Beverages continue to be one of the hot beds for innovation when it comes to nutrient fortification, with insoluble fiber, nutritional oils, and (of course) protein all catching the eye.
The Global Organization for EPA and DHA Omega-3s’ campaign to promote positive messages about omega-3s has finally launched, but more funds needs to be raised to allow a national roll-out, said GOED’s Adam Ismail.
Consumers are looking for individual and integrated strategies to optimize their health and wellness, but no company has yet put all the pieces together, says BrandHive’s Jeff Hilton.
Obviously taste rules when it comes to any food or beverage. But many consumers are also looking for indications that what they’re eating has been minimally “messed with”—hence the growing incidence of “all natural” and related terms on product labels.
Cargill has weathered a potential media storm concerning its functional ingredient Trehalose. The ingredient, a glucose dissaccharide, was one of the potentially ‘scary’ food ingredients seized upon for its use by a well known fast food chain.
The GRAS process as it stands in the United States is vulnerable to criticism based on possible conflicts of interest and low-quality safety work, said Claire Kruger, PhD, president of Spherix Consulting, a division of ChromaDex.
During the IFT 2014 show in New Orleans, FoodNavigator-USA caught up with RIBUS Inc. CEO Steve Peirce for an update on its all-natural and organic rice-based ingredients and the sustainability of rice in a world that faces staggering levels of food waste.
The growth of the Non-GMO Project verification scheme has been nothing short of explosive over the past 18 months. But does the firm serving as its technical administrator have the resources to cope, and are competing certification schemes adopting the...
Recent pathogen outbreaks in raw chia powder and concerns over whether some psyllium is actually food grade highlight the ongoing importance of selecting suppliers wisely, says the CEO of BI Nutraceuticals.
Lackluster sales of packaged bread & ready-to-eat cereals might suggest that years of carb-bashing and changing lifestyles have finally driven some grain-based categories into terminal decline. However, flour milling giant Ardent Mills begs to differ.
Since it was created in 2012, Chapul Inc. has been on a mission to integrate edible insects into Western diets, using its cricket energy bars as the vehicle.
Steviol glycosides produced through fermentation will be cost-effective, high purity, and sustainable, but they are about 18 months away, says DSM Food Specialties as it announces its new sweetener platform at the IFT Expo.
What is the future of ‘naturality’ on product labels? Are sin taxes and warning just policy tools disguised as a consumer advocacy? And should health and wellness be part of every brand’s messaging?
Women, protein blends, and the ‘anti-wasting’ market are all areas of significant opportunity in sports nutrition, says Jeff Hilton, co-founder and CMO of BrandHive.
If the cover of TIME magazine earlier this month (headline: Eat Butter) is anything to go by, it would seem that the conversation about fat, and saturated fat in particular, is changing, at least in the media. But are policymakers sitting up and taking...
On the face of it, the FDA’s proposal to revoke the GRAS status of partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) - the source of most of the ‘artificial’ trans fats in the US food supply - seems like a no-brainer. But there are other ways to crack down on trans...
A lot of food manufacturers are not happy with FDA proposals to revoke the GRAS status of partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs). Meanwhile, the soybean industry is urging the agency to hold off until larger quantities of new high oleic soybean oil are available....
GlobalMeatNews travelled to Beijing, China for the 20th annual World Meat Congress, which took place from 14-16 June 2014. In this video we give you an overview of the event, as well as an exclusive interview with Canadian agriculture minister, Gerry...
Food companies need to develop online personalities to successfully connect with savvy consumers who expect a human connection, according to nutritionist and social media guru Jenny Westerkamp.
Understanding consumer expectations and respecting these, combined with a boldness to draw inspiration from new areas is the perfect mix for successful innovation, say experts.
The huge amounts of food and agricultural produce that end up as waste could be used to feed insects and produce high-quality animal protein that is better for environment, according to Professor Arnold van Huis.
Fear is a major roadblock to many food companies getting it right when it comes to social media, according to business mentor and entrepreneur Mike Greene.
