.S. and Canada. All foreign subscriptions cost $150 annu- ally to cover air delivery. All payments must be made in U.S. funds and drawn on a U.S. bank. For subscriber services, including subscription information, call 520.721.1300. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Gourmet News, 1877 North Kolb Road, Tucson, AZ 85715. The current presidential administration has bowed out of the debate on what we should do about climate change. I want to point out here that that's the debate – it's no longer about whether climate change is happening. Scientists are nearly universal in their agreement that climate change is real. The questions at hand are whether the rest of us are going to go along with that, and if so, what do we do about it? For an answer to the first part of that question, I look back to 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal, who pointed out in a discussion of whether or not we should believe in God even if we also harbored doubts, that we should all con- sider the stakes. When it's your eternal soul that's in question, the stakes for being wrong are just too high to bet against the reality of God, he suggested. "Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. (...) There is here an infinity of an in- finitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite," he wrote. In other words, his basic argument was that if what you see before you is a 50/50 chance – either God exists or not – then if you bet one way, what you have to lose lasts a lifetime, and if you bet the other way, then what you have to lose is your eternal soul. Well then, the smart bet is the one where you can win for eternity, he concluded. When I'm asked about my own position on climate change, global warming, what have you, I make exactly the same argu- ment: consider the stakes. If we take the position that climate change is real, then the downside if we're wrong is finite. Maybe we've endured some inconvenience by conserving energy. Maybe we've taken steps to curb our waste of food. Maybe we've planted some trees. If climate change isn't really happening, then maybe those ef- forts didn't actually mean that much. But if climate change is real, the stakes are much higher. What we have to lose then is the ability of our descendants to survive on this planet. The entire human race could be wiped out. Blaise Pascal would argue that there's an obviously smarter side to bet on. Note that this is not a partisan political argument that depends on what President Trump and his administration plan to do. He has clearly decided not to exercise leadership in this area, but that doesn't mean that others can't pick up the baton he's decided to drop. You will read this month in the pages of both Gourmet News and Kitchenware News that business leaders across the U.S. are doing just that. They're not doing this just to honor their own beliefs. They're doing this in the knowledge that Millennial consumers already believe that climate change is real and observable, so for them there's no question. They're also inclined to act on their beliefs by voting with their dol- lars on brands that they believe share their values. For these businesses, that changes the terms of the bet a bit – they're not just betting on the survival of the human race; they're also betting on the survival of their brands. What that means is that there's only one smart bet here. GN — Lorrie Baumann Editorial Director FROM THE EDITOR

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