The 2012 World Cheese Awards have just been held at the BBC Good Food Show in Birmingham in the UK. There were more than 2700 entries from across the world. It is the largest international cheese competition. The judging was done in three stages by over 200 judges, over one very full day, to determine the World Champion Cheese for 2012.

This year’s Champion is from Spain (for the first time in the Award’s 20 year history) and is the Manchego Do Gran Reserve – an unpasteurised ewe’s milk firm cheese which had been aged for six months. It is only produced in that specific region in Spain and is easily recognised by the zigzag pattern on it’s inedible rind. It was the top cheese out of the Awards 55 “Super Golds”.

The Best Australian Cheese is the “Oak Blue” from Berrys Creek Gourmet Cheese (from Gippsland in Victoria) and is one of the three Australian cheeses in the Super Gold group.

The other Australian Super Golds were the “Woodside Wakame” from Woodside Cheese Wrights and the “Tasmanian Heritage Red Square” from Lion Dairy and Drinks.

Australia also did well in the Gold Class with the following cheeses;

“Monet” – Woodside Cheese Wrights

“The Blue Bitch” – Woodside Cheese Wrights

“Maffra Cheddar” – Maffra Cheese Company –

“Locheilan Triple Cream Ring” – Locheilan Farmhouse Cheese

“Mossvale Blue” – Berrys Creek Gourmet Cheese

A recent study by Murdoch University’s Audience Labs and the University of Wollongong has found that a bonding of some form with a product results in increased sales compared to no feeling at all.

The study found that there is an increase of 38 percent in the purchase of beer if men feel a “love” for a specific brand. It doesn’t only apply to food, but other products as well, with an increase of 60 percent in the sales of laundry detergent if women have bonded with a particular brand.

The “I’m loving it” campaign from McDonalds is an example of how a business is trying to use emotional