More than one-third of Americans use complementary and alternative medicine, according to a 2004 study by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health. Of these, 19 percent used natural products such as herbs, botanicals and enzymes. Increasingly, market research and NIH studies show that consumers are turning to these products in the form of herbal teas or infusions in order to maintain good health, improve metabolism or increase resistance to the common cold or flu.
Educational programs that include food safety, sanitation and quality as part of worker safety training offer more protection and rewards for processors.
Have a special birthday or anniversary coming up? Most people celebrate with a trip to a favorite restaurant. While expensive, high-end restaurants remain popular destinations for special celebrations, going out to eat for no special reason has become mainstream for most Americans.
Do you ever consider how much you accomplish in a day, a week or a year? We do. Each year at this time, Food Engineering's editorial team begins work on a three-and-a-half month project that provides a very unique service to our industry-the Food and Beverage Plant Construction survey. In its 29th year, this research survey uncovered more than 500 plant projects of $1 million or more last year.
In food and beverage packaging, function often takes a back seat to form. Take a recent sales promotion at Safeway Inc.'s Dominick's supermarkets in metropolitan Chicago: on one page, the flyer featured a gallon of milk in an unglamorous high-density, polyethylene plastic jug for $2.50, available in chocolate and all fat levels of white. On the next page, a single-serve PET container with one-eighth as much product was promoted for $1. For three days, not seven. In white, only.
The business case for automating plant sanitation has always included soft savings, though the value of extending production runs between sanitation shifts is appreciated by food and beverage processors. But even the soft dollars are acquiring a harder edge as customers and regulators increase pressure for documentation that the soil removal and equipment sterilization steps that are supposed to be done do, in fact, occur.
The food supply in the United States is one of the most diverse and safe in the world. A stroll through a grocery store almost anywhere in the country reveals a variety of choices unknown anywhere else around the globe. So, one wonders, how can an industry that can produce such bounty have a problem when it comes to communicating safety and efficiency?
Arcing and uneven heating are two issues that have limited industrial applications of microwave technology, be it in food or any other manufacturing process. Researchers in Dana Corp.'s Disruptive Technologies Group in Rochester Hills, MI, believe they have overcome those limitations with atmospheric plasma technology-AtmoPlas for short.
Once playing with your food at the dinner table was discouraged-now ketchup-maker H.J. Heinz Company and Graham Packaging Company, York, PA, have joined together to create an innovative plastic ketchup bottle called Heinz Silly Squirts that actually encourages play thanks to a specially designed closure.
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