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The retail niche narrows
Trees, antacids boost allergic reactions
Trans fat reputation darkens
Sympak to show high speed turnkey lines
BRIEFLY…
The World Health Organisation
has published a revised guide to food safety and quality. The document is
aimed at helping governments, particularly in developing countries to
strengthen their food safety legislation. Go to ftp://ftp.fao.org/es/esn/food/GuideFCS_en.pdf
Mindful of America’s swelling
waistline, the US Department of Agriculture has called for comment
on its revised Food Pyramid, the national healthy eating guide, that now
contains 600 fewer calories than before. You have 45 days from now. The
new pyramid is due out in early 2005.
One in four British shoppers find
it hard to find and understand information on food labels, says the UK Food
Standards Agency. The findings of research into five label designs
will go to the European Commission, which is exploring a uniform food
label.
The US Food & Drug
Administration voted nine-three against a new drug application from
Norway’s PhotoCure for its Metvix (methyl aminolevulinate) product for
the treatment of skin cancer (basal cell carcinoma or BCC). But it said
there is a medical need for Metvix in certain patient populations with BCC
and there will be further discussions with the FDA on this.
Trends
The retail niche
narrows
Wal-Mart and club stores are
forcing smaller grocers into niches to survive, but consumers care less
about retail-based relationships.
These are two of five trends facing
food processors and retailers outlined by US management consultancy
Acclaro Growth Partners. The study found:
Wal-Mart
and club stores are shaking up the grocery industry. Grocers cannot
compete against Wal-Mart, but they can compete around Wal-Mart by being
what it is not, cannot be, and will not become.
Specialty retail
is becoming even more differentiated. Novel tastes, prepared meals, ethnic
foods, and even branded fresh foods are gaining popularity.
Battle for the perimeter
Produce, meat, fish, bakery, prepared foods, organics, nutraceuticals and
functional foods are more important in the traditional grocery
environment.
Brand? What brand?
Brand is more relevant in fresh foods and less relevant in centre aisle.
Technology
It is no longer a luxury. An e-commerce capability is essential.
Relationship-based selling is less relevant than ever.
Allergies
Trees,
antacids boost allergic reactions
New research released this week at
the World Allergy Organization's (WAO) Congress in Vancouver shows that
plane tree pollen and treatment to lower stomach pH could lead to a rise
in allergic reaction to foods.
People sensitised to one allergen
may become allergic to others, say researchers who tested patients with
known allergies to cherry and hazelnut against plane tree pollen. Patients
who had allergic reactions to the lipid transfer proteins (LTPs) in
cherries also had the same reaction to a similar protein in hazelnuts.
This also reacted with the LTPs of a plane tree, producing a
cross-reaction. This may be important in increasing patients’
sensitivity to allergy sources, they say.
Other researchers found that
typical food allergens, such as fish or milk, are not resistant to stomach
digestion. Stomach, or gastric, digestion is dependent on the presence of
acid and pepsin, which is a protein-degrading enzyme. The pepsin is
activated at high acidic levels, but the elevation of the pH levels
hinders pepsin, thereby hampering protein digestion.
Some medications affect acid
secretion or neutralize the pH within the stomach. Then harmless food
proteins turn into potential allergens. With 10% of the adult population
today on antacids, these findings may be significant.
But Norwegian researchers had some
good news: allergies are distributed evenly between the sexes, and severe
reactions peak when patients are in their 20s. But most allergic reactions
happen outside the home, and are due mainly to nuts, peanuts and
shellfish.
Nutrition
Trans
fat reputation darkens
Eating trans fat is “like
throwing sand in your metabolic gears”, according to Harvard
University’s Dr Walter Willett, who adds trans fat raises 'bad' LDL
cholesterol and lowers 'good' HDL cholesterol.
The comment comes just after fats
and oils maker Archer Daniels Midland Company launched its NovaLipid line
of oils and shortenings that contain zero or reduced trans fat.
The US Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) has insisted that food manufacturers label trans fat content
by 1 January 2006.
Writing in the Harvard Health
Letter Willett said "Without processing, fat molecules have a
nice curved shape that allows them to be metabolised properly. Trans
fat is an entirely artificial, processed food… made out of vegetable
oils that have been heated and blasted with hydrogen. That process twists
the shape of the molecule so it doesn't 'fit' correctly with enzymes.
"Eating trans-fat is like
throwing sand into your finely regulated metabolic machinery," said
Willett, who is chairman of the nutrition department at Harvard's School
of Public Health.
CibusTec
2003
Sympak to
show high speed turnkey lines
Italian equipment maker Sympak will
complete turnkey lines for high speed food canning and edible oil bottling
into 500ml PET containers, as well as of stand-alone state-of-the-art
machines.
 The 24,000 bph edible oil line
consists of air conveyors feeding pre-labelled bottles, a
blower-filler-capper triblock with piston filling, a divider for shaped
bottles, a shrink wrapper with film thrusting, a five-layer/min pushing
palletiser, and conveying systems for bottles and packs.
Other innovative items include a
high speed rinser-filler-capper triblock for fruit juices with hot fill
technology in glass and PET bottles with temperatures and re-circle
control, a monoblock piston filler and seamer for vegetables preserves in
tinplate cans and, for aluminium band cans, a rotary seamer with a new
patented internal automatic seaming control system.
Sympak is presently
installing two turnkey projects, one in Brazil (a 24,000 bph bottling line
for seeds oil into PET bottles) and one in Austria (a 12,000 bph line for
olive oil into glass bottles), both to be delivered by October 2003.
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Smells
de-stress shoppers