The war of words over labeling conventions for plant-based ‘milk’ intensified this week as FDA commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb indicated that a “a new compliance policy” may be on the cards as the agency hosted a public meeting on its nutrition innovation...
While some meal kit brands are doing better than others, the subscription based home delivery model underpinning them is fundamentally flawed, claims the new owner of Chef’d, which abruptly ceased operations in mid-July.
“There is no greater benefit to ingesting Trader Joe’s alkaline water than ingesting an equivalent bottled water or tap water,” argues a lawsuit alleging Trader Joe’s is duping shoppers into paying over the odds for the water, although legal experts predict...
Highlights from day one at the Digital Food and Beverage conference
Selling food & beverage brands online has some obvious advantages: you can get to market more quickly, get rapid feedback, and find out who your customers are. But it’s not all plain-sailing. Here are some takeaways from day one of the Digital Food...
It’s not as big as Greek just yet, but the explosive growth of Icelandic skyr in the yogurt aisle could inspire a flurry of skyr-infused spin-offs in other parts of the store, predicts Arla Foods Inc, which has recently launched a skyr cream cheese in...
The FDA’s July 12 public meeting on cell-cultured (aka ‘clean’ meat) exposed sharp differences of opinion over how meat grown from cells outside an animal should be labeled and regulated. But there was also real excitement about the potential of a technology...
Primal Kitchen – a lifestyle brand spearheaded by former endurance athlete Mark Sisson (strapline: ‘Eat like your life depends on it’) - is on course to double sales this year as it adds new lines to its Paleo-fueled food portfolio from unsweetened ketchup...
In a letter to Nestlé, the world’s largest food company by revenue, Third Point, a New York-based asset manager with $18bn in capital ($3bn in Nestlé), called out the food and beverage giant for falling short on its long-term, sustainable growth mission.
Public comments on USDA’s GMO labeling rule have exposed sharp divisions about whether it should include refined ingredients from GM crops, or foods produced via modern gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR. But they have also raised questions about...
Consumers will lose trust in the food industry if USDA does not mandate that refined ingredients such as oils and sugars derived from bioengineered crops are subject to GMO labeling, says the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA).
While sales of plain dairy milk have been declining for years, and US yogurt production has dropped off after peaking in 2014, new data shows the continued growth of cheese, butter, and ready-to-drink coffee, yogurt drinks and protein beverages featuring...
Home Chef meal kits - which roll out in selected Kroger stores later this summer in standalone coolers – will target the significant subset of consumers that buy into the meal kit concept but don’t want to commit to a subscription, says Home Chef chief...
If consumers are to believe that the food industry is serious about transparency, highly refined ingredients derived from GM crops must be included in the definition of 'bioengineered' enshrined in federal GMO labeling legislation, even if they...
Investors in early stage food companies are constantly searching for the ‘what’s next?’ in food, and many fundamentally agree that the ideas and people worth investing in are the ones that are fulfilling an unmet consumer need in a "unique way that...
A month after being hit with a lawsuit alleging it made false and misleading representations about its light ice cream, Halo Top has been targeted again, this time with a proposed class action alleging it routinely under-fills its pints, “and has been...
Beyond Meat has struck a deal with A&W - Canada’s fastest growing national burger chain – to add its plant-based Beyond Burgers to the menu at 925 outlets, boosting its overall distribution in the foodservice sector to 10,000+ restaurants, hotels,...
US packaged food companies have been “frantically buying up new challenger brands at escalating deal multiples to offset the weakening sales trends in their core businesses,” says a new report from Bernstein. But success rates have been hit and miss,...
Long-awaited guidance from the FDA spelling out which isolated or synthetic non-digestible carbohydrates it believes should be classified as ‘dietary fiber’ on the Nutrition Facts panel brings to an end a period of extended uncertainty for companies supplying...
Which cooking oils are growing most strongly and why? Is ghee trending and has coconut oil lost some of its luster? Is butter outperforming vegetable-oil-based spreads?
FDA proposals that the sugars in a jar of honey or pure maple syrup should be listed as 'added sugars' on food labels (albeit with an explanatory note) is “absolutely ridiculous,” according to the vast majority of stakeholders commenting on...
Dr Lustig: 'Despite the food industry's propaganda, people now understand that 'a calorie is not a calorie...'
Dr Robert Lustig’s mantra – that not all calories were created equal - appears to be resonating with more US consumers, with one third (33%) of Americans believing that sugars are the ‘source of calories most likely to cause weight gain’ compared with...
While they are small fry right now in volume terms, emerging application areas for walnuts from walnut butter and hummus to walnut milk and cheese could be significant growth drivers in the future, predicts the California Walnut Board.
World-renowned chef Thomas Keller once said, ‘Food should be fun.’ But to those who make the products we eat and drink, there is nothing fun about food and beverage labeling litigation.
Attempts by the US Cattlemen’s Association (USCA) to restrict use of the terms ‘beef’ and ‘meat’ to products from animals ‘born, raised, and harvested in the traditional manner,’ are “ill considered,” claims the North American Meat Institute (NAMI).
Ghee – a ‘clarified butter’ produced by boiling butter and pouring off the butterfat, leaving milk sugar (lactose) and protein (casein and whey) behind - is very high in saturated fat, but it’s gaining traction among shoppers looking for something new...
If the first wave of comments to its proposed rule on GMO labeling is anything to go by, USDA’s agricultural marketing service faces a daunting task as it seeks to nail down its national bioengineered food disclosure standard, with early feedback revealing...
