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Editor’s Stuff: Talking to the man who made the first artificial burger!
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Hmm, I don’t know if it’s an age thing, but in my fifth decade, I am starting to find eating meat an increasingly dissonant issue. This never used to bother me much, but it does now. I love meat, I eat meat, but loathe the harsh realities of how it gets to our supermarkets.
I’m sure I’m far from alone in questioning if any animal farming is humane? But people want meat and global demand is spiralling. It’s this burning moral tension that has piqued so much global interest in artificial meat/protein, and the many fascinating initiatives that are underway in trying to make it feasible.
I came across a new interview with Prof Mark Post, the scientist who showed the world the first artificial beef burger last year. It’s my read-of-the week.
Laboratory-grown beef: meat without the murder, but would you eat it? Growing meat in labs could cut hunger, tackle climate change and end animal slaughter, but high-profile creator, Prof Mark Post, says the biggest beef will be convincing consumers. Here’s an interview with the man himself.
And there’s lots else besides! Enjoy this week’s read….
SAAFoST Events in Cape Town!
One-day seminar: What’s trending in functional ingredients? July 23…
Organised by the Cape Branch, this is being held at CPUT, Bellville. Topics covered will include fibre, dietary flavonoids, functional botanicals, enzymes, sodium reduction, new dairy ingredients, the stevia advantage, and the new draft labelling regulations.
Workshop on R429, July 30…
With time quickly expiring to the August 29 D-date for submission of comments on the new draft food labelling regulations, R429, SAAFoST has set up a high-powered seminar being held at Stellenbosch University on July 30. It ran last week in Jo’burg, and is presented by leading labelling experts, CFL, comprising Nigel Sunley and Jane Badham.
FOODStuff SA is a hub for food-bev industry recruitment!
Swift Silliker has two positions to fill!
Advertise your openings now! Click here
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| Local News and Developments |
Fire at Nestlé’s Potchefstroom factory stops production
A clean-up process has commenced at Nestlé South Africa’s Cremora creamer manufacturing factory in Potchefstroom, North West province, where a fire broke out last Friday afternoon. |
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R100-bn turnover gives Shoprite power Shoprite achieved double-digit growth in sales for the year to June to top R100-billion for the first time despite a tough consumer environment – a demonstration of the size of its economies of scale, as well as its purchasing power.
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New from the Peppadew International stable is a logical brand extension, the Peppadew Pasta Sauce range.
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A very small number of South African FMCG brands are making the conscious effort to extend engagement with the consumer beyond product consumption… some provocative insights from a South African perspective by Larry Khumalo, Ornico Group marketing manager.
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IFEA 2014 – Africa’s international food and drink exhibition – is said to be attracting exhibitors from all over the world as they prepare to expose their brands to decision-makers from the burgeoning pan-African market looking for the latest and the best international and local foods and drinks.
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Heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are steadily killing more and more South Africans, says a new WHO report.
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There’s no keeping him out of the headlines! Prof Tim Noakes made a large front-page splash in the Cape Times Wednesday, a report on a talk he gave advising that instead of carbs such as pap and bread, children’s diets should and could contain more nutritious and cheap animal organs.
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In case you missed it: SA’s maggot protein initiative moves to commercialisation This fascinating initiative – that we first reported on two years ago – is called AgriProtein and it aims to solve two serious environmental problems by converting fly larvae into livestock feed. It’s now moving to commercialisation.
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International Developments
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Lindt & Spruengli is gobbling up Russell Stover Candies, a move that will make the Swiss confectioner the third-biggest chocolate maker in North America.
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Consumer goods giant Unilever has shed its Slim-Fast milkshake and snack bar brand in another belt-tightening move.
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ICYMI: ADM to acquire WILD Flavors for €2.3-billion
Archer Daniels Midland Company has announced that it is acquiring WILD Flavors, giving ADM the ability to offer food and beverage companies a comprehensive suite of systems to enhance and improve their products. |
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| Trends, Marketing and NPD |
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The SOFIs honour the most outstanding specialty foods/drinks from the thousands of exhibitors, local and international, at America’s popular Winter and Summer Fancy Food shows. The awards for 2014 were recently announced – and the long and varied line-up of finalists should offer all involved in NPD some inspiration!
