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Within three months of becoming CEO of the Honest Company in 2023, Carla Vernón slashed 25% of its eco-friendly goods. That seems tame in comparison to what happened when Brad Charron joined Aloha as CEO in 2017: He killed off every product category. Now on the other side of major rebrands and company pivots, these CEOs say there wasnt necessarily a playbook to follow when they joined their respective companies as outsiders. While assuming the role of turnaround CEO proved difficultand not one either would like to undertake againthere are many lessons learned, which they shared during a discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. When Charron was initially approached about becoming chief marketing officer of Aloha, he was unimpressed with the product lineup and after about an hour meeting with the team, he concluded the organic, plant-based food company wouldnt be in business a year from then. He ultimately decided to join Aloha as CEO, giving himself a made-up title of re-founder, and initiated a company re-start, killing off all of existing products like trail mix and chocolates and launching the current lineup of protein bars, powders and drinks. It was a complete destruction because that was what was needed, Charron told the SXSW audience. You couldn’t step-change your way to fixing all that illed it. While Vernóns changes at Honest were less drastic, she had the added pressure of overseeing a publicly-traded companyWall Street gave me no grace. Honest had gone public less than two years before she arrived and while private, it had experimented with launching products in a wide variety of categories, she said. One of her first tasks as CEO was to evaluate the wide range of Honest items, from the core or hero products beloved by consumers to those with varying success by financial metricsand everything in-between. In the end, 25% of the products were slashed. People think that that’s risky, but our company grew revenues for the first time in two years when we had less variety in our portfolio because we could focus on what mattered and what was good, she said. Product quality is your number one focus. EMPOWERING EMPLOYEES Empowering employees to have a sense of ownership at both Honest and Aloha was also key to these turnaround success stories, the CEOs said. There is more scrutiny and skepticism of the outsider, both from the employee base and from the investor base, who has to figure out whether they can trust you managing their money, Vernón said. One of the things I introduced is that every single full time employeeI don’t care if that is the office mom or if that is the CFOthey are all shareholders, and so they are all invested in us figuring out how to be aligned with our retail partners and with our investors. Charron likewise focused on ensuring employees felt a sense of ownership in Aloha. The most precious thing we have in the world is our time, and there’s nothing worse than wasting your energy and your heart and your soul on something that’s not symmetrically set up for a future success, he said. I had to find people who would be willing to kind of put their skin on the line a little bit and be an employee-owner mentality. NAVIGATING DIFFICULTY Even though he came into a situation he knew would be difficultand proved to be difficultand Charron said it was important to recognize that fixing so much that was broken wouldnt happen quickly. Everything across the entire ecosystem of the company needed to be questioned and we needed to have patience that eventually we were going to build something that was going to work, he said. That’s really kind-of the core discipline that has gotten Aloha to where it is today. Vernón had more time pressure to enact a pivother first earnings call was eight weeks after she became CEOand she needed the buy-in of the board of directors and investors. While she said working at Honest has been the thrill and adventure of a lifetime, there were some tough days early on and thats when she leaned on her support network. It was a very, I think fragile moment for us as a company and I am so proud that we’ve come through actually stronger.
