The growth of the organic foods industry in the United States has been dramatic in the past 2 decades. It is estimated that organic sales have increased by nearly 20% annually since 1990, with consumer sales reaching $13.8 billion in 2005 (Figure 1). While initial organic food production primarily involved small farms and local distribution of fresh produce, today’s organic food system is a com...

The National Food and Nutrient Analysis Program (NFNAP) was implemented in 1997 to update and improve the quality of food composition data maintained by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). NFNAP was designed to sample and analyze frequently consumed foods in the U.S. food supply using statistically rigorous sampling plans, established sample handling procedures, and qualified an...

There is an assumption that legislation against unhealthy behaviour would be unethical, or at best unenforceable and counterproductive. However, the ethics of coercion depend on the manner in which such coercion is introduced, the essential precondition being wide, favourable community consensus. Two recent Australian examples have been the Victorian seat-belt legislation and the Tasmanian hyda...

The aims of this study were to develop strategies and algorithms of calculating food commodity intake suitable for exposure assessment of residual chemicals by using the food intake database of Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES). In this study, apples and their processed food products were chosen as a model food for accurate calculation of food commodity intakes ut...

OBJECTIVE To examine the association between television advertising exposure and adults' consumption of fast foods. DESIGN Cross-sectional telephone survey. Questions included measures of frequency of fast-food consumption at different meal times and average daily hours spent watching commercial television. SUBJECTS/SETTING Subjects comprised 1495 adults (41 % response rate) aged >or=18 yea...

This study explores the growth in demand for fast food. A distinguishing characteristic of fast food is its convenience; in today's pervasive marketplace, consumers need not travel far to find a fast food outlet. This greater availability translates into a decrease in the full price of obtaining a meal, which contributes to greater consumption. Market-level data are used to estimate demand equa...

Probiotics are live microorganisms that confer a health benefit on the host when administered in adequate amounts (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations-World Health Organization Working Group, 2002). Many microbial species have probiotic properties, but those most commonly used are lactobacilli (Salminen et al, 1998; Caplice & Fitzgerald, 1999; Leroy & De Vuyst, 2004). Lactob...

aseptic processing is defined as steril product filling in pre-sterilized containers followed by hermetic sealing in a sterile environment. aseptic processing and packaging has made great developments as a flexible and efficient technology for production of sterilizable products in food industries. in this study, the historical developments of the application form processing, sterilization of p...

Archaea are prokaryotic organisms distinct from bacteria in the structural and molecular biological sense, and these microorganisms are known to thrive mostly at extreme environments. In particular, most studies on halophilic archaea have been focused on environmental and ecological researches. However, new species of halophilic archaea are being isolated and identified from high salt-fermented...