If you say the words ‘Dirty Dozen’ to farmers, don’t be surprised if you see them shudder, as this popular - but fallacious - concept isn’t based on science or reality.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has published a long-awaited proposed rule to establish GMO labeling standards (the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard), but still leaves most of the key questions – including how to interpret its...
'Some of them have no intention of filing a lawsuit. The only intention is to line their pockets...'
You can’t beat a good courtroom drama, but if you’re monitoring the food litigation scene these days, you’re highly unlikely to get one, observed experts at a recent legal conference, who claimed that a small number of law firms targeting food brands...
'We can produce up to 10,000 cows’ worth of meat with a single biopsy'
Excitement is building as cultured meat approaches commercialization, but “science does not occur in a cultural vacuum” and bringing consumers and regulators with you on the journey is more important than being first to market, says clean meat start-up...
Essentia positions itself as a “supercharged ionized alkaline water that’s better at rehydrating,” but its recent meteoric growth 20 years after launch (sales surged 84% to $136m in measured channels in the year to March 25, 2018*) reflects a shift in...
Habit meal delivery business on hold as testing and nutrition plan components ramp up
Personalized nutrition platform Habit was originally billed as "food company, not just a recommendation engine." However, delivery of customized fresh prepared meals based on its dietary advice – trialed in the Bay Area last year – is on hold...
PBFA: Changing course now could put the FDA in a legal bind
FDA commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb says the agency is “actively” exploring whether consumers are being misled by the use of terms such as ‘milk’ or ‘yogurt’ to describe plant based products, but says the FDA's radio silence on this issue in recent...
Proposed research questions for the 2020 Dietary Guidelines that continue to focus on consumption in relation to nutrient adequacy are “disappointing,” and a better use of resources would be to look at the impact of food groups on disease endpoints, argues...
Brands and consumers are getting more comfortable talking about digestive health, with the conversation shifting beyond getting enough fiber for regular bowel movements, to the gut microbiome, says Beneo, which says growing interest in probiotics is helping...
By Kamel Chida, Deputy Director, Private Sector Partnership Development for Nutrition, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Despite significant progress in recent decades, malnutrition is still a huge barrier to children’s health and development around the world. The numbers speak for themselves: poor nutrition is an underlying cause of nearly half of all child deaths, and...
Creating a business plan isn’t as fun as launching a new product or company, but it is fundamental to succeeding in the long term in the highly competitive food and beverage industry, according to an executive with FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Accelerator....
Sharply contrasting views over the scope of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans have emerged in comments submitted to USDA and HHS this week, with some stakeholders arguing that issues such as sustainability (eg. should we recommend eating less...
It’s a cruel reality that, even today’s most bold innovators in premium food and beverage may find themselves copied and mimicked with remarkable speed. Whether deliberate copycats or simultaneous innovation, ideas for innovation spread much, much faster...
‘The traditional direct to consumer subscription model reaches a limited consumer base’
A significant percentage of consumers buy into the meal kit concept, but don’t want to commit to a subscription, and want more flexible options to purchase them on- and off-line, says Chef’d, which is rolling out meal kits to 1,500 grocery stores by the...
'I think you’ll see a mass exodus of CPG companies moving from polyols to allulose...'
Allulose is the sweetener generating the most buzz among food formulators right now, although many are waiting to see if the FDA exempts it from sugar labeling (it’s technically a sugar, but it’s not metabolized like one), before launching products featuring...
‘All of these people yelling at each other…the vegans vs the Paleos vs the ketogenic people, this is insane…’
A calorie is a calorie, right? Wrong, argues pediatrician, sugar-nemesis and author of best-selling book ‘Fat Chance’, Dr Robert Lustig, who caught up with FoodNavigator-USA at the Natural Products Expo West trade show in Anaheim last week.
By Terry Fleck, executive director, The Center for Food Integrity
'The block statement in JavaScript is often called a compound statement in other computer programming languages. Unlike C++ , JavaScript doesn’t consider a block to be a new scope.' Does this make sense to you? I don’t know about you, but my...
FDA commissioner: 'We will have more to say on the 'natural' issue soon'
By Charles Sipos, partner; and Lauren Staniar, associate, Perkins Coie
While defining ‘natural’ for the purposes of food labeling has not appeared to be high on the FDA’s priority list since it announced its 2015 probe, things could be about to change, predict Perkins Coie attorneys Charles Sipos and Lauren Staniar.
Analysis of multiple cohorts of consumers around the world featuring large subsets of people on vegan and vegetarian diets – including the Adventist Health Study 2 in the US, the EPIC Oxford study in the UK and the Tzu Chi Health Study 1 and vegetarian...
Attorney: 'I would be surprised if the USDA acts on this petition'
Producing ‘clean’ meat by culturing cells – instead of raising or slaughtering animals - is a new frontier in food production that will require consumer education and transparent labeling. But should regulators prevent pioneers in this space from using...
'No one wants to pay more than they have to for groceries...'
Consumers are tired of cavernous stores with “90 different jars of pasta sauce,” said Tom Cindel, director of operations at ALDI’s Moreno Valley, CA, division, pointing to a shelf at the recently opened store in Monrovia, CA. “We just buy this one, it’s...
Most food, beverage and supplement brands know that stating or implying that their wares can treat, prevent, or cure a disease is a definite no no. They may not, however, be aware that retweeting, re-posting, or simply ‘liking’ social media postings to...
