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Tackling obesity is no fair-weather game

17-Nov-2008 - The long shadow cast by obesity over public health means that encouraging healthier eating should be high on the agenda of every food firm, come financial rain or shine.

Beijing Olympic Games clean-up a dirty business

10-Nov-2008 - This year’s Beijing Olympic Games may have been good for China’s public image but the smooth running of the event was built on multiple state-prompted sacrifices and the food ingredients industry was one of the lambs that copped it in the neck for ‘the greater good’.

A menu for American food policy

03-Nov-2008 - At the time of writing, the US is poised to go to the polls. The next two days are going to be hugely exciting. And when it’s all over, after the victor gets some well-earned rest… he’ll rub his sleepy eyes and ask: ‘What’s for breakfast?'.

The hour of stevia is nigh

27-Oct-2008 - The course of true love never did run smooth. The same could be said of stevia’s road to regulatory approval as a food ingredient. One final concerted effort is needed to ensure approval of this hot ingredient.

Banks’ rescue package points the way for food crisis remedies

20-Oct-2008 - Question: When is a crisis not a crisis? Answer: When it’s a food crisis. Compare the two responses to failures in the food system and financial markets.

Waking up to smell the caffeine

13-Oct-2008 - Before reading this you’re probably going to need a coffee, in fact why not have a few? After all who’s to say when enough is enough in our hunt for a caffeine kick.

Bringing organic back down to earth

06-Oct-2008 - Organic has an image problem. As some consumers fear they are, quite literally, priced out of the farmers market, it’s time to stir up more debate about organic as a set of principals, not as a status symbol.

What to do when safety studies smell a rat

29-Sep-2008 - Using animals, and specifically rats, to build the science behind ingredients is vital, but dismissing conflicting studies just because a rat is not a human is not acceptable.

Consumers fear the packaging - a BPA alternative is needed now

22-Sep-2008 - “I have a bad feeling about this.” Luke Skywalker’s warning in the movie blockbuster Star Wars could equally be applied to consumers’ concerns about Bisphenol A (BPA).

Dietary supplements win Olympic gold

15-Sep-2008 - To coin a phrase oft-used by winning athletes, Beijing was 'a good games’ for an increasingly mature dietary supplements industry.

Hurricane wake-up call for business and boy scouts

08-Sep-2008 - Louisiana was holding its breath when Hurricane Gustav made landfall last week. It promised to be the mother of all storms as it roared towards the Gulf Coast but fortunately the region, along with the food industry it supports, was spared.

Rising to the health claims challenge

01-Sep-2008 - Europe’s health claim assessment process kicked off with the rejection of almost 90 per cent of the first bunch. But industry must accept its shortcomings if credibility is to be the winner.

Why food is the new oil

11-Aug-2008 - “Food is a weapon – don’t waste it.” This message, which featured on a Second World War poster issued by the US Office of War Information in 1943, is a lesson from history we would do well to heed.

Bringing an end to the food waste shame

04-Aug-2008 - Have you ever scavenged through a supermarket bin looking for your next meal? It’s a strange question to put to business readers – and most would shrink at the thought. But that’s just how the ‘freegans’ decide what’s for dinner.

Can we believe the Danisco – Apax rumours?

28-Jul-2008 - Rumour, according to the Romans, is a feathered beast with a myriad eyes and tongues. Last week she went bristling through the Danish business pages, spreading the news that Danisco could be bought by a private equity firm.

Budweiser to be Belgian? Big deal

21-Jul-2008 - The news that all-American brewer Anheuser-Busch is to be sold to Belgium’s InBev for $52bn has made sports bar patrons across the US weep into their Budweisers. But the idea that an American firm must remain American for all time runs counter to the world of global commerce.

Diet better than statins in kids' cholesterol control

15-Jul-2008 - The prescribing of statins for eight years-olds is tantamount to saying that food and diet have failed, and that children are incapable of changing their eating habits and lifestyle.

A half measure of alcohol reforms

07-Jul-2008 - Knife crime, obesity and skiffle music. Out of all the evils currently threatening the welfare of Western teenagers, recent US headlines finger the main culprit as the caffeinated alcoholic beverage.

The food industry after Lisbon

30-Jun-2008 - In the face of another rejection of a European Union treaty, the bloc's food industry has one glaring path ahead: business as normal.

GM: Breaking the stalemate

23-Jun-2008 - Food industry voices are joining those of politicians in the GM debate, hailing the controversial technology as the answer to the food supply crisis. But the hearts and minds of consumers must still be won.

The value of hyperactive curiosity

16-Jun-2008 - For a little yellow flower, it's ignited a huge debate. Believe the headlines and St John's wort won't help hyperactive kids, but last week's study asks more questions than it answers. It's time to put funding disclosures in the dock.

Food crisis: Time to stop the squabbling

09-Jun-2008 - Bickering gets you nowhere. It's a lesson to be learned early in life, but which seems easily forgotten when it comes to tough political issues like measures to curb the food crisis.

Yesterday's food complacency proves hard to swallow

02-Jun-2008 - For too long, the developed world has taken food for granted. For years, ample food stocks, a well-supplied export trade and rapidly rising agricultural productivity have confined food fears, in the west at least, to history and the memories of older generations.

The GSK weight loss wake-up call

26-May-2008 - GlaxoSmithKline's petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban dietary supplements from making weight loss claims, has opened a cupboard and only the deluded would deny the presence of one or two skeletons rattling around in there.

Time for an organic-GM peace treaty

19-May-2008 - The war between the GM and organic movements has been bitterly fought. However in the midst of a global food crisis the time has come for these old enemies to bury their differences and concentrate on the benefits an alliance may bring.

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