25-May-2009 - When is a breakfast cereal not a breakfast cereal? Well, when it’s a drug.
18-May-2009 - You can try your best to avoid it, but when it comes to measuring carbon footprint, almost everything we do these days, either as a business or individuals, is likely to have a negative impact on the environment.
11-May-2009 - What do companies like Vitamin Shoppe, Johnson & Johnson, DSM, Whole Foods, NBTY and even Pfizer have in common?
04-May-2009 - On a summer’s day in 1906 Theodore Roosevelt pushed through new food safety regulation. The Food and Drugs Act passed that day over 100 years ago was the last time the US food safety system was modernized.
27-Apr-2009 - As yet another TV show concludes that supplements are unnecessary, is the ignorance of the mainstream media few putting the health of the many at risk? Isn’t it time to change the record?
20-Apr-2009 - What does health taste like? As a kid, I was encouraged to hold my nose and swallow down broad beans and cod-liver oil. If they tasted bad, it was only ‘cos they were good for me.
14-Apr-2009 - The ongoing slide of global capitalism is decimating industries, but the food supplements industry is not one of them as fraught consumers turn to its potential low-cost, anti-medical, wellness promise.
06-Apr-2009 - Ben & Jerry’s campaign to ensure produce from clones is detectable in the food chain shows that bundling biotech in with conventional produce remains unacceptable – but lessons from GM do not seem to have been learned.
30-Mar-2009 - “If you don’t plan to plant a garden in Lake Wobegon in the spring, it means you plan to be planted yourself.”
23-Mar-2009 - Short of an earth-bound deity walking amongst us and miraculously multiplying our fish stocks, industry must invest more in alternative sources of omega-3 to meet nutritional needs.
16-Mar-2009 - Sugar could be shedding its bad boy image to take a surprise spot on the public’s list of trusted ingredients, as manufacturers look to appeal to more savvy consumers.
09-Mar-2009 - Clutched to the president’s chest like a medal of nationalisation, Cargill Venezuela cannot be sitting very comfortably this week as it awaits the fate of its rice plant.
02-Mar-2009 - “The new cartons stink.” Customer responses to new product developments seldom come clearer or more direct than that.
23-Feb-2009 - Consumer concerns about a synthetic growth hormone used in milk production have prompted two leading food producers in the United States – General Mills and Dannon – to reformulate their dairy product lines. It is a decision that will have immediate implications on the dairy market as a whole, but could also mark a turning point in the use of new technologies in food production in general.
16-Feb-2009 - The GM debate at times seems much like the Hokey Cokey (or Pokey, if you’re US-based). There’s been a lot of putting in, some putting out, and quite a lot of shaking things all about, but as of yet, there hasn’t really been a turnaround and definitely no ra, ra, ra!
09-Feb-2009 - Last week’s withdrawal of a high-profile functional food in France is disappointing for the company concerned and maybe for the healthy/functional foods industry, but you may be led to think differently if you happen to be a reader of the UK broadsheet, The Financial Times.
09-Feb-2009 - Danone pulled beauty yogurt Essensis from French shelves last week and left behind a lesson in how not to market edible cosmetics.
02-Feb-2009 - E. coli in ground beef, melamine in infant formula, and salmonella in peanut butter - what is next? Isn’t it about time the slices of the US food safety pie were taken back from the multiple federal agencies involved and surveillance placed under one roof?
26-Jan-2009 - Everyone from government to grocers seems to have their own idea of how best to inform consumers about foods’ nutritional content, but a labeling free-for-all has resulted in a clamor of nutrition labels which are actually getting in the way of comprehension.
19-Jan-2009 - Who likes pesticides? Misunderstood by consumers and misrepresented by pressure groups, pesticides are a soft target for legislators. The latest blow to that soft target could have hard consequences for the European food industry and for developing countries.
12-Jan-2009 - There are fears that in the economic crisis consumers will put on “recession pounds” by eating unhealthily. Rightly or wrongly, food manufacturers may suffer the blame but “unhealthy” and “recession proof” do not necessarily go hand-in-hand.
23-Dec-2008 - Benjamin Franklin once said that nothing is certain in life but death and taxes, conveniently forgetting the human race’s desire to avoid both inconveniences at any cost.
15-Dec-2008 - It sometimes seems as if life is a pantomime, and food science is the baddie, complete with boos and hisses from the audience.
08-Dec-2008 - One of the most fiercely debated and amended pieces of European Union food law history is playing out before our eyes, and its effects are beginning to be felt.
01-Dec-2008 - “Four legs good, two legs bad.” When the pigs take over the land in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, they have no hesitation; any creature with four legs is beyond reproach and any human is bad, mad and dangerous to know.