PMA presents to you a special consumer research series from Produce Retailer entitled "Defining a New Reality" completed by The Perishables Group. These reports cover issues such as the keys to organic produce success, consumers' purchases, and pricing sensitivities.   This six part series of articles originally appeared in Produce Retailer’s January through June issues in 2010 as posted below.

• Are You Ready for the Post-Recession Consumer?

If Young Kim has his way, every corner food store on Milwaukee's north side would stock fresh fruits and vegetables alongside their usual staples of potato chips and sugary drinks. "People are getting food, but are they getting the right kinds of food," said Kim, who operates the Fondy Food Center, the city's largest farmers market.

Hardly a morning passes without food making the headlines. This week has brought us the burger that thinks it’s a pizza and news that eating asparagus helps you stay slim (fingers crossed it’s the type covered in melted butter). And we heard that, if you eat pickled squid guts and single cream together, it tastes like strawberry shortcake. However, this month has also seen news reports on escalating wheat and coffee prices due to bad weather and poor harvests.

 With national attention turned toward a childhood obesity epidemic and increased focus on providing more fruits and vegetables as snack options on school menus, Eastern apple shippers say there are some lessons to be learned, as well as profits to be earned. “We’re big in the school program with pre-sliced apples and all the activities going on in the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) and their apple purchasing,” said Jim Allen, president of the Fishers-based New York Apple Association.

Pasta sauce, potatoes and ready meals should be promoted as part of the ‘5-A-Day' campaign, according to a group of experts set up by the Government to boost healthy eating.

As smartphone adoption continues to increase, people expect mobile devices to improve their everyday lives -- right down to making smart decisions about food, according to Latitude’s newest study, “The Interactive Future of Food.” The study collected and analyzed data from about 100 participants across the world that shared personal narratives about needing more information while grocery shopping.

Scott DeGraeve, general manager at Peapod, said Peapod's focus is to reach families in the food desert with attractive values and good food. The long-term goal is to lessen the rates of diabetes, childhood obesity and high blood pressure in food-desert neighborhoods. Peapod, whose regular delivery service overlaps half of the food desert area, commissioned a study by Mari Gallagher Research and Consulting Group, known for its food-desert analyses, to find out where children are most affected by lack of access to fresh fruits, vegetables and other groceries.

Shoppers have been working up a healthy appetite for portion-controlled products lately. While smaller packages are by no means a new concept, new twists on the single-serve concept — such as the 100-calorie snack packs that became an instant hit in grocery aisles — demonstrate how the concept is evolving, even as it becomes more popular.

Like many employees toiling in offices, Ann Barnum gets hungry about 2 p.m. The only choice is often the building's vending machine. Barnum's usual snack is a bag of chips. That was until she got her cube fruited. Through a new program called Fruit My Cube, Barnum gets a box of 15 to 18 pieces of fresh fruit for her desk each week.

Hectic schedules and tighter budgets have changed the way consumers cook, shop and dine, according to an audience trend report from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. These findings underscore a real change in consumer behavior as the family meal enjoys a resurgence.