Food manufacturers are under increasing pressure to reduce sodium, but surveys suggest many shoppers are, well, not that bothered. So where does this leave firms plugging sodium reduction solutions?
Some food manufacturers still worry that using potassium chloride to replace salt in their recipes might compromise their clean label credentials. But the FDA’s recent proposal to include potassium as one of the nutrients that must be listed on the Nutrition...
If you don’t like taking risks, don’t go into the beverage industry, says the founder of ChaiElixir, an Oklahoma City based start-up selling sparkling tea. “A significant portion of new products do not make it past year one or two, but that’s the nature...
The nutrition bar category is becoming saturated, but there are still untapped pockets of opportunity, says Ohio-based Good Greens, which claims to blow rivals out of the water when it comes to packing a nutritional punch.
Tetra Pak's Suley Muratoglu has challenged packaging designers and brands to shake up the beverage and liquid dairy markets with better graphic design implementation.
Keurig Green Mountain is “well on target” to expand beyond hot drinks into the much larger cold beverage category as early as next fall with the launch of its Keurig Cold carbonation system in North America, the firm’s CEO confirmed Nov. 19.
Coffee leaf tea has got the 'body and full flavor of black tea without the bitterness'
By unlocking the potential of the coffee fruit, enterprising companies from Bai Brands and KonaRed (beverages) to CF Global (coffee flour) and VDF Futureceuticals (nutraceuticals) have already proved that the coffee bean is not the only thing the coffee...
Protein is hot - and big brands are piling more of it into everything from breakfast cereal to ice cream. Yet the Dietary Guidelines for Americans say “inadequate protein intake in the US is rare”. So does this trend make sense from a nutritional perspective?
To understand Functional Foods you must see it as a strategy to add value to processed foods, says the president and founder of the HealthyMarketingTeam, Peter Wennstrom, in this guest article.
Faced with mounting difficulties in their drug businesses, many pharmaceutical manufacturers are looking at getting into functional foods and beverages, notes food marketing expert, Julian Mellentin in this guest article.
While mainstream food retailers discovered kombucha later than their counterparts in the ‘natural’ channel, they are playing catch-up now, says natural soda maker Reed’s, which entered the market in 2012 with its Culture Club kombucha range and now claims...
Global gum leader Wrigley is trying to block the third largest gum player Perfetti Van Melle’s from registering character trademarks for ‘WTF’ and ‘What the Fresh’ in the US.
Protein fortification is a red hot trend in the market, but one formulation expert questions whether all of the information on the protein portions of those product labels is being reported correctly.
General Mills has agreed that it will not use the term ‘100% natural’ to describe Nature Valley bars that contain certain ‘artificially produced’ ingredients in order to settle a long-running false advertising lawsuit*.
Most Americans believe knowing how much added sugar is in a food would be helpful, according to a recent study that contradicts food manufacturers’ concerns that a proposal to differentiate added and naturally occurring sugar on the Nutrition Facts label...
American children were exposed to significantly fewer TV ads for sugary drinks in 2013 compared with 2011. But not every soda giant got the memo, says a new report, which claims that children aged 2-11 saw 29% more TV ads for PepsiCo sugary drinks in...
Three years ago, Greek yogurt was on fire. Today, as the category has matured, its growth has slowed to a more modest pace, while one market watcher predicts dollar sales growth in the overall yogurt category (which has been driven by Greek in recent...
Can a boiled sweet stop you from overeating? While at first glance any product marketed as a ‘signaling lozenge’ sounds distinctly dubious, the entrepreneur behind MealEnders does not try to blind consumers with science - or pseudoscience - when he makes...
Four years ago sodium was public enemy #1. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) was calling for the FDA to modify the GRAS status of salt and slash the daily value for sodium to 1,500mg, and the food industry was on high alert. Today, sugar is the new bogeyman,...
Innovation and dedication to quality, rather than aggressive promotions, are helping Pinnacle Foods gain distribution and hold sales steady in the frozen foods and bakery categories at a time when consumers increasingly are favoring fresh foods, according...
Bai Brands CEO Ben Weiss says the Dr Pepper allied brand will hit $50m in sales this year and puts this down to a focus on ‘distribution at the expense of brand equity’ during the early ‘basement’ years.
