In today’s food supply chains, climate is the wild card. A few days of unexpected rain during harvest can trigger sprout damage in wheat. A hotter-than-usual summer can alter grain protein levels. Each shift leaves its mark on the food system, rippling through storage, milling, processing, and ultimately, the consumer experience. For farmers, grain traders …

Organic farming began as a countercultural movement in the U.S. in the 1960s. As the public became more aware of the negative effects of pesticides, demand for organic food increased.1 According to the Organic Trade Association’s latest Organic Industry Survey, between 2020 and 2021, organic sales surpassed $63 billion, with $1.4 billion (2% total growth) …

Imagine a classic burger, packed with delicious, meaty umami flavor, joy and familiarity in every bite. And yet it’s not beef. Or pork. Or lamb. It’s plant-based protein, and it’s so tasty that even discriminating carnivores seek it out. Today’s plant-based alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs are the result of years of careful research …

When you consider shifts and changes in an industry, you often need to ask, ‘how did it get to be this way?’ When it comes to the winemaking industry, the answers are as complex and mysterious as a Chateau Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux. There are several reasons why the industry has changed for vintners (also known …

If you study pollutants in the air and water or control food or beverage quality, you’re probably familiar with a GC detector and know quite a bit about Gas Chromatography (GC). This article is for the rest of us. Those who may be a little familiar with the term but could use a really good …

The effort of creating new near-infrared (NIR) calibration databases often prevents users from upgrading old spectrometers, platforms, or changing from poor-performing vendors. Historical databases collected over years contain crop and production variation that is impossible to emulate in the short term. This variation is essential in creating robust, stable calibrations that are sensitive to the …

At the end of April 2021, the European Union (EU) food scientific community met virtually for the Food Integrity conference—and its outcomes showed that every sector of the industry are involved in food safety and fraud. The panel discussions and presentations at the conference, originally funded by the EU FoodIntegrity project and now organized by …

Feed producers often manufacture various products with different recipes for a range of animal species. Traditionally, multiple product-specific, near-infrared (NIR) calibrations have been used to predict the protein contents of the feed pellets. Although the recipes vary, there are similarities between the products meaning it would be possible and more practical to develop a few …

Many modern food processing techniques and new, alternative ingredients (i.e. plant proteins, resistant starch) require temperatures at or above 100° C, but few rheological devices offer analysis of ingredient and food viscosity at that temperature. Modern food processing techniques such as pasteurization and sterilization require high temperatures beyond the boiling point of water. Understanding how …

When starting to use a new NIR calibration it’s good practice to validate and adjust it. Especially if it was developed using a different reference lab than the one it will be compared to in routine use. Unfortunately, different labs don’t give identical answers when analyzing the same samples, even when they use exactly the …