Food Trends | Newsletter Archives | Food Industry Jobs

 

Kraft has relaunched Cadbury Dream white chocolate in a stylish new packaging design and the introduction of two new flavours – Dream with Biscuit and Dream with Almond and Coconut.

Entecom will be conducting a workshop on food defence in association with AIB International. This hands-on workshop, to be held in Randburg on April 19, is customised to the South African industry and will be presented by Rolf Uys.
   What is food defence? Food safety is defined as unintentional contamination of food, whereas food defence is the intentional contamination of food, by extortionists, extremists, criminals or disgruntled employees.

US: “Pink slime” just went from a simmer to a boil

The Cola War continues. As Pepsi struggles to regain market share, Indra Nooyi’s job is on the line…. Read this excellent analysis of PepsiCo’s current struggles and strategies from The Economist.

A coming boom in agriculture? I think so. The old way of looking at food supply and demand is giving way to a new emphasis on the changing diets of hundreds of millions of people. Those changes will substantially increase demand for grains, putting upward pressure on prices, writes Forbes journalist, Bill Conerly.

Innova Market Insights tracks and reports on hundreds of innovative products from around the world every, providing just a snapshot of the vast body of new product data it covers. Here’s is a run-down of the first ten of twenty of what it rates as “the most innovative and on-trend products” that it featured in its database and monthly magazine in 2011, listed in the order in which they appeared. One of them is from South Africa. The rest will follow next week!

Food companies are reaching for the snack bowl. Facing stagnant growth in their base grocery business, packaged-food companies are increasingly turning to snacks as an avenue for growth.

Despite ongoing economic difficulties, new product activity in the global snackfoods industry appears to be continuing unabated. Launch numbers recorded by Innova Market Insights showed a strong double-digit increase in 2011. Savoury and salty snacks accounted for just under two-thirds of the total, and snack nuts and seeds the remainder.

The iconic nuclear family of the 1950s is kaput. At nearly any time of day, just a casual glance at the variety of shoppers in a typical grocery store reinforces the notion that trying to influence Mom as the primary grocery shopper is largely a losing battle. The notion of family is being totally redefined….. Great insights from The Hartman Group.

Chocolate milk, to allow it or not, is a hot topic for schools in America. In reaction, chocolate milk producers are turning their attention away from school kids and focusing on millions of adult athletes.

Rare blood oranges get their distinctive colour from anthocyanins, pigments that also provide a variety of health benefits, for example lowering the risk of heart disease and stroke. The oranges, however, require distinct growing conditions which make them a rare fruit – but this could change with the genetic work of a team of British scientists.

Guar gum, widely used in multiple food applications, is in short supply thanks to unprecdented demand from the oil and gas industry and its growing use in hydraulic fracturing to prevent fluid loss. This has resulted in substantially higher prices which has food formulators increasingly looking for alternatives. DuPont Danisco reports it has a wide range of solutions to help.

Simply looking at images of food that appeals to you can make something taste better, according to a new study by scientists at the Nestlé Research Centre in Switzerland.

Yet another scare on red meat…. those juicy burgers and sizzling steaks may look innocent enough (not to mention temptingly tasty), but they could be driving meat eaters to an early death, according to a new Harvard study.

Meat industry experts and health campaigners have both questioned the results of a Harvard Medical School study which claimed to show that eating a diet high in red meat shortened life expectancy.

Californian researchers have discovered how salmonella, a bacterium found in contaminated raw foods that causes major gastrointestinal distress in humans, thrives in the digestive tract despite the immune system’s best efforts to destroy it.

Of all the childhood allergies, an allergic reaction to eggs is one of the most common. But eggs are difficult to avoid, even finding their way into many foods that might not seem particularly “eggy”, and are even used in flu vaccines. A team from Australia’s Deakin University, Melbourne, now says its well on the way to producing not just hypoallergenic eggs, but the chickens that lay them.

Soft bigotry of low food expectations
The “obesity epidemic” is often used to justify myriad new regulations targeting certain types of food and restaurants. Yet these regulatory efforts really have less to do with making people healthy than increasing government control over how private businesses run their companies and how citizens run their private lives. [Excellent commentary from The Washington Times!]

There is not enough scientific data to support a link between FDA-approved food colours and the increased incidence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to results of a new meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

You have to love the ever-inventiveness of human nature… trending in trendy bars of the world is the Nicotini, tobacco-spiked cocktails devised reportedly in Florida, US, in reaction to the ban on smoking in restaurants and bars.

Anaesthetic gel made from a rare plant found deep in the Peruvian rainforest has been found to be so potent that it could potentially replace the uncomfortable anesthetic injections used prior to dental procedures — and provide a natural remedy for aching teeth, scientists say. [No, this is not food, but it is related, sort of. Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating development.]