We list “nutrition-washing” in our 100 Things to Watch in 2010, forecasting that with today’s proliferation of health and nutrition claims, “shoppers will increasingly take health messaging with a grain of salt.” Recently The New York Times and AOL’s Consumer Ally wrote about a Center for Science in the Public Interest report that calls for the U.S. government to more closely regulate food labeling. The Times’ post, headlined “Six Meaningless Claims on Food Labels,” includes the practice of touting “made with whole grains” (some such products consist largely of white flour, some may contain more sugar than whole wheat, etc.), “real fruit” and “lightly sweetened.”

As watchdogs like the CSPI and other experts make people increasingly aware of the emptiness of many food-label claims, more consumers will be Reading the Fine Print, one of the 10 Trends we’ve outlined for 2010.

Photo credit: qmnonic

An interactive chart published by The New York Times encapsulates President Obama’s 2011 budget proposal. Using a mouse, you can move within regions of the chart to see how much spending will increase or decrease in specific sectors; you can even access the 2010 budget breakdown by clicking a button at the top of the chart. One item the data demonstrates is an increase in Medicare expenditures, from $462 billion this year to $498 billion in 2011. As noted in our 10 Trends for 2010, the world’s population is growing older than it’s ever been at an unprecedented rate; it will be interesting to watch how economies around the world adjust.

- Today ends the second annual Social Media Week, a conference that spans six cities in four countries. JWT had the honor of hosting two NYC events, Crowdsorcery Potions 101 and Social Graph Optimization.

- One year and two Grammys later, The Wall Street Journal sees Lady Gaga as “a case study of what it takes to succeed in the music business today.”

- In “The Persistence of Mass Culture,” New York magazine observes that Americans focused primarily on a few topics in late January (the iPad’s unveiling, the State of the Union speech, the Super Bowl, etc.). But, notably, “much of our collective conversation preceded, rather than followed, these events.”

- The future of the Internet will be mobile, a shift we highlighted in our 10 Trends for 2009; recent research from Morgan Stanley forecasts that the mobile Internet market will be twice the size of the desktop Internet.

- American schools are debating cell phone bans. Many see cell phones as too distracting—and more than two-thirds have banned them on school grounds, according to CommonSense Media. But the American Association of School Administrators promotes them as “genuine educational tools.”

- Ad Age reports that big brands are jumping on the Foursquare bandwagon but asks whether they will drive away fans of the fledgling location-based game by commercializing it too soon.

- An Economist special report explores how social networking is just the beginning of a new era in global interconnectedness, changing social lives and working habits for the better.

- A Bloomberg/BusinessWeek report examines how design can impact the bottom line for businesses in any industry.

- The San Francisco Chronicle concludes that “blogging is for old people”—a Pew Research Center report on Social Media and Young Adults revealed that just 14 to 15 percent of teens and young adults blog; it also found that Twitter has failed to catch on with Millennials.

- Out-of-work execs are going out on their own, according to a Challenger, Gray & Christmas study that found an increase in entrepreneurial activity, with close to 9 percent of unemployed managers and executives starting a businesses in 2009.

The World Social Forum, held last week in Brazil, was positioned around the idea that sustained growth is detrimental to the planet and the population, that we’ve reached “the age of limits” on progress. The spread of consumer culture was blamed for everything from global warming to growing disparities between rich and poor. While most societies view the ability of citizens to acquire cars, electronics and other material goods as progress, the downside of having more stuff is becoming increasingly apparent. One example many of us are all too familiar with: the rush hour traffic jam.

The Daily Beast’s “America’s 75 Worst Commutes” ranks places around the U.S. where there is too much traffic and not enough road (L.A.’s Hollywood Freeway is deemed the worst). As a New York traffic reporter observes about the Cross Bronx Expressway (No. 6 on the list), “There’s no room to expand, no way to throw in an additional lane or an additional shoulder. People are changing their driving habits whenever they can.” In other words, we’ve reached our limit. As we go forward this century—or stop and start, as the case may be—signs point to people backing up in order to move ahead.

Photo credit: N-O-M-A-D

One of our 10 Trends for 2010 is Visual Fluency, the ongoing shift from words to images to explain complex topics. A novel example comes from Stockholm, where artists are aiming to create global dialogue around provocative news stories via T-post, which the creators call the first “T-shirt magazine.” Each story is distilled to a T-shirt visual (the full news story is printed on the inside of the shirt). T-post subscribers—currently in more than 50 countries—receive a shirt every six weeks. The hope is that wearers will move the conversation forward.

What should really get people talking is the future of Visual Fluency as envisioned by Pranav Mistry, a Ph.D. candidate in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT’s Media Lab. In a November presentation at TEDIndia, he demonstrated his SixthSense technology, which uses gestures in place of a keyboard so as to merge the computer with the physical world. For instance, a user could snap a photograph with simple hand movements. Mistry’s goal: to help people connect to what’s going on around them instead of interfacing with machines. Just as T-post aims to use visual cues to get people talking, Mistry is hoping iconic gestures will create a more universal understanding, as well as seamless access to relevant information.

As New York goes, so goes the nation? Excess salt—which can cause high blood pressure, stroke and heart attacks—is the latest target of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s health and wellness campaign, which has previously focused on smoking, calorie consciousness and sugary sodas. Bloomberg is calling on restaurant chains and food manufacturers to reduce salt by 25 percent.