Pinnacle Foods has struck a deal to acquire Canadian plant-based food specialist Garden Protein International (Gardein) for C$175m ($154m) from founder Yves Potvin and private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners.
While kale chips have a lot of growth potential in conventional food stores, Rhythm Superfoods CEO Scott Jensen said he worries whether the pervasive leafy green soon will jump the shark as a trendy snack ingredient in health and natural product stores.
Tune into an earnings call from a big consumer packaged goods (CPG) company, and you’ll likely hear a lot of frustration over the ineffectiveness of trade spending. But is weary resignation (‘it’s just a cost of doing business') a constructive response?
What’s for dinner tonight? And could Watson - the IBM computer that trounced its human rivals at Jeopardy - have the answer? FoodNavigator-USA headed to the reThinkFood conference - a collaboration between the Culinary Institute of America and the MIT...
J.M. Smucker Company’s notable 9% list price increase on Folgers, Dunkin’ Donuts and other packaged coffees in the U.S. announced last June has finally caught up with the food maker, dragging down its second quarter sales an expected 5%.
Unprecedented access to information about foods through smart phones and social media is a driving factor in consumers’ increasing interest in healthy eating, according to a leading food culture researcher.
'Hampton Creek is up against a well-financed plaintiff'
While Unilever’s lawsuit against Hampton Creek Foods has generated a lively debate about corporate bullying, industrialized egg production, and whether the standard of identity for ‘mayonnaise’ is outdated, legal experts say it will hinge upon what consumers...
John Gagliardi let his experience as a college and professional lacrosse player guide his choices when it came to formulating his new energy beverage company. Called Titan Tea, the product line is based on black tea and D-ribose as primary ingredients.
Start-up Green Sheep Water hopes that using aluminum bottles to package its recently launched water will reduce the nearly 990 plastic bottles that Americans use every second that end up in the landfill or ocean.
Mainstream retailers that have been slow to take up the natural and organic product mantle now are realizing the trend is not a flash-in-the-pan and are scrambling to stock more healthy options, which is good news for Hain Celestial, company executives...
Monster Energy admits that Red Bull’s successful Summer Edition launch with 7-Eleven meant it lost market share in Canada during Q3 2014, due its distribution partner’s ‘conflicting priorities’.
Attorney: Unilever needs to prove 'Just Mayo' misleads reasonable consumer
UPDATED: Unilever has filed a lawsuit against Hampton Creek Foods accusing it of falsely advertising its egg-free Just Mayo spread and causing “irreparable harm” to Unilever's Hellmann’s mayonnaise brand and the category as a whole.
Boulder Brands - which announced a high-profile re-launch of its Smart Balance spreads on a non-GMO platform in March - has admitted that the move has not transformed the brand’s flagging fortunes.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rubbished suggestions by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) it is hiding data collected on animal drug residues in raw milk.
Stevia-and-sugar-sweetened Coca-Cola Life is rolling out nationwide this month following trials in The Fresh Market stores in four US states. But Coca-Cola has declined to comment on a new report claiming that it has already proved to be an “undeniable...
With HPP (high-pressure-processed) cold-pressed juices now an established part of any self-respecting retailer’s chilled beverage set, it’s easy to forget just how rapidly this category has moved from niche to mainstream, and that key players such as...
UPDATED - Initial returns indicate that voters in Colorado have given a firm thumbs down to GMO labeling initiative Proposition 105, while the vote in Oregon on Measure 92 headed to a nail-biting finish - but ended with voters saying NO.
Online grocery shopping, craft foods, fermented and pickled foods such as sauerkraut, and non-stop snacking will all gain momentum in 2015, according to ‘Supermarket Guru’ and TV personality Phil Lempert.
Given that the Dietary Guidelines urge Americans to reduce calorie intakes from added sugar, helping them identify foods that actually contain it by listing it on the Nutrition Facts panel seems like a no-brainer, says nutritional ranking system Guiding...
The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has rejected two citizen’s petitions urging it to ban the use of aspartame as a food additive, arguing that neither presented any credible scientific data that would warrant a change of policy on the zero-calorie...
A new interactive food database created by the Environmental Working Group aims to help consumers who increasingly want organic and natural foods select products that are “cleaner, greener and healthier.”