New eating and shopping habits likely here to stay as pandemic measures ease, U of A food economist predicts
Eating at home more and sticking with online delivery or takeout are habits likely to persist even as pandemic measures ease, according to one expert. “The ‘new normal’ is unlikely to be the same for retail and food service as life was in January of 2020,” when the first case of COVID-19 was reported in…
When costs rise, most food companies adjust. Safe, fair and sustainable business practices are always a priority in this sector – almost. Several food science experts believe an increase in food fraud is inevitable due to COVID-19. The Food Authenticity Network advisory board, which includes more than 1,500 food science experts from around the world,…
Packing plant closures can be disruptive and, for farming, disastrous. But they can be necessary to protect the public
As COVID-19 ravages communities across North America, many analysts believe meatpacking plants, where employees work close to each other, are the next focal point of the spread of the virus. We’re likely in the worst of it now. More than a dozen North American meatpacking plants have closed over the last two weeks, with at…
Restaurants are hard hit by the COVID-19 crisis. Many won’t recover and some are already closed for good. And grocers, despite the influx of millions of new dollars, are managing unprecedented pressure points. Grocers are in a high-volume, low-margin business. The $80 billion shifting over from the decimated food service industry may have been a…
Convenience now has a different meaning. It’s less about saving time and more about survival and safety
COVID-19 will redefine grocery shopping and food service. Convenience now has a different meaning. It’s less about saving time and more about survival and safety. Before the crisis, barely anyone ordered online and many Canadians wondered why someone would ever order food in that fashion. But many things are changing – rapidly. The in-store shopping…
To suggest the disease naming process of an international agency may have affected sales of a beer carrying a similar name tells us something about our risk-averse society
A survey this week suggested that 38 per cent of Americans aren’t drinking Corona beer due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, formerly known as the coronavirus. There’s obviously no link between the beer and the virus, but the survey suggests a mental association between the product and the disease may be too much to bear…
Organized, well-funded groups condemning farming practices on social media are winning the consumer trust battle
The public uses social media every day to express concerns about farming practices. And it’s getting worse. Farmers are criticized for a variety of reasons – for example their environmental stewardship and their ethical behaviour in how they treat livestock. In survey after survey, Canadians generally say they trust farmers, regardless of headlines, social media…
Gene-edited crops can help produce safe and affordable food and energy. But proponents need to make a legitimate case to consumers
Will Canadian consumers want to eat gene-edited food? There's a lot of excitement in agriculture about the introduction of gene-edited food products into the Canadian food system over the next few years. But there’s also a great deal of apprehension. Gene editing is about tweaking a plant’s genome by turning off certain genetic traits. By…
Climate change knows no borders and neither should science. And when it comes to plant science, Canada is a force to be reckoned with
Every year, the United Nations promotes something that it believes warrants attention and it has declared 2020 the International Year of Plant Health. Celebrating plant health and bringing more awareness to the issue is well worth pursuing. Plants represent about 80 per cent of everything we eat. And animals raised on farms, of course, eat…
Far too many products in Canada’s stores give us lots of calories but little nutrition. And we have dangerously abandoned cooking and meal-time routines
In the 1960s, the biggest supermarkets only carried 10,000 items or fewer. Big supermarkets today offer almost 40,000 products. To be sure, among those extra items are more kinds of fresh fruits, vegetables and non-food items. But not 30,000. The vast majority of the additional food items are a huge range of ready-to-eat products from…