Food round-up 2009

Food news

This year has been a busy one for the subject of food. The main story this year has been the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft, as Kraft tries in vain to buy the chocolate maker. 2009 has also been the year which has seen food labelling and what's in our food comes under scrutiny, as well as how much food is unnecessarily thrown away.

Cadbury vs Kraft

So far, Kraft have been unsuccessful in their attempts to takeover Cadbury. So far, 2009 has seen them make two bids, both of which have been rejected by Cadbury's for undermining the value of the company.

For now, all we can do is wait and see if Cadbury stays as it is, or if it succumbs to takeover bids as rumours are rife about a possible Hershey bid, while their was previously rumours of nestle possibly considering an approach.

Food waste

In the UK, a big worry has been the amount of food that's being wasted - 8.3 million tonnes each year. In fact, 30.8 percent of all food purchased in the UK is thrown away, when in fact it doesn't all need throwing away. A lot of this is down to confusion over food labelling.

Food labels can be defined in the following way:

Use-by: the key date in terms of safety. Never eat food after this date. Found on cooked meats, soft cheeses and dairy-based desserts.

Best-before: is about quality not safety. Food should be safe to eat after this date, but it might not be at its best. One exception is eggs.

Sell-by/Display-until: this information is for the retailer, not the customer. It is mainly used for stock control purposes.

Sugar and salt

This year has also seen attention drawn to what's in our food - in particular, the sugar and salt in our food. The most astonishing information found this year was how a jam doughnut contains less sugar than a bowl of cereal.

Reports on salt this year, found that of what we consume, 75 percent of it is already present in the food we buy. The FSA launched an ad campaign back in October will start from today. The health watchdog will warn that more than three quarters of people (77 percent) are unaware that bread and breakfast cereals are among the daily foods that contribute most salt to our diet.

The campaign was put in place to urge people to pay closer attention to the salt levels in the foods that they are buying and encourage them to reduce the amount of salt they eat by checking labels on foods and choosing products that are lower in salt.

Like this article? Get the RSS feed: