As a gastronomic delicacy, the 140g hamburger that Mark Post (left) has painstakingly created here surely will not turn any heads. But Dr Post is hoping that it will change some minds. The hamburger, assembled from tiny bits of beef muscle tissue grown in a laboratory and to be cooked and eaten at an event in London, perhaps in a few weeks, is meant to show the world — including potential sources of research funds — that so-called in vitro meat, or cultured meat, is a reality.

Juicy red strawberries - one of the world's favourite fruits and flavour. In Germany, for instance, this seasonal fruit has never been more popular: on average 3.5 kilos per head were consumed in 2012 - a full kilogram more than ten years ago. Scientists from the Technische Universität München (TUM) decided to find out what gives strawberries their characteristic flavour.

Scientists are learning to enhance our enjoyment of food by analysing exactly how we experience it. So how do they deconstruct the multisensory interplay involved?

A South African cereal food scientist has fostered an advance in food safety, specifically with detecting mycotoxins in maize, with rapid chemical imaging technology.

A new ‘staging’ concept by Arla Foods Ingredients should add some innovation potential to the $11.5bn global infant formula category. Built around Arla's Lacprodan portfolio of protein ingredients, Staging is an improved approach to infant formula designed to reflect the fact that the composition of breast milk changes significantly during lactation.

Superweeds? Suicides? Stealthy genes? In the pitched debate over GM foods and crops, it can be hard to see where scientific evidence ends and dogma and speculation begin.

Many kinds of cinnamon, cinnamon-flavoured foods, beverages and food supplements in the United States use a form of the spice that contains high levels of a natural substance that may cause liver damage in some sensitive people, scientists are reporting.

An agreement with leading producer, Mingtai, will facilitate increased availability of MCC to meet market needs and growing consumer demand, says DuPont.