Although corn is a food most people associate with New Mexico, our state is not one of the nation’s top producers; yet corn is everywhere in our regional diet. Tortilla chips take the place of bread in the baskets on many of our tables, and pretty much every New Mexican restaurant in town offers some traditional corn-based fare: tamales, posole or one of any number of dishes made using corn tortillas. Where might that corn come from?
With the locus of the American corn crop on my mind, I recently sat …

Do you really know what’s in the wine you lift to your lips over dinner?
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell. The new fly in the ointment: additives that go beyond the already enhanced tools of modern winemakers.
There’s a new arsenal of chemicals out there, and while it’s hard to pinpoint who is using them, major wine supply firms are selling tons of the stuff.
And not only to amateur winemakers.
Mind you, folks have been adding strange things to their wine for more than 2,000 years. The ancient Romans often watered their …

Nutrition experts have criticised a report on the effects of food colouring on children by TV3’s 60 Minutes this week, with one dietician saying an experiment conducted by the programme was “one of the most biased you could ever hope to see”.
In the experiment, one group of children was given “healthy” food and the other was given “party” food containing artificial colouring.
The reporter commented on the differences in behaviour she observed, attributing those differences to food colouring in the items consumed.
The science behind the experiment was criticised by NZ Dietetic …

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has announced that it is seeking public input on the implementation of its new authority overseeing tobacco products in the United States. The agency is inviting the public to provide information and share views on a variety of topics, from product content to advertising and marketing. All public comments will be posted online.
The FDA is establishing a public docket to obtain information on the implementation of the Family Smoking Prevention & Tobacco Control Act in order to provide an opportunity for …

The event was an unmitigated success, welcoming 1012 visitors who left the show impressed and vowing to return in 2011.
SAO PAULO, June 30 /PRNewswire/ — A total success. That sums up the Health ingredients (Hi) South America Summit, held for the first time on June 15-16, 2009 at Sao Paulo’s Novotel Centre Norte. The international conference and tabletop exhibition welcomed over 1000 key decision-makers in the food industry, in this, its inaugural edition.
The Summit’s organizer, UBM Brazil, reports that 323 of the visitors attended the conference program, which consisted of …

The Centre for Food Safety found 15 out of 6,000 food samples tested in May to be unsatisfactory, mainly involving excessive or illegal use of food preservatives or colourings or metal contamination. The overall satisfactory rate was 99.7%.
 
It tested vegetables, fruit, meat, poultry, aquatic products, milk, milk products, frozen confections, cereals and grains.
 
Apart from the eight unsatisfactory food samples announced earlier, a Spanish sausage sample was also found to contain sorbic acid while a fresh beef sample contained sulphur dioxide. Three fresh oyster samples contained excessive cadmium.
 
A Chinese red bun …

Amid the recent debate on fire standards for wood, plastic and composite pallets used in warehousing, a side issue arose that has further fanned the longstanding debate between wood and plastic pallet providers. A group of man-made flame retardants called polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs is drawing criticism from some consumer activists, scientists and regulators.
            PBDEs can be found everywhere from consumer electronics and textiles to human breast milk to Arctic seals and local shorelines. Two forms were voluntarily phased out in 2005 due to toxicity concerns. A third formulation, …

Rockville, Md., June 29, 2009 — As Viet Nam’s industrial capabilities have developed rapidly in recent decades, government officials have recognized the importance of helping to secure the nation’s supply of medicines. In an important milestone addressing this need, the Vietnamese Pharmacopoeia Commission (VPC) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Pharmacopeial (USP) Convention. USP is a scientific nonprofit organization that sets standards for the identity and quality of prescription and over-the-counter drugs that are enforced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the United States. …

Although President Barack Obama recently gave the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority over tobacco marketing, most of the changes won’t be seen until next year, according to Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Within the next 12 months, larger warning labels will be required on all smokeless tobacco packages and advertisements, and descriptors such as “light” or “mild” will be prohibited. Tobacco manufacturers can no longer sponsor athletic or cultural events, and advertising in most magazines and at the point of sale must be printed in black and white.
But the law is …

There are many reasons that some people choose to shop and eat a completely organic range of foods, but the primary reason seems to center around the additives in various non-organic food items. Those additives have been studied and linked to various diseases, and instead of taking the chance that unhealthy preservatives and flavorings might be integrated into grocery store items, people often opt for the strictly organic route so as to avoid them altogether.
But everyone cannot afford the prices of organic foods or the time it takes to shop …