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Hain Celestial invents McDonald's McVeggie burger
Applesauce snacks taste better under pressure
Kuya to spice up Allied Domecq sales
EC invites business incubators
More quit Ahold's US Foodservice
Obesity costs US $93bn/y
UK to cut salt content in processed food
NPD
Hain
Celestial invents McDonald's McVeggie burger
McDonald’s potentially
mould-breaking McVeggie burger, now on sale in 600 southern Californian
outlets, was developed at Yves Veggie Cuisine, a wholly owned subsidiary
of Hain Celestial Group, North America's leading maker of fresh meat
alternatives.
The new burger is a soy-based patty
with tangy barbeque sauce, fresh lettuce, tomato, slivered onions and
pickles served on a toasted whole-wheat bun. At 8 g of fat and 350
calories, the meal is cholesterol free, low in saturated fat and a good
source of protein, vitamins and minerals. The patties are made in the Yves
Veggie Cuisine plant in Vancouver along with over 30 meat and dairy
alternatives.
Applesauce
snacks taste better under pressure
Canada’s top applesauce producer,
Leahy Orchards, is using ultra high pressure rather than cooking or
chemicals to sterilise a new range of extended shelf life premium snacks
for foodservice outlets.
Company president Michael Leahy
said "The taste was remarkable because the product had not been
cooked." Leahy is using one Avure Technologies’ 215-litre
high-pressure processing (HPP) system and has another on order.
HPP destroys food-borne pathogens
and spoilage organisms, ensuring product safety and enabling longer shelf
life. Foods retain more of their fresh taste, colour, texture and
nutritional values, claims Avure.
The fresh applesauce and
applesauce/fruit blends are aimed at institutions, mainly public schools
in the US, for autumn 2003.
Launches
Kuya to
spice up Allied Domecq sales
 Drinks
firm Allied Domecq’s US business has launched Kuya, a spicy-citrus
fusion rum it hopes will create a new category.
Aimed at 21 to 29-year-olds who
drink rum and cola and spiced rum cocktails, the company expect to take
neck share from bourbon, vodka and beer.
Allied Domecq plans an initial
launch in 18 cities in May and a national roll-out in September. The rum
sector makes up 12.7% of the US spirits market, and sales grew 4.1% last
year, according to NABCA/DISCUS statistics. Specialty and spiced rums were
up by 7.5% over the same period. Kuya will be available in 1-litre, 750 ml
and 50 ml sizes.
Innovation
EC invites business
incubators
Cordis, the European Commission's
research and development information service, wants more business
incubators to join and use a specialised service that allows them to
submit and update their details and profiles.
Business incubators provide a
nurturing environment and practical help for new businesses. Cordis
already has details on over 700 business incubators in Europe and
associated countries. A searchable interface lets users identify the
nearest local support. The revamped service carries incubators’ news and
events announcements on the Cordis Wire news service. It also provides
links to the EC's benchmarking activities and case studies. Details from http://www.cordis.lu/incubators.
People
More
quit Ahold's US Foodservice
Two more executives have followed
former chief executive Jim Miller out of US Foodservice, the American
subsidiary at the heart of an $880 million financial scandal at the parent
company, Dutch retailer Royal Ahold.
The two latest quitters are chief
financial officer Michael Resnick and executive vice president and general
counsel David Abramson. This makes five executives who have left US
Foodservice over the scandal, which also cost the careers of Ahold’s
chief executive Cees van der Hoeven, and chief financial officer Michael
Meurs.
Sustainability
Fish in
crisis
Ocean fishing may become a thing of
legend unless the world takes immediate steps to rebuild fish stocks. This
is the stark warning of the cover story in today’s Nature
magazine.
Based on a 10-year study of top
predator fish species by Canadian and German scientists, it reports 90
percent of all large fish in the world's oceans are disappeared over the
past 50 years.
The prevalence of large predators
is an excellent indicator of the relative health of the supporting
population.
"The impact we have had on
ocean ecosystems has been vastly underestimated," said co-author
Boris Worm of Dalhousie University and the University of Kiel in Germany,
in an interview with Environmental News Service. "These are
the megafauna, the big predators of the sea, and the species we most
value. Their depletion not only threatens the future of these fish and the
fishers that depend on them, it could also bring about a complete
reorganisation of ocean ecosystems, with unknown global
consequences."
The study, based on data sets
representing all major fisheries in the world, shows that industrial
fisheries take only 10 to 15 years to reduce any new fish community they
encounter to one tenth of what it was before.
The researcher found that in
addition to the depletion of top predator stocks, the average size of
caught fish is only one fifth to one half of what it was. This also
suggests that many do not reach reproductive age.
Earlier warnings of overfishing of
Atlantic cod by co-author Ransom Myers went unheeded. Last week the
Canadian government declared the fish an endangered species. "No one
understood how fast the decline happened at the end; it was only a couple
of years," Myers told ENS. "The quotas had been too high. They
refused to slow down because they had seen lots of little fish coming in -
a good year class. The little fish were caught and discarded and there was
no future."
The researchers say fishing nations
must reduce quotas by at least half, reduce overall fishing effort, cut
subsidies, reduce bycatch, and create networks of marine reserves.
"If stocks were restored to higher abundance, we could get just as
much fish out of the ocean by putting in only a third to a tenth of the
effort. It would be difficult for fishermen initially but they will see
the gains in the long run," Myers said.
Health
Obesity
costs US $93bn/y
A US Centre for Disease Control (CDC)
study has found that health problems caused by overweight costs the US up
to $93 billion a year in medical bills, half of it paid by the government.
A few years ago, the estimated cost of tobacco smoking was $76 billion/y.
Two-thirds of Americans are more
than 10 pounds (4.5 kg) overweight. They risk more heart disease,
diabetes, many cancers and other illnesses.
The study found that annual medical
costs for an obese person (ie more than 30 pounds (13 kg) are about 37.7%
more, or $732 higher, than the costs for someone of normal weight. The
annual medical spending attributable to overweight and obesity is about
9.1% of national medical costs. Those attributable to smoking range from
6.5% and 14.4%.
UK to cut
salt content in processed food
The trade body for UK food and
drink manufacturing industry, the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), plans
to continue cuts in sodium content in breakfast cereals and soups and
sauces.
Since 1998 UK breakfast cereal
makers have cut sodium content by 16% and by the end of the year soup and
sauces makers expect to cut their products’ salt levels by 10%.
“Subject to consumer acceptance, (we will) push for further similar
reductions in 2004 and 2005,” the FDF says. The FDF also plans to review
sodium content of processed foods each year.
A 2000 survey found manufacturers
use salt for flavour (95%), preservative (46%), texture (38%), and for
technical processes (24%), such as to control yeast growth and
fermentation rate in bread and to inhibit the “clouding” of vinegar in
pickled products. |
