Can You Feel the Heat?

Thermometers across North America descended to record lows over the last week. Yet if you were to believe the environmentalists, global warming is going to destroy the earth and food production is one of the leading contributions. The article, “As more eat meat, a bid to cut emissions” in NY Times is a great example of that scare.

 

The Fickle Consumer

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been at the Center for Food Integrity Food Summit.  In addition to hearing from executives from across the food chain with vastly varying opinions, consumer panels enlightened us and provided a glimpse into another world.

Several on the animal care consumer panel didn’t really believe that labels are meaningful; the generational differences were apparent with the levels of food label use.   This is consistent with recent Food and Drug Administration findings that consumer use decreased for most label components. “It declined approximately 3 percentage points for the Nutrition Facts panel, 11 percentage points for the ingredient list, and 10 percentage points for the panel’s information about calories, fat, cholesterol, and sodium. Only the use of information about fiber and sugars did not decline over the 10-year period. Use of fiber information increased by 2 percentage points, while that for sugars held steady.”