 July 1999 -- Focus On New Technologies
By: Heidi Kreuzer What's on the Net? What isn't on the Net these days? Perhaps the more appropriate question to ask is: "What's on the Net for food scientists and product developers?" The answer is plenty - all you need is Web access and a browser, and you're ready to go. For general food-industry information, www.foodingredientsonline.com and www.foodonline.com provide a good starting point for exploring the Web. These sites contain supplier information, industry news, employment assistance, discussion forums for food professionals and archived editorials, along with event listings and links to food-related books, equipment and supplies.
Board meetings
For subject-specific cyber surfing, marketing-board sites often prove to be treasure troves of information and advice. For example, the Walnut Marketing Board's site, www.walnut.org, supplies industrial formulas for baking with walnuts, as well as walnut-nutrient data and a list of suppliers in California.
At the Almond Board of California's site, www.almondsarein.com, the handy "Tips for Technologists" brochure is available for downloading from the Nuts (&Bolts) section. The brochure is in the form of a PDF (portable document format) file, which can easily be viewed with the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader program, available as a free download at www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html. The advantage to PDF files is their flexibility across operating systems - not only are they readable in all environments, but the document's appearance is preserved, complete with fonts and formatting. Meanwhile, at the home of the incredible edible egg, www.aeb.org, the American Egg Board provides information on egg nutrition, safety and recipes, as well as the Eggcyclopedia, an alphebetized index of egg-related data. If you need to know how to freeze an egg, here's the answer, along with information on such topics as albumen, foam, calcium content and microwave recipes. The National Honey Board has devoted a section of its site specifically to information for food technologists. At www.nhb.org/foodtech/index.html, there's information on honey's composition, physical characteristics, sensory aspects, functionality and applications, as well as product formulas and information on suppliers. This site also offers fact sheets and a technical brochure in PDF format. In its Grains of Truth pages, the Wheat Foods Council's site at www.wheatfoods.org delivers information on products ranging from pancakes to pasta. In the Nutrition Forum section, Judi Adams, M.S., R.D., president of the council, maintains a question-and-answer bulletin board, displaying both visitor's nutrition queries and her responses to the questions. Dairy Management Inc. (DMI) also encourages question submissions by giving those who visit its www.doitwithdairy.com site the opportunity to send a detailed dairy-ingredient query to the organization's technical-support group. The site also contains a number of documents that detail how dry milk and whey ingredients can be used in food products. Additionally, DMI's site at www.dairyinfo.com provides information on the dairy industry at large.
Association sites
Food-industry association websites present an additional source of information for food developers. For example, the American Association of Cereal Chemists' (AACC) home page at www.scisoc.org/aacc contains links to the association's Cereal Chemistry journal, as well as a listing of available short courses. Functional Foods Online, a nutraceuticals and functional-foods forum developed by the AACC, can also be accessed from this home page. There, you'll find articles on such topics as dietary fiber, resistant starches and bakery-product fortification, along with supplier information and an events listing.
The Institute of Food Technologists' (IFT) site, www.ift.org, also contains information on events, providing an extensive listing of short courses, conferences and exhibitions. In addition, the IFT home page offers information on the organization's Annual Meeting and Food Expo®, as well as links to education, employment and career-development sites.
Other professional association sites include:
Government domains
The federal government maintains a vast network of sites, many of which are very useful to those in the food industry. The sheer scope of the information housed in these sites can perhaps be a bit overwhelming, but the pages are nevertheless excellent sources of information.
A good place to start is the Food and Nutrition Information Center (FNIC) site at www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/index.html, which is administered by the USDA's Agricultural Research Center (ARS). If you are interested in the sugar content of a particular food, for example, clicking on the "Food Composition" button brings up a number of nutrient-information sites, including USDA-ARS's Nutrient Data Laboratory at www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/. Or, clicking on the "Food Safety" button brings you to the Foodborne Illness Education Information Center. From here, you can access such sites as www.foodsafety.gov, which contains scads of information on foodborne pathogens, including the creatively titled "Ten Least-Wanted Foodborne Pathogens" page at www.fightbac.org/problem/10-least.html.
Further information on food safety can be found at http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov, the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, and www.foodsafety.org, a multi-agency site funded mainly by the USDA. The International Bibliographic Information on Dietary Supplements site, located at http://odp.od.nih.gov/ods/databases/ibids.html, is a searchable database with over 300,000 listings. Developed jointly by FNIC and the National Institutes of Health, the goal of the database is to provide a comprehensive index of published research on dietary supplements, including vitamins, minerals and botanicals. While full-text articles are not available due to copyright restrictions, a list of journals provides assistance with obtaining copies of the publications.
Other government sites to bookmark include:
While not a government-operated site, www.foodcompliance.com is a good commercial site for those looking to find answers to the regulatory and compliance questions that may arise during the food-development process. Taking full advantage of the site requires a $25-per-month membership fee, although much of the site's information is available for free. The Internet can be an extremely valuable research-and-development tool. The sites mentioned here will lead to additional resources, and before long you'll become an expert at finding information online. Traveling cyber space may take a little getting used to, but once you've tried it, there's no going back - chances are you'll soon be joining the ranks of the numerous habitual (and often Internet-addicted) Web visitors.
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