Pedro Perez’s food brims with bacteria, just the way he likes it.
For the past two years, the Stillwater resident has been fermenting his own food, making homemade yogurt, sauerkraut, sourdough bread and kimchi (a traditional Korean vegetable side dish) on his kitchen counter.
The fermentation process — which Perez describes as easy and money-saving — is older than recorded history. Today, it’s gaining favor among people who want to take advantage of its health benefits, including heaps of helpful bacteria known as probiotics. The fermentation revival is also getting a boost …

Uncooked meat products enhanced with food additives may contain high levels of phosphorous and potassium that are not discernable from inspection of food labels, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). This can make it difficult for people to limit dietary phosphorous and potassium that at high levels are harmful to kidney disease patients.
 
Kidney disease patients on dialysis must watch their intake of dietary phosphate so that their blood phosphate levels do not rise. This is important because …

Washington, D.C. – An effort to improve the safety of fruits, vegetables and processed foods is running into objections from a broad collection of farm interests, including livestock producers, organic farmers and small-scale growers.
A bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in June would give the Food and Drug Administration more authority over the 80 percent of the food supply the agency is responsible for regulating.
The food administration, which regulates most foods except for meat and poultry, would be required to set safety standards for fruit and vegetable …

The dog food that you buy your dog is more than just a meal. What your dog eats impacts his health and it can even make him sick. As a concerned dog owner, you must take your time to choose dog food that is high quality and that does not contain ingredients that could harm your dog’s health.
It can often be difficult to tell if a dog food is high quality just by looking at it. It is really not about how the food looks as much as it is …

Things are not as simple as they used to be. There was a time when any food a grocer sold was suitable to feed to the family. Nowadays, many of the products on the shelves can’t really be said to be food. Preservatives, additives, flavors, colors and shapes pollute our food sources in ways even the saviest of consumers can’t know about.
Breakfast cereal, for example, touts the benefits of whole grains and vitamins but at the same time is an extruded food, meaning it was processed so intensely that it …

Global health officials are scrambling to try to prevent the spread of the H1N1 swine flu virus, with U.S. officials moving Thursday with a recommendation that the Food and Drug Administration approve or license a vaccine.
In the U.K., the government launched a telephone hotline and Internet site as the number of new cases last week doubled to an estimated 100,000. The number of deaths attributed to the disease had held steady at 26 in England, not including cases diagnosed in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Besides vaccine development, health officials are …

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has joined other health experts to warn consumers about potential health risks associated with electronic cigarettes.
Also known as “e-cigarettes,” electronic cigarettes are battery-operated devices designed to look like and to be used in the same manner as conventional cigarettes.
Sold online and in many shopping malls, the devices generally contain cartridges filled with nicotine, flavor, and other chemicals. They turn nicotine, which is highly addictive, and other chemicals into a vapor that is inhaled by the user.
“The FDA is concerned about the safety of these …

Take a look at any grammar school class photos from more than 30 years ago and try to find the overweight and obese kids. There might be one or two, but rarely more than that, and most of those appear large-boned rather than soft and sedentary.
Those old photos prove the point that children in the United States — not to mention adults — were never previously as overweight in today’s epidemic-scale numbers.
It is pretty much the same everywhere, though some regions of the country (the South) seem a bit worse …

Eden Foodservice, part of Initial Facilities Services, has received the Food for Life catering mark for 96 primary and special schools within the Croydon area.
The company, working in partnership with Croydon Council, has achieved the bronze accreditation, which recognises greater use of fresh, seasonal, local and organic ingredients, high welfare meat and sustainable fish.
Eden Foodservice has undergone a detailed auditing process to demonstrate they meet a range of required criteria including freshly preparing at least 75 per cent of all dishes on site.
In addition, meals are required to contain no …

Directive 2009/32/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States on extraction solvents used in the production of foodstuffs and food ingredients (Recast) Text with EEA relevance was published in the Official Journal L 141 , 06/06/2009 P. 0003 – 0011.
 
Directive 2009/32/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council
of 23 April 2009
on the approximation of the laws of the Member States on extraction solvents used in the production of foodstuffs and food ingredients
(Recast)
(Text with EEA …