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Top 10 Trends at the Fancy Food Show Every summer, more than 25,000 food industry insiders head to the Javits Center in New York to troll long aisles of over 180,000 specialty food delectables at the Summer Fancy Food Show -and to find the next big thing in food trends. Here they are…
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DSM reports that the appeal of yoghurt is on the rise around the world. It has published results of a survey carried out in countries as varied as China, US, Brazil and Turkey, in a Global Insight paper, and which has found a growing demand for yoghurt as health-conscious consumers make it a regular habit. |
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Stonyfield Farm wants to give American yoghurt lovers a new high-protein treat with a twist – and it doesn’t include the word “Greek”.
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In many ways, Millennial tastes and behaviours foreshadow what’s coming in consumer consumption. A new report from The Hartman Group, Outlook on the Millennial Consumer 2014, takes an in-depth look at what they’re doing and how food manufacturers and retailers can take part in this trend.
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Sweets & Soda: Can carbonates learn a lesson from confectionery? Despite vulnerability to growing wellness concerns, these two categories have experienced divergent recent fortunes and future prospects. Through the early incorporation of smaller packages and more premium products, the confectionery category has outperformed carbonates in terms of value growth.
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Ugly produce on the rise ‘Ugly produce’ is on JWT Intelligence’s list of 100 Things to Watch in 2014, is proliferating in Europe, thanks in part to government efforts to reduce the 89 million tons of food wasted in Europe each year.
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Research conducted by Stanford and Boston University business academics has explored the question of how the feeling of satiety affects how soon people might eat the same food again; and the upshot is that humans take more pleasure in moderation than over-indulgence.
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| See all 2014 trends reports here! |
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Food Science and Technology
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While they may be feared, spurned and hopelessly misunderstood in today’s world, the fact is that mankind depends on food additives; in fact, the industrialised world would not have been possible without them. A FREE paper published in Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety analyses the safety and toxicity of the most important additives.
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Pescatech, a leading distributor of international cleaning solutions for the food-beverage industries has launched Vikan brushware in PINK! Vikan now offers more cleaning tools in more colours than any other competitive manufacturer.
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A team at Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh has produced modified proteins that easily break down into micro-particles and therefore closely mimic the behaviour of fats during food manufacture which it believes is far advanced on any previous replacers.
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What’s next in active and intelligent food packaging?
Among the types of active and intelligent packaging most commonly researched is antimicrobial food packaging. But when will we see commercialisation and true marketplace impact? |
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Why packaging can spoil the flavour of food – and how to avoid it Flavour contamination from packaging is a big, much-studied commercial issue – and there are many ways of mitigating what is known as “flavour scalping” ie when some of the food’s flavour is lost to the packaging, or when the food absorbs aromas from the packaging.
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The first human trials of a banana that’s been genetically engineered to contain higher levels of beta carotene are underway in the US.
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| Health and Nutrition |
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A new scientific review in the British Journal of Nutrition claims organic foods are higher in some nutrients and lower in pesticides compared with conventionally grown varieties.
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We may think of ourselves as just human, but we’re really a mass of microorganisms housed in a human shell. Every person alive is host to about 100 trillion bacterial cells. They outnumber human cells 10 to one and account for 99.9 percent of the unique genes in the body.
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| Weird, Whacky and Wonderful Stuff |
‘Crisps buoyed Britain in its darkest hour’ The crisp has been a Western favourite snack for nearly 200 years – it’s almost as if salt and vinegar are in our blood. The UK alone troughs its way through an estimated six billion bags annually. There’s a new book out tracing the history of the potato crisp.
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Food bites…2014: Using consumer insights to
address the obesity epidemic
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“POLICY and nutrition advocates are almost always looking at the stuff, the people or their behaviour and are forgetting that all eating occurs in a cultural context. Like any other culture, ours has rules governing when we should eat, what we should eat, with whom we should eat and so forth. Or at least it should work that way.
“But as I believe most of us recognise, those norms governing our eating behaviour have all but disappeared in our contemporary lives. And as those rules have vanished, so too has our ability to control our waistlines….
“Let’s begin by thinking creatively about how to repair some of the damage here, how to refashion our collective eating practices to reflect a new morality about food consumption.”
“NEVER in my lifetime did I think I would be living in a state that allowed marijuana retailers to occupy the same neighbourhood shopping space as my bank or dry cleaner. If we can collectively decide to do something as seemingly radical as legalising certain narcotics, is it too little to expect that we can experiment with ways to quit eating so gosh-darned much food by rethinking how we approach eating and snacking in our schools and workplaces?”
Harvey Hartman, chairman of The Hartman Group, read more
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