Lynn A. KuntzThe Hot Pot RSS

The Hot Pot is a goulash of news, opinions and advice about designing food products and other issues affecting our industry. Its moderator and sometimes contributor is Lynn A. Kuntz, editor of Food Product Design. A lifetime of food-industry experience, first in the trenches and currently via the written word, has shaped her knowledge base and her opinions―and she's not afraid to use either of them.

08/04/2008

U.S. Obesity: Must Be the HFCS

The New York Times reported on the USDA’s latest food availability data (the amount of food produced for the average American consumer, minus various measures of waste) which tallies up the total for 2006. According to the data, the average American ate approximately 18.2 lbs. of food a week, vs. the 16.4 weekly lbs. they consumed in 1970.Let’s do the math: We’ll be kind and say only ...
07/31/2008

Battle for Stevia Supremacy Heats Up

PepsiCo just threw down the stevia gauntlet to Coca-Cola Co, announcing the imminent debut of a line of stevia-sweetened drinks. In a press release issued July 31, PepsiCo announced a partenership with Whole Earth Sweetener Company, a subsidary of Merisant, to introduce PureVia™, Whole Earth’s stevia-based sweetener in a new nutritionally enhanced PepsiCo beverage called “SoBe ...
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07/21/2008

A Natural Question

The buzz is all about “natural” products these days, and demand for natural foods and beverages appears to be soaring. A longtime associate and fellow blogger, Gary Augustine, vice president, Jones and Thomas, Inc., is looking for the answer to a simple question when it comes to products carrying a “natural” label.-Lynn A. Kuntz Isn’t Natural Supposed To Be Simple?I’m ...
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07/15/2008

Fear and Loathing of HFCS

High fructose corn syrup seems to have acquired the mantle of “bad food du jour.” I profess I’ve not studied the current evidence in depth, but I haven’t seem anything that alarms me. (Let me assure you, however, that any type of corn syrup―or anything sweet, for that matter―is decidedly not responsible for my extra pounds.) And so we’ve invited John S. White, ...
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07/09/2008

Food vs. Fuel: Filling the Wrong Tank?

Wondering how to put a brake on spiraling prices at the pump and along the supply chain? As the debate about the economic and environmental effect of biofuels continues, today’s guest, economist Thomas E. Elam, Ph.D., president, FarmEcon LLC, and Adjunct Fellow of the Center for Global Food Issues, a project of the Hudson Institute, provides an analysis of the situation. Elam recently published ...
06/29/2008

Line Extensions: Fine Young Cannibals

While catching up on my post-vacation reading today, I saw a Brandweek article about candy market segments according to Hershey. While the part about the consumer segments (running the gamut from “loyal indulgers” to “detached occasionalists”) was the topic that initially caught my eye, after reading the article, what really piqued my interest was that this marketing philosophy ...
06/24/2008

A Good Climate for GM-Derived Foods

Graham Brookes, agricultural economist with the UK-based analysts PG Economics would like to take issue with the stream of negative, subjective and unrepresentative views of anti-biotech organisations and provide definitive impact evidence based on robust, representative data from peer-reviewed scientific journals.
 

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