Nutrition labels on items in the produce section tend to be short, if not absent altogether. While cereals, soups and sauces come with long lists of ingredients on their packaging, an apple doesn’t need an ingredient list for consumers to know what they’re buying (although it arrived at the grocery store in a labeled package),…
How Does the Organic Industry Regulate Processing Aids?
The crunch of a good organic apple. The taste of a sun-warmed organic tomato. The welcome chunk of an organic potato in a potato salad. The distinctive flavor of an organic hamburger. Without a doubt, fresh organic foods are a popular mainstay in grocery stores and at farmers markets across the nation. But what about…
Processing Aids: What's Not on the Label, and Why?
Walk down the aisles of any grocery store and grab a product off the shelf. Chances are, the label of whatever you grabbed will contain at least a few ingredients whose names don’t exactly roll off the tongue. There’s everything from xanthan gum in salad dressing to tripotassium phosphate in Cheerios, not to mention calcium…
Antimicrobial Umbrella Helps Deli Supplier Walk Food Safety Tightrope
In the decade since the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued 9 CFR Part 430, “Control of Listeria monocytogenes in Ready-to-Eat (RTE) Meat and Poultry Products; Final Rule”, concern over L. monocytogenes contamination of RTE meat products in retail delis has “blown up.” As evidence of that concern, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection…
Processing Aids Used to Deliver Food Safety
When an expert like James Marsden, Distinguished Regents Professor of Food Science at Kansas State University, starts talking about processing aids, it’s as if a menu of choices pops up in his head. The professor is best known for his work on reducing Shiga Toxin-producing Escherichia coli in beef, so he’s very familiar with the…
Slimegate: Should USDA Require Labeling for LFTB?
Over the past several weeks, thousands of articles, blog posts, tweets and even Facebook statuses have weighed in on the debate over Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), now commonly known as “pink slime.” One place you won’t find any mention of the product, however, is on a ground beef label — or any meat label,…
Processing Aids, Labeling and ‘Pink Slime’
Since early March, the product notoriously known as “pink slime,” Beef Products Inc.’s lean finely textured beef, has come under an unprecedented amount of scrutiny from most everyone who eats. The ensuing debate has prompted many to question why ground beef packages containing the product are not labeled as such, or at the very least,…