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E-Commerce
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced it will reconsider the reach of the nations bedrock clean water law and likely further limit the wetlands it covers, building on a Supreme Court decision two years ago that removed federal protections for significant areas. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said at agency headquarters in Washington that officials will listen to concerns from farmers and other groups worried about federal interference in how they use their land and then set limited, predictable and lasting rules defining which waterways the Clean Water Act protects. President Donald Trump sought to shrink the law’s reach in his first term while prior Democratic administrations have expanded federal power to regulate the nation’s lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands and oceans. That’s created drastic swings in how the law is interpreted and applied. In the 2023 Supreme Court case Sackett v. EPA, the majority of justices largely agreed with the Trump administration’s limited approach. That decision departed from decades of federal rules governing the nation’s waterways. When the Biden administration rewrote protections to comply with Sackett, however, some conservative groups believed that the rule still protected too many wetlands and improperly limited private property rights. On Wednesday, the EPA issued guidance about how the ruling should be implemented to exclude certain wetlands. We are not looking for this to be a ping-pong anymore, Zeldin said. What we are looking for is to simply follow the guidance from Sackett. That decision was one of several Supreme Court rulings in recent years that drastically shrank the federal governments power to regulate the environment and industry. Some states, however, have passed their own laws to strengthen wetlands protections. For decades, environmental interests and left-leaning policymakers have fought right-leaning industry and agricultural interests in federal court over the Clean Water Act’s power. At the center of those cases is the definition of just five words in the law, waters of the United States, which determines its reach. In Sackett, the conservative majority sided with those industry and agricultural interests that sought more flexibility to dig or fill wetlands, finding that federal regulators had long wielded too much authority. Environmental groups have sharply criticized Sackett, saying it will mean more polluted and filled-in wetlands, which is expected to hit the arid southwest especially hard. Julian Gonzalez, senior legislative counsel at the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, called the Sackett decision industry’s white whale that achieved weakened environmental protections after years of work. He said the effort is especially concerning now that the EPA is facing drastic cuts, reducing its capacity to enforce the rules. Despite the fact that they finally got that decision after all those years, they are still not resting on their laurels, he said. They are going to continue to find ways to change the Clean Water Act to weaken public safeguards. Wetlands filter pollutants, reduce flooding, serve as important habitat and are worth protecting, Gonzalez said. Sackett was brought by an Idaho couple who wanted to build a house near Priest Lake in the state’s panhandle. Chantell and Michael Sackett objected when federal officials identified a soggy part of their land as a wetland, which meant they had to get a permit before they filled it with rocks and soil. Justice Samuel Alitos majority opinion said federally protected wetlands must be directly adjacent to a relatively permanent waterway connected to traditionally interstate navigable waters such as a river or ocean. That viewpoint was similar to a 2006 opinion by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. They also must have a continuous surface connection with that water, making it difficult to determine where the water ends and the wetlands begins, Alito said. That departed from a 2006 Supreme Court opinion that had established the longtime standard for evaluating which waters were protected. In that case, then-Justice Anthony Kennedy described covered wetlands as having a significant nexus to larger bodies of water. Opponents have long objected that the standards were too vague and unpredictable. American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall spoke during Zeldin’s announcement, saying farmers wanted a simple rule. I’m a farmer and I need a rule that’s on one page, that is sitting on the dash of my truck right next to my devotional book, and if I have a question about a ravine on my farm, I can pick that one page up, read it, and interpret it myself,” Duvall said. The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment Michael Phillis, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Sam Srisatta, a 20-year-old Florida college student, spent a month living inside a government hospital here last fall, playing video games and allowing scientists to document every morsel of food that went into his mouth. From big bowls of salad to platters of meatballs and spaghetti sauce, Srisatta noshed his way through a nutrition study aimed at understanding the health effects of ultraprocessed foods, the controversial fare that now accounts for more than 70% of the U.S. food supply. He allowed The Associated Press to tag along for a day. Today my lunch was chicken nuggets, some chips, some ketchup, said Srisatta, one of three dozen participants paid $5,000 each to devote 28 days of their lives to science. It was pretty fulfilling. Examining exactly what made those nuggets so satisfying is the goal of the widely anticipated research led by National Institutes of Health nutrition researcher Kevin Hall. What we hope to do is figure out what those mechanisms are so that we can better understand that process, Hall said. Halls study relies on 24/7 measurements of patients, rather than self-reported data, to investigate whether ultraprocessed foods cause people to eat more calories and gain weight, potentially leading to obesity and other well-documented health problems. And, if they do, how? At a time when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made