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‘Naturality’ is set to be the leading driver of innovation in the food and beverage market in 2012, according to the latest edition of New Nutrition Business’s eagerly anticipated annual trend-spotting report. 10 Key Trends in Food, Nutrition & Health 2012 says naturality has become the biggest single trend in the market to the point that it is now a “basic consumer requirement for any brand” – even those without an overt health position.

Brenda Neall: publisher & editor                      

When it comes to food, people around the world are more alike than different, according to McCormick’s annual flavour report. Since 2000, McCormick has endeavoured to inspire a passion for flavour with its signature flavour Forecast report, pinpointing common trends and flavours driving culinary innovation around the world. This year, for the first time, it has taken a global view.

In Britain, fast food, for the first time ever, now makes up more than half of all the meals eaten outside of the home. The recession, and the subsequent squeeze on disposable income, has encouraged millions of families to cut back on spending on luxuries, especially on meals in restaurants.

McDonald’s will briefly become the UK’s biggest retailer of children’s books with a month-long promotion to replace the usual plastic toy in its Happy Meals with a book.

Kraft Foods in the UK has unveiled the launch of the “innovative” Cadbury Dairy Milk Bubbly, an aerated chocolate bar, and a launch that will draw comparisons with Nestle’s Aero bar.

McCain Foods has launched Ready Baked Jackets, a microwaveable jacket potato that cooks in five minutes, in the UK.

US: Putting millions into food advertising
The US is seeing a resurgence in marketing efforts for packaged foods that began with the financial crisis and continues as the economy remains uncertain. Kraft for instance, has just launched a $50m campaign for its cheese products.

When it comes to Coca-Cola products, people tend to be die-hard fans. While Diet Coke has been a leading sugar-free soft drink since it was first released in 1982, it came to light that young adult males shied away from this beverage — identifying it as a woman’s drink. The company’s answer to that predicament came in 2005 — in the form of a shiny black can — with the super-successful release of Coke Zero.

For many consumers, the label “fair trade” promotes the inaccurate assumption that a chocolate bar is lower in calories than its competitors, two new US studies have found.

A short burst of low voltage alternating current can effectively eradicate E coli bacteria growing on the surface of even heavily contaminated beef, according to a new study. The technique offers an inexpensive and easy to implement approach to reducing the risk of food poisoning.

Honeybee deaths linked to seed insecticide exposure
Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields: the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting.

Placebo effect stronger than we thought?
Double-blind trials have long been considered the gold standard to determine drugs’ effectiveness. Do we need to rethink that assumption, given the power of the placebo effect?

Man from Mars: health and nutrition research at Mars, and beyond
Hagen Schroeter, the director of fundamental health and nutrition research at Mars, Inc, talks about research on bio-active food compounds and the search for why a healthful diet is good for you.

Of the many forms of sugars, fructose currently is in the spotlight more than others. In part, this is related to a perceived increase in the prevalence of fructose malabsorption or intolerance. This IFIC report details the latest science on the topic.

Fad diets are nothing new – people have been following them for two millennia. They are also little better than useless, so why do we keep following them? A new book looks back on 20 centuries of bingeing, purging, snake oil and strange ideas…

A diabetic man with a penchant for sugary drinks who lost his legs to amputation is the latest posterboy in New York’s health department’s hard-hitting anti-obesity campaign.

“The benefits food technology brings in terms of convenience and palatability should not be underestimated – there’s nothing convenient about a coconut and there’s little that’s palatable about unroasted coffee beans. It is convenience and palatability that people want most – as well as health benefits – and those are two elements that many foods cannot deliver in their raw and natural state.

Demand for smart food technology will, if anything, increase because ‘natural foods’ with ‘natural benefits’ will increasingly mean foods that are processed as little as possible – often a hugely difficult task.

As a result, it is companies who invest in technology, not hippy companies and not back-to- the-land sandal wearers, who will most likely influence the natural foods business in the years ahead, for only technology will be able to resolve the contradiction that sits firmly in consumers’ minds: that they want their food and drink products natural and healthy and convenient and good-tasting.”