The finding of this study reported on in Science Daily raises the question of how well the food manufacturers are, or want to educate the consumer to understand what their products contain and how this compares to other products.

So the consumer has understood correctly that the antioxidants (mainly polyphenols) in tea are good for them. Wanting tastier and more convenient sources of polyhenols they try and start to use bottled tea based beverages.

But what health benefit are the processors giving them – as always that depends, but a recent study by Shiming Li, a natural product chemist at WellGen Inc showed that bottled teas have polyphenols as low as 5% of a brewed cup of tea. This means that the antioxidant benefit of 1 cup of tea would be equivalent to 20 bottles of this tea.

Besides missing the health benefits bottled teas contain sugar, additives which means that drinking the large volumes to get the antioxidants can have other negative effects on the diet.

How many other products reflect a similar situation where the consumer is not really aware of what they are getting. Many fruit juice blend proclaim “100 % pure juice” not clearly noting the addition of water. Amarula Cream leads consumers to think it is produced from fruit collected in the community but in fact only a small fraction of the alcohol is. The actual quantity of sugar in carbonated beverages is not well understood. Organic, free range, corn fed and other similar terms related to “new age” foods are also not well understood and the certification of compliance is completely unclear to the consumer.

Think about it and email me your examples which I will publish!

This Zambian company produces a wide range of canned fruit and vegetables.

These include a wide range of products using beans, tomatoes, onion, sweet corn, sundried tomatoes, cherry peppers, pineapple, guava, and gooseberries.

I remember some years ago when functional foods was one of the focuses of research at the CSIR Food Processing programme because it was an agreed on major trend in the Food Industry. At the CSIR it was difficult to find the food processors roll, it being more a discovery and testing focus. This lead to the programme loosing its enthusiasm and changing focus. It now seems that the Industry might loose its enthusiasm for functional foods as well, but for different reasons.

(click the image to open website)

The Industry’s problem lies in the complexity of advertising and selling the health claims associated with the foods.

The European Union has introduced new regulations for food health claims which seem to be approaching the demands of the pharmaceutical certification process, which makes no sense for the Food Industry which works on much smaller margins. There’s an interesting discussion on Beetroot health claims on the BBC Food Programme I posted on a few weeks ago.

In the United States there are a number of cases where major companies (Nestle, Damone, Wrigleys and General Mills included) are settling class action claims or being forced by the FederalTrade Commission to withdraw advertising.

I suppose well informed consumers will have learnt enough to continue buying these products but it must effect the projected growth. What opportunities will the consumer, not be offered, because of the less attractive business from a suppliers viewpoint.

This manual, as its title implies is focussed on the farming of snails covering the topic in great depth.

There is, however quite a lot online on the marketing and processing of snails in a number of different sources. To have a look click this link and you will be assisted to make a google search which should give you a good start to finding useful information.

Anyone with information to share can email me here. and I will add links here.

I bought this interesting packet of potato chips (crisps to others) a few days ago as I was interested to see the face of a white housewife seemingly advertising chips on the supermarket shelf.

However it turns out to be something quite different which seems to me to be an interesting take on product design.

Simba have set up a competition allowing consumers to design their own flavours and submit these for consideration. The competition brought in 180 000 suggestions which were reduced to 20 and eventually the 4 winners now appearing online ready for your vote.

There was also competition on the supplier side with flavour houses being challenged to come up with flaours for the new products.

The winner will receive R 200 000 and 1% of all sales of the product for its life. The public voting for their preferred flavour can win weekly prizes of R 500 and two prizes from the final draw of R 50 000.

What do I think about it? – a brilliant marketing and product definition exercise but unfortunately although the Look up and Run Chicken had a new and interesting flavour, any taste of snoek or achaar were missing from Brendan Johnston’s chip!

By the way Walkie Talkie in this case refers to chicken heads and feet! which are also called Look Up and Runs. So a nice South African feel to the competition!

It will be interesting to see how it develops from here. Let me know what you think of this and watch this blog or subscribe to the RSS feed to hear how this develops.

The BBC, well known for the quality of its material, broadcasts the Food Programme on Radio 5 once a week. BBC describe it as “making sense of food, from the kitchen and canteen, to the farm and factory”.