Industry needs to ‘dramatically innovate’ if it is to come up with sustainable solutions to feed the world, says James Bauly of DSM, as he summarises his take away messages from the event.
Last year Professor Mark Post sparked international interest with the unveiling, and tasting, of the world's first lab-grown meat. Since then he's been working to iron out technical issues so that commercially available lab-grown meat can become...
What is the future of food? Simple communication of complex advances will be crucial, as well as picking up the pace amid a global population boom to feed the world nutritiously and sustainably, according to FoodNavigator and NutraIngredients senior editors.
Talking Rain’s Sparkling Ice brand plugs a market gap that Pepsi and Coca-Cola missed, enabling $350m in annual sales to tot up with little to no competition, its CEO says.
The use of mobile technologies and social media to connect with real consumers can help manufacturers gain better innovation insights for today and tomorrow, says Chris Cornyn.
The term ‘probiotic’ may be banned in the European Union – along with its cousin ‘prebiotic’ – but sales remain steady, and the global picture is buoyant, says leading analyst, Euromonitor International.
Irish dairy ingredients specialist Glanbia Nutritionals once filled its sights almost exclusively with the sports nutrition sector, but the explosion of interest in protein means the ‘ordinary’ mainstream food industry is a bigger and bigger target.
Nestlé may have canned Jenny Craig, and regulators clamped down on the sector's claim-making, but weight management products are booming globally, especially in increasingly image driven emerging economies like India and Brazil. It has pushed beyond...
The bread sector has experienced a riches to rags story and is now in a state of decline with white bread demonized but industry has hope in whole grains, says ConAgra Mills.
Aside from people with celiac disease, which is estimated to affect less than 1% of the US population, why do so many other Americans buy gluten-free products, and will they carry on buying them, or are current growth rates unsustainable?
Going green and taking on sustainability initiatives sometimes can be a hard sell to tight fisted financial executives. Cargill marketing manager Jennifer McLenighan tells how the company's new assessment tool can make the pitch easier.
Will the FDA put us all out of our misery and make a decision asap on whether GMOs belong in foods marketed as ‘natural’, as judges handling class action lawsuits over this issue are hoping?
The media frenzy surrounding AquaBounty’s GE salmon and the accompanying ‘Frankenfish’ headlines obscure the fact that it is "just a fast-growing fish”, according to one animal biotechnology specialist.
What precedent might it set if firms are forced to label foods made using new technologies, even if the end product does not differ in any meaningful way from foods developed by ‘traditional’ methods?
If you plot them both on a graph, the rise in diagnosed cases of autism correlates closely with the rise in sales of organic foods. So do organic foods cause autism? Of course not.
New research from Cargill shows that when parents are making purchase decisions, they don't view food categories as narrowly as a food manufacturer might.
Success with Boomers – people born from 1946 to 1964 – is dependent on tapping into what they know, with functional teas a particularly hot driver, says marketing guru Jeff Hilton.
From California to Washington, and from Connecticut to Vermont, initiatives to label the presence of ingredients derived from genetically modified foods are dominating headlines. Despite this, the CEO of BI Nutraceuticals doesn’t think we’ll see government...
The global protein market is ‘fantastic’ and driven by awareness, says the President and COO of Burcon Nutrascience, with pea protein ‘very hot right now’.
By exploiting plant by-products for precursors to in-demand flavors, Natural Taste Consulting’s (NTC) has come up with natural, sustainable, and highly cost-effective options for a variety of foods – but how are they doing this?
Open innovation used to be just for the likes of P&G and Unilever, but today, it's being embraced by a lot of mid-sized companies in the $100m-$1bn revenue range as well, according to Andy Zynga, CEO of open innovation expert and corporate matchmaking...
Plant-based proteins were a hot topic at the IFT show this year, whether from algae, pea, rice, soy or other plant-based sources. One firm making waves in this market is RiceBran Technologies, which caught up with FoodNavigator-USA at our booth to talk...
Stevia supplier PureCircle has released sustainability goals for 2020 - but is sustainability really top-of-mind for stevia users? And why does the company define calorie reduction as part of sustainability? FoodNavigator speaks with PureCircle's...