The cooking sauces and dressings sector has performed well in recent years, thanks to the recession and subsequently slow economic recovery. Since 2005, Americans have been spending more time and money on home meal preparation than just six years ago.
In the coming year, food forecasters expect less emphasis on the center-of-the-plate proteins and more importance on vegetables and grains previously relegated to the perimeter. “When the New York magazine declared, ‘Vegetables are the new meat’ [November 2010], chefs started paying more attention,” says Kara Nielson, “trendologist” for the Center of Culinary Development, San Francisco.
Consumer regard for yogurt has ebbed and flowed over the past few decades, but yogurt’s healthy attributes and a wider recognition of the benefits of probiotics finally cemented the segment as a sales powerhouse. According to Citigroup Global Markets, total yogurt sales in 2010 amounted to $4.1 billion.
Just as sports teams sometimes experience a “transitional year” from time to time, 2011 proved to be just such a year for makers of convenience meals and processed meats. The perception of these markets as relative “safe havens” for economically stressed consumers ebbed a bit as the economy improved.
Sometimes a lack of big news during a year is actually good news. Bakery companies that remember the Atkins Diet and its characterization of carbohydrates as the devil incarnate can breathe a sigh of relief that 2011 did not bring about any such black swans. Still, 2011 will go down as a slightly off year for baked goods, with declines in some categories outweighing gains in other categories.
Wine introductions had a good year in 2011. Despite slipping somewhat from 2010 numbers, the segment remained strong in terms of product launches. The year saw nearly twice as many wine debuts as 2009 and nearly three times the number reported in 2008, according to Mintel’s Global New Products Database (GNPD).
According to a 2011 report from the Hudson Institute, a policy research organization, companies that offer products with “better-for-you” (BFY) attributes perform better financially than companies that don’t.
Research suggests that overall eating habits—and thus nutritional status—would improve if people snack now and then. And that’s good news. Who doesn’t like an occasional snack? It’s no wonder marketers of snack foods, ranging from sweet confections to whole-grain crackers, continue to roll out innovations in a category that appeared saturated years ago.
The Excellence In Innovation (EII) Awards are a unique opportunity to acknowledge outstanding product development teams and the innovation used to design and launch successful new products—all while providing new products and companies with priceless worldwide exposure.
You hold in your hands a magazine loaded with failures. Often, our New Products Annual ends up little more than a preamble to the eulogies of product introductions destined for clearance sales.
Lycored Ltd.’s unique tomato lycopene formulation is tailored specifically for use as natural colorant in surimi applications, enabling food manufacturers to use a natural, vegetarian colorant. Surimi is a highly popular food product in Asia and the U.S. and is available in many shapes, forms and textures—which are often identical to the meat of lobster, crab or other shellfish.
Lycored Ltd.’s unique tomato lycopene formulation is tailored specifically for use as natural colorant in surimi applications, enabling food manufacturers to use a natural, vegetarian colorant.
National Starch Food Innovation/Corn Products International’s white paper, “Novel Ingredient Solutions for Formulating Clear-Type Beverages,” highlights how advancements in ingredient science are enabling manufacturers to meet increasing consumer demand for health and wellness beverages.
Wild Planet Foods Inc. recently introduced a new premium-quality tuna “so luscious the addition of mayonnaise would just ruin it,” notes the company. Packed in Spanish olive oil and cooked only once to retain the naturally high levels of omega-3 and fresh flavor, these extremely moist, thickly-cut Albacore fillets come apart at the touch of a fork.
Whether for pizza, pasta or snacks, cheese gives many convenience products that “special something extra.” But, traditional cheese is not always the best choice: Cheese preparations or recombined alternatives can offer key advantages in manufacture and processing.
Hearthside Food Solutions LLC offers granola enriched with baobab. Baobab Foods—the importer of the superfruit produced by Afriplex of South Africa—supplied the Baobest brand baobab used in Hearthside’s granola.
Foods with higher protein content are desirable, but they can be challenging to formulate. Zumbro River Brand Inc. (ZRB) has developed a tasty, nutritious snack base made from soy protein and potato, with a protein level of 55%.
Mardi Gras might be over, but Cajun/Creole-inspired foods are a party all year long. Zatarain’s helps bring the tastes of Louisiana to many flavorful, festive food preparation ideas with a spirit of Mardi Gras and inspired ideas: Host a “Big Easy,” pot-luck style party and ask folks to bring their favorite,
Supplementation with Superba krill oil from AkerBioMarine ASA recently demonstrated beneficial effects on heart-health function in an experimental model of heart failure. Pre-treatment with krill oil attenuated left ventricular dilation and hypertrophy after myocardial infarction.
Teens are not consuming enough whole-grain foods, according to a recent study from the University of Minnesota at St. Paul, featured in the January 2012 issue of Food Nutrition & Science. The study analyzed adolescents aged 12-19 in the “National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey” (NHANES, 1999-2004); it found less than one third of teens consumed more than .5 whole-grain ounce-equivalents per day.
Protica has added a new product to its line that is designed to help people on a calorie-counting diet. Protein Gem is a gelatin snack intended to help replace snacks that are typically unhealthy with snacks that have a high nutritional value.
A cooking revolution is on the rise with some of the latest trends in pre-packaged, versatile spreads that can be added to recipes to continuously invoke mouth-watering tastes while cutting time in the kitchen. Twisted Foods (www.twistedfoods.com) introduces Twisted Butter, a spreadable blend of salted butter, canola oil and all-natural ingredients in six versatile flavors.
Seneca Foods Corporation recently added two new flavors to its popular oatmeal product line: Seneca Farms Cranberry Apple and Maple & Brown Sugar. Seneca Farms Oatmeal is quick to prepare, portable and nutritious; it also provides an excellent source of vitamin C without trans fat or cholesterol.
The salt load of potato chips is released between 20-30 seconds after chewing begins, according to new UK research. But, the chip is swallowed before this occurs, so more salt is added in order to get the “flavor hit” sooner.