Thursday, March 17, 2011

Beyond The Hive: New line of food "pigments"

Remember when nature made all the flavors and colors of food we consumed? Sensient Technologies, a global manufacturer and marketer of colors, flavors and fragrances, has come up with a new "pigment range" to provide food with a more natural appearance. According to the company website, when they are not manufacturing food colors and flavors, they make cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and printing ink.

Beyond The Hive: If it looks like propaganda about high fructose corn syrup, and smells like propaganda ...

The Corn Refiners Association has put out a series of graphs that show how certain (unnamed) products dropped in sales after high fructose corn syrup was removed as an ingredient. There's so much wrong with these charts, which the ill-educated could take as gospel. First, they might have substituted the wrong sweetener, artificial or othewise, to take the place of HFCS. More important, it's hard to think of products that did not experience declines in sales over the last couple of years during the recession. Finally, we don't know what other factors might have contributed to the decline, such as recalls, rises in prices that turned off consumers, poor distribution, or maybe the TV commercials sucked.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Authorities in Oregon seize counterfeit honey

Authorities found 10,000 gallons of counterfeit honey from a warehouse in Salem, Oregon.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Utah, New York, Nebraska eye honey standards

There's an interesting trend developing here, with lawmakers in Utah, New York and Nebraska all considering measures to set honey ID standards.