05/18/2006
The healthful aspects of food--and the inverse of that equation--tend to make more headlines these days, particularly in the case of the latter. Nutritional, science-based breakthroughs often take a back seat to the latest report that (gasp!) a steady diet of all things fried and a sedentary lifestyle might cause obesity, which can then lead to type 2 diabetes.
Discounting extreme examples, an ...
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05/17/2006
OK. We had to know that this was coming. The "Starbucks Effect" (variously defined and interpreted by consumers and the media as either a cause of increased traffic congestion and air pollution, an effective marketing model, or a catalyst for the growth of coffeehouses in general, among other theories: see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61460-2005Apr17.html, http://www.japaninc.net/article.php?articleID=1218 ...
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05/16/2006
Airline food and hospital food have probably spurred the creation of more jokes than any happenstance gatherings of a priest, a minister and a rabbi. You'd think that the two situations where people typically have little control over--the need for airline travel and the rarely voluntary admittance to the hospital--would serve as points of inspiration for product developers who work in those foodservice ...
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05/15/2006
Since the 1980s, the food industry has repeatedly requested that FDA establish official criteria for natural foods (here's a recent one: http://www.sugar.org/media/press_releases.asp?id=321). However, that initiative remains tabled, thereby relegating that market to a realm that we can at best call nebulous. FDA has said that it has not considered defining "natural" foods--or enforcing "natural" claims--one ...
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05/12/2006
In the wake of the All Things Organic™ show, I have a lingering, thorny topic to vivisect before giving organics a bit of a rest (well, I'll at least try to hold off for a week or two…). I can sum it up in two words: Wal-Mart organics.
First: the status quo. Everyone already knows today that organic is more than an emerging niche, and it's getting bigger all the time. For years, large manufacturing ...
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