Yan Weixing, the deputy director of nutrition and food safety for the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has disclosed to local media that the Guangzhou-based Wanglaoji Pharmaceutical Company has used herbal medicines that have not been approved by the Ministry of Health for its beverage products.
Earlier, China media reported that a consumer from Hangzhou got ulcer of stomach after drinking Wanglaoji Cool Tea and the doctor’s diagnosis showed that the patient had a stomach cold, which might have some affiliations with the herbal medicine in the Cool Tea.
Yan …

Su Zhi, the deputy director of the Bureau of Food Safety Coordination and Health Supervision of China’s Ministry of Health, has disclosed to local media that China will initiate a two-year campaign on food safety and food additives.
Su said that the food safety situation in China is not optimistic. It is unbalanced and there are many weak points that have not been covered by the government’s campaign.
Su stated that much work needs to be done to solve these problems. First, local governments at various levels shall be asked to be …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, just entered a consent decree in which about $1.3 million worth of dietary supplements have been condemned and forfeited to the United States for destruction.
“The court order is the result of efforts by the federal government to protect consumers from products for which there is inadequate information to assure that they do not present a significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury,” said Michael Chappell, FDA’s acting associate …

TORONTO — Canada’s food industry says it’s concerned about its ability to bring new products to market and blames an out-of-date regulatory regime for making it difficult to keep pace with what’s occurring in other countries.
The industry group Food & Consumer Products of Canada released a report Wednesday calling on the federal government to speed up the decision-making process on approvals for food additives and health claims for food products.
“We’re not looking here at all for less regulation,” said Nancy Croitoru, president and CEO of the trade association representing companies …

After Sunday morning church services each week, members of St. Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox Church – a Russian Orthodox Church in Boise – break their fast with a communal potluck meal.
“It emphasizes the fact that we are a family, that our parish is a family É that we’re linked to one another, that we’re connected to one another,” Father David Moser said of the meal, called trapeza.
Those members of the church who hail from Russia and former Soviet republics regularly share favorite dishes from the old country with fellow congregants, …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has seized over 23,300 bottles of dietary supplement products, worth about $1.3 million, owing to a safety risk.
The federal agency stated that the all supplements would be destructed as they have unapproved food preservatives and-or new dietary components for which there is insufficient data to guarantee they do not present a significant or unreasonable threat of infection or injury.
The products, distributed by LG Sciences LLC of Brighton, Mich. — were commercialized for making use of by musclebuilders, and sold online and in retail stores …

BEIJING, May 11 (Xinhua) — No melamine has been found by spot tests of raw milk conducted since last December across the nation, an official with the Health Ministry said on Monday.
    As of April 30, 68 tonnes of illegal food additives and 116.3 tonnes of excessively used food additives have been seized, Su Zhi, deputy director with the ministry’s food safety coordination and supervision bureau, told a press conference held in Beijing.
    The Chinese central government established a special law enforcement group involving nine departments last December for a …

Food energy is the amount of energy in food that is available through digestion.
Like other forms of energy, food energy is expressed in calories or joules. Some countries use the kilogram calorie, which is equal to 1 kilocalorie (kcal), or 1,000 calories as normally defined. In the context of nutrition, and especially food labeling, the terms “calorie” and “kilocalorie” are interchangeable. In either case the unit is approximately equal to 4.1868 kilojoules (kJ). The kilojoule is the unit officially recommended by the World Health Organization[1] and other international organizations. In …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is requesting a budget of $3.2B to protect and promote the public health as part of the President’s fiscal year (FY) 2010 budget – a 19 percent increase over the current FDA fiscal year budget.
The FY 2010 request, which covers the period of Oct. 1, 2009, through Sept. 30, 2010, includes increases of $295.2M in budget authority and $215.4M in industry user fees. The FDA budget proposes two major initiatives for FY 2010: Protecting America’s Food Supply and Safer Medical Products. It also includes …

Order a meal in any fast-food restaurant, and you’ll likely walk away with a sandwich, fries and a drink. If you had to identify the ingredients of this meal, you might list beef (or chicken), lettuce, tomato, cheese, ketchup, bread, potatoes and soda. Not complicated, right? Wrong.
Burger and chicken joints don’t think of the building blocks of a menu item as ingredients. They think of them as components, which are made of ingredients. For example, McDonald’s famous Big Mac jingle — “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, …