Ten changes to integrate.

We "know" that the food people buy and where they buy is changing as fast as our lifestyles and society are changing, but knowing and integrating what we know are two different things. Adjusting to change isn't easy for businesses, or for people. Businesses are made up of people, and people go on doing what they done and thinking what they've thought.

Some recent food headlines and perceptions have underscored the changes in ways that take many of us closer to gut level understanding.

1. Kraft, the preeminent American food company, is closing factories and laying off thousands of workers.

2. In partial explanation of changes at Kraft, 60 percent of our respondents agreed that "national brands of packaged foods are much less important than they used to be."

3. Putting that 60 percent into dramatic perspective, only 8 percent of our respondents agreed that "food shopping is less important than it used to be." That imbalance suggests that food shopping has remained far more important in shoppers' heads than brands like Kraft.

4. Walgreen's, the pre-eminent American drug store, is testing fresh sandwiches and related take-out foods in 100 of their stores in Chicago.

5. Food service sales are growing in spite of a weak economy, and supermarkets are losing 20 percent of their once-a-week traffic.

6. An article about "Food Chains" in Food & Wine magazine didn't mention supermarkets at all.

7. Airlines are selling meals that they used to give away, and lots of people are buying. I sampled a $10 Wolfgang Puck salad on a lunchtime flight on US Air and was impressed with the flavors and quality of the greens and sadly disappointed in the quality of the chicken (which I thought was the easy part but which tasted strangely artificial--as though it had been mechanically tenderized). Always a researcher, I asked others around my seat what they thought of the meal and whether they'd buy it again. Most were positive: "I'll buy it as long as they keep up the quality. This is better than the food that used to come with the ticket."

8. The landmark Domino Sugar plant and the sign that has shone into Manhattan from the Brooklyn Side of the East River are shutting down and going dark because of declining demand for cane sugar in an age of competing sweeteners.

9. Twenty-two percent of our survey respondents agreed that "Wal-Mart and Target have replaced supermarkets as the most important places they shop."

10. Only 11 percent agreed that supermarkets "aren't as important as they used to be."

Of course, much of this has been happening for years. It's old news that Subway has passed McDonald's in the number of U.S. stores. FMI has gotten smaller and IDDA has gotten bigger. Chains that we thought were huge are merging to be large enough to compete with Wal-Mart.

Synthesizing all these changes so that they are in your gut as well as your head is like learning to think in a foreign language. It enables you to really see what's happening and move strategically to deal with the new world.