nutrition and chronic disease a key priority, the answers cant come soon enough. Kennedy has repeatedly targeted processed foods as the primary culprit behind a range of diseases that afflict Americans, particularly children. He vowed in a Senate confirmation hearing to focus on removing such foods from school lunches for kids because theyre making them sick. Ultraprocessed foods have exploded in the U.S. and elsewhere in recent decades, just as rates of obesity and other diet-related diseases also rise. The foods, which are often high in fat, sodium and sugar, are typically cheap, mass-produced and contain added colors and chemicals not found in a home kitchen. Think sugary cereals and potato chips, frozen pizzas, sodas and ice cream. Studies have linked ultraprocessed foods to negative health effects, but whether its the actual processing of the foods rather than the nutrients they contain or something else remains uncertain. A small 2019 analysis by Hall and his colleagues found that ultraprocessed foods led participants to eat about 500 calories a day more than when they ate a matched diet of unprocessed foods. The new study aims to replicate and expand that research and to test new theories about the effects of ultraprocessed foods. One is that some of the foods contain irresistible combinations of ingredients fat, sugar, sodium and carbohydrates that trigger people to eat more. The other is that the foods contain more calories per bite, making it possible to consume more without realizing it. Teasing out those answers requires the willingness of volunteers like Srisatta and the know-how of health and diet experts who identify, gather and analyze the data behind the estimated multimillion-dollar study. During his month at NIH, Srisatta sported monitors on his wrist, ankle and waist to track his every movement, and regularly gave up to 14 vials of blood. Once a week, he spent 24 hours inside a metabolic chamber, a tiny room outfitted with sensors to measure how his body was using food, water and air. He was allowed to go outside, but only with supervision to prevent any wayward snacks. It doesn’t really feel that bad, Srisatta said. He could eat as much or as little as he liked. The meals wheeled to his room three times a day were crafted to meet the precise requirements of the study, said Sara Turner, the NIH dietitian who designed the food plan. In the basement of the NIH building, a team carefully measured, weighed, sliced and cooked foods before sending them to Srisatta and other participants. The challenge is getting all the nutrients to work, but it still needs to be appetizing and look good, Turner said. Results from the trial are expected later this year, but preliminary results are intriguing. At a scientific conference in November, Hall reported that the first 18 trial participants ate about 1,000 calories a day more of an ultraprocessed diet that was particularly hyperpalatable and energy dense than those who ate minimally processed foods, leading to weight gain. When those qualities were modified, consumption went down, even if the foods were considered ultraprocessed, Hall said. Data is still being collected from remaining participants and must be completed, analyzed and published in a peer-reviewed journal. Still, the early results suggest that you can almost normalize energy intake, despite the fact that theyre still eating a diet that is more than 80% of calories from ultraprocessed food, Hall told the audience. Not everyone agrees with Halls methods, or the implications of his research. Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Childrens Hospital, criticized Halls 2019 study as fundamentally flawed by its short duration about a month. Scientists have long known that its possible to get people to eat more or less for brief periods of time, but those effects quickly wane, he said. If they were persistent, we would have the answer to obesity, said Ludwig, who has argued for years that consumption of highly processed carbohydrates is the prime dietary culprit” and focusing on the processing of the foods is distracting. He called for larger, better-designed studies lasting a minimum of two months, with washout periods separating the effects of one diet from the next. Otherwise, we waste our energy, we mislead the science, Ludwig said. Concerns about the short length of the studies may be valid, said Marion Nestle, a nutritionist and food policy expert. To resolve that, Hall needs funding to conduct longer studies with more people, she said in an email. The NIH spends about $2 billion a year, about 5% of its total budget, on nutrition research, according to Senate documents. At the same time, the agency cut the capacity of the metabolic unit where investigators conduct such studies, reducing the number of beds that must be shared among researchers. The two participants enrolled now at the center and the two planned for next month are the most Hall can study at any one time, adding months to the research process. Srisatta, the Florida volunteer who hopes to become an emergency room physician, said participating in the trial left him eager to know more about how processed foods affect human health. I mean, I think everyone knows it’s better to not eat processed foods, right? he said. But having the evidence to back that up in ways that the public can easily digest, is important, he said. HHS officials didn’t respond to questions about Kennedys intentions regarding nutrition research at NIH. The agency, like many others in the federal government, is being buffeted by the wave of cost cuts being directed by President Donald Trump and his bilionaire aide Elon Musk. Jerold Mande, a former federal food policy advisor in three administrations, said he supports Kennedys goals of addressing diet-related diseases. He has pushed a proposal for a 50-bed facility where government nutrition scientists could house and feed enough study volunteers like Srisatta to rigorously determine how specific diets affect human health. If youre going to make America healthy again and youre going to address chronic disease, we need better science to do it, Mande said. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Jonel Aleccia, AP health writer
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