I take you through 5 of the top food headlines in the world.
Welcome to our new, Wednesday edition, of The Lempert Report; Food News Today.
Is Your Produce Contaminated?
Are the reusable containers used by Farmers to ship produce, lacking in the food safety department? According to two new studies, the answer is yes! One Canadian study from
University of Guelph and one US study from
University of California Davis, both found issues with the containers sanitation and cleanliness, raising concerns over food safety risks. Apparently the plastic could transfer pathogens from contaminated produce onto clean produce when not sanitized properly.
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2014/11/studies-find-reusable-produce-containers-often-contaminated/#.VHyIIWTF9_c
Iconic Chocolate Brand Looks to Change
Chocolate giant, Hershey is looking to appeal to consumer demand by replacing the high-fructose corn syrup in some of its products with sugar. Will Papa, chief research and development officer at The Hershey Co., told The Associated Press the company uses a mix of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup in its products but that it is "moving more toward sugar." A timeline for the change has not been announced. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/hershey-chocolate-high-fructose-corn-syrup_n_6256438.html
Takeout from…Amazon?!
Amazon is expanding its reach even more, their takeout & delivery feature just went live. Amazon is now in competition with the likes of seamless web and grubhub. For now, they seem to just be operating in Seattle covering about 20 restaurants, but if all goes well, we’ll most likely see that expand soon. As the company pointed out in the app; “The holidays are busy. We can help.”! At the same time Uber has expanded its lunch delivery to now include delivering dinner in Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/03/amazon-takeout-delivery-food-seamless-rival/
Obama Launches Local Food Initiative
This week the White House selected 26 communities to participate in Local Foods, Local Places. A program designed to help integrate local food systems into community action plans where a team of agricultural, transportation, environmental, public health and regional economic experts will work directly with the communities to develop specifically identified local food projects. http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2014/12/0262.xml&contentidonly=true
Starbucks Goes Mobile
A new Starbucks mobile app just made your morning commute easier! Forget waiting in line, now you can simply order your coffee from your iPhone, so when you arrive at Starbucks, skip the line, head straight to the cashier! Currently the pilot program is running in Portland, Oregon, but
over the next year, the app (on Android soon) will expand and also see a series of updates, including the option to set a daily coffee order, or use geofencing, a software program that uses the global positioning system (GPS) or radio frequency identification (RFID) to define geographical boundaries, to automatically place your coffee order at specified point during your morning commute.
To get the full articles for each of these stories just click on the links! Thanks for watching & see you next week!