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US faces brain drain
Retailers to drive smart packs
Calcium, folic acid could save $15bn
General Mills goes whole-grain
Mutation leads to obesity - maybe
BRIEFLY
A daily intake of up to 10 mg/kg body
weight per day of methyl and ethyl parabens and their sodium salts
(additives E 214-219) is considered safe by the EFSA’s Scientific Panel on
Food Additives, Flavourings, Processing Aids and Materials in Contact with
Food (AFC). Propyl paraben is not included because available evidence of
long term safety is not convincing. The European Commission must now decide
if new measures are needed regarding the antimicrobial preservatives which
are used in foods, drugs, cosmetics and toiletries.
Countries with World Heritage sites
that have still to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, face
increasing pressure to act on greenhouse emissions. This follows a
report by international lawyers that says they must act under their
obligations under the UNESCO World Heritage Convention.
Meanwhile, the Friends of the Earth
lobby group report that Russia may be about to sign the Kyoto Protocol.
This will give the legal weight to force others to act or face sanctions.
Talent
US faces brain drain
As well as outsourcing clerical and
manufacturing jobs, the US is exporting its creative talent, says the
Conference Board, America’s top business panel, in its latest magazine.
The countries picking up the talent
include Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Ireland. These
countries are becoming more competitively creative at a faster rate than the
United States.
“For the first time in modern
memory, top scientists and intellectuals from elsewhere are choosing not to
come to the US,” the author says. “The altered flow of talent, aided by
more stringent security measures, is already beginning to show signs of
crimping the scientific process.”
Brussels is fast becoming a
creative-class centre to rival Boston, Seattle, and Austin. Vancouver and
Toronto are also set to take off; both city-regions have a higher
concentration of immigrants to help drive their creative economies than New
York, Miami, or Los Angeles do. As creative centres, Sydney and Melbourne
rank alongside Washington and New York.
The best young creative minds are no
longer flocking to America, so future cultural and industrial revolutions
are less likely to begin in the US. Unless corrected, the US will slowly
lose its competitive edge, the authors say. “The US desperately needs
economic, cultural, and political leadership with enough savvy to bridge
ideological, geographical, and international gaps,” they say.
Market
research
Retailers to drive smart packs
As food and beverages continue to
decline in terms of consumer spending, so-called smart packaging will help
retailers to meet more sophisticated customer needs and preserve
manufacturers’ profit margins.
This is the conclusion of new
research from Dublin-based Research and Markets.
Drinks, snacks and dairy segments will drive the kids' packaging markets,
but ambient meals and frozen segments should the only segments to grow over
the next five years, the report says.
Dairy, worth $71.59 billion in 2005,
is still the biggest segment in Europe, but snacks, at 7.2%, are the
fastest-growing by value.
Packaging for different occasions
will feature strongly in future, as will smart packaging which adds value to
the basic product.
Ingredients
Calcium, folic acid could save $15bn
Extra calcium could prevent 734,000
hip fractures and save in health care costs over the next five years. Giving
pregnant women more folic acid could prevent 600 cases of neural tube birth
defects yearly. Over five years, the US could save itself $13.9 billion and
$1.3 billion in lifetime medical costs over five years, says the Lewin Group
in a report presented to Congress by the Dietary Supplement Education
Alliance.
Supplements such as omega-3 fatty
acids, glucosamine and saw palmetto supplements also showed promise for
improving quality of life and potentially reducing health care costs, it
says.
Ingredient
General Mills goes whole-grain
The diet crisis in the US has
prompted General Mills, maker of Cheerios, Wheaties and Trix cereals, to
make all of its breakfast cereals with whole grain.
The firm says despite the health
benefits of eating whole grain cereals, nine out of ten Americans do not get
the recommended amount of whole grain each day. The move means Americans
will eat more than 1.5 billion servings of whole grain per year without
adding calories.
Obesity
Mutation leads to obesity - maybe
Abnormalities in the melanocortin 4
receptor (MC4R) gene, which regulates body weight, have a "major"
impact on the tendency to obesity, bumping up the body mass index (BMI)
score, reveals research in the Journal of Medical Genetics.
But the mutations are rare; only 2%
to 3% of very obese people carry them.
"MC4R mutations entail a strong
predisposition to obesity," conclude the authors. But they add that the
high rate of body fat among the relatives of the carriers suggests that the
mutations do not, by themselves, account for obesity. Other genetic and
environmental factors play a role.
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