New York City became somewhat of a pioneer in what we’re calling Maximum Disclosure—one of our 10 Trends for 2010—when it started requiring restaurant chains to post calorie counts in 2007. Today, five states require disclosure, and Congress is mulling a national mandate as part of its health care bill. In response, Starbucks and other chains are offering more low-calorie options, as we recently noted. The new measure is voluntary, but Subway has already agreed to meet New York City’s standards in all its restaurants nationwide. (Since fast food items are standardized, a chain can’t normally tailor offerings for each locale.) Now that New York has sodium in its cross-hairs, smart food marketers will make “Hold the salt” their new motto. And as marketers tout their new reduced-sodium formulas, salt is likely to become a national watchword.

Photo Credit: edenpictures

- USA Today outlined four ways shopping will be different in 2010. Plus, is the store-within-a-store concept the next big trend in retail?

- NPR compiled Bureau of Labor Statistics figures to come up with a visual representation of The Decade Ahead in Jobs.

- After the Pew Research Center reported the rise of the breadwinning wife, The New York Times had seven experts weigh in on how “alpha wives” are affecting the institution of marriage.

- There’s a reason why 88 percent of all resolutions end in failure, an NPR report explains, and it has less to do with lack of willpower than it does with an overtaxed brain.

- Deafening buzz greeted Apple’s new iPad; some found it a letdown, many found humor in the name.

- On AnxietyIndex.com, we noted the irony of a new Office Depot commercial that taps into populist zeal (a topic touched on by New York Times columnist David Brooks). Miller High Life will champion Main Street by spotlighting several small businesses during the Super Bowl.

- Twitter launched a “Local Trends” feature.

- Some of the world’s biggest brands have partnered in the Global Packaging Project in a bid to agree on ways to measure packaging sustainability.

- Are philanthropic organizations getting the boot? A few reasons why “We’re in the age of the citizen philanthropist.”

- Thanks to affluent, aging Baby Boomers, the global market for anti-aging products, currently worth $160 billion annually, is expected to grow to $275 billion within three years.

- A study conducted by Burst Media in late December found that 90 percent of Web users surveyed have incorporated some aspect of greenness into their lives and overall respondents are willing to pay a premium for green products.

- Internet use continues to soar in China—already home to the world’s largest population of Internet users—where 384 million people are online, up 30 percent from 2008.

On Tuesday, Twitter launched a Local Trends feature, situated on the sidebar of users’ home pages; more locations, languages and data will follow. This data chart from Trendistic shows that the launch of Local Trends generated a great deal of Twitter buzz—in fact, “local trends” itself became a trending topic.

Local Trends is another example of the growing importance of local. As we highlighted in one of our 10 Trends for 2010, the rise of location-based or -aware services means the conversation is becoming as much about “where I am” as it is about “what I’m doing” and “what’s on my mind.” Twitter’s move gives retailers, restaurants and other neighborhood businesses better opportunities to build word-of-mouth by encouraging customers to Tweet.

Follow us on Twitter at @JWTIntelligence.

The posting of calorie counts is one major manifestation of Maximum Disclosure, one of our 10 Trends for 2010. The big question is whether this disclosure changes people’s food choices.

As we said in our trends forecast, while the behavioral effect as of yet is unclear, calorie disclosure is one reason we’ll be seeing smaller serving sizes, more lighter-fare options and simple substitutions that lower calorie counts. Just this month, Taco Bell launched its controversial Diet Drive Thru Menu (seven lower-fat items under 200 calories), Applebee’s introduced a menu featuring five entrees under 550 calories and Starbucks added four hot panini options under 400 calories. A Taco Bell exec told USA Today that in a test of the Diet Drive Thru Menu in two markets last year, “repeat purchases … were the highest of any product the chain’s sold in 20 years.”

Clearly a significant portion of consumers are calorie-conscious and there’s data to prove it. A recent Stanford business school study found that Starbucks customers in New York, Boston and Philadelphia bought 6 percent fewer calories per visit once the cafes started posting calorie info. In the same vein, a study just published in Pediatrics found that parents veer toward lower-calorie options for young children when fast-food menus show calorie counts.

However, there may be some room for skepticism since earlier research focusing on fast food outlets in low-income New York City neighborhoods found that people hadn’t altered their eating habits. As disclosure ramps up, it will be interesting to see if a response becomes more universal.

The London grocery store Unpackaged is a great example of one of our 10 Trends for 2010—the idea that the eco spotlight is increasingly focusing on the environmental costs of packaging. Customers bring containers (jars, paper bags, Tupperware, etc.) and fill them with bulk products—grains, nuts, herbs, teas, cheeses and so on. Goods sold in containers such as milk or jam come in returnable or refillable jars or bottles. Shoppers without their own containers can buy reusable bags.

While this specific concept is unlikely to go mainstream, brands and retailers can adapt some of the package-free ideas here. Kenco coffee in the U.K., for instance, sells Eco Refill bags with which customers can top up their jars. And the idea of growler stations at liquor stores is increasingly popular in the U.S., allowing customers to take home draft beer in 64-ounce refillable jugs.

Photo credit: http://beunpackaged.com/