If you are not aware of podcasts, this is one type and is essentially a recording of the Radio 5 programme, which is “published to” services such as iTunes, Zoon, Google Reader and RSS feeds. By accessing it through these services the item is either downloaded to you device (iPod, Zoon) for offline listening or streamed through your internet connection.

Each programme addresses a particular food topic (eg small scale dairies, marmalade, puddings) and normally considers processing, marketing, sales, legislative and consumer issues, presenting a understandable but knowledgeable view of the subject.

Most podcasts store all their episodes on the service, but BBC for “copyright” reasons allows only the current episode to be online at a time. This means that you need to go to the website to listed to episodes you missed. These are played on BBC’s custom player and can not be directly downloaded, but must be streamed. It is however worth it as there are some facinating episodes in the 188 that are archived.

Although I’ve only listed to 10 or so some of the podcasts that I found useful were:

Professor Peter Fellows has been appointed Editor for the relaunch of Food Chain by Practical Action, previously ITDG. The journal is described as an international journal of small-scale food processing and food supply management.

• What are the recent developments in small-scale food processing?

• Where is small-scale food processing heading (national or regional trends)

• Raw material supplies

• How to ensure consistent quality and reliable deliveries of raw materials.

• Processing equipment/technology transfer

• The relative cost/benefits of investment in new equipment or employing additional staff.

• Is it better to have equipment made by local engineers or to import it?

• Research and development of low-cost or appropriate processing equipment.

• Achievements and obstacles to the transfer of novel processing technologies to small-scale producers.

• Packaging supplies

• What can be done to improve the variety of available packaging and reduce the costs? Experiences of new packaging that have assisted marketing and improved the sales of foods from small-scale processors.

• Research and development into low-cost packaging, recycling and re-use of packaging, and/or biodegradable packaging.

• Development of low-cost packaging machinery.

• Quality assurance/food legislation

• Research and development of simple, low-cost analytical methods.

• Needs of small-scale processors for further research into food analysis and quality assurance methods.

• Experiences of the application of quality assurance systems, including HACCP and ISO 9000 or 22 000, in small-scale food processing.

• The effect of supermarket growth on quality standards required from small-scale producers.

• How can small-scale producers meet national and international quality standards, and comply with food regulations or buyer standards for food quality and food safety?

• Environmental impacts

• Methods or experiences of re-using of waste materials, research and development in waste disposal to reduce environmental impacts.

• Research and development into reducing energy consumption in food processing, alternative low-energy equipment, experiences of reducing the total energy load of small-scale businesses.

• Distribution, sales and marketing

• Research or experiences of novel methods to reach customers using printed materials, radio or TV media, the Internet, exhibitions and trade fairs.

• Is it better to sell locally or to export? – experiences of sales to multi-national companies, fair trade organisations, food relief operations, local wholesalers or supermarkets, and directly to local consumers.

• The effect of supermarkets on suppressing or stimulating local small-scale food processing.

• Research and development or experiences of novel food distribution methods that reduce energy consumption, maintain food quality or better meet customers’ needs.

• Getting involved in global value chains – is there a role for small-scale producers and what are the risks and benefits?

• Financial and business management

• Development of simple methods for financial management or business planning, and experiences of applying the methods.

• The future role of banks and other lending agencies in financing small-scale food enterprises.

• Training/staff development

• Developments in food processing training – new methods and novel training materials.

• Experiences of retaining staff, improving staff welfare and benefits.

• The role of workers in achieving a successful small enterprise.

Another different practice that adds to the concern over the fact that many go hungry while the rich indulge!

This is a nice “lifecycle Study” from the Worldwatch Institute that provides a bit of history, some process and market information aswell as an environmentalist’s view on issues for chocolate bars (what the American’s call candy bars).

Just 5 or 600 words long these articles give a nice nugget of interesting information on a variety of products.

The work in the United Kindom on waste in the food system has lead to an intriguing, data rich report which is available on the WRAP website.

Taking the information of how much food is wasted from this report, with the post on excessively nutritious foods and Michele Obama’s work with the the food industry to reduce the energy content in the food they sell together surely indicates a process that should start to redistribute calories.

Maybe some more about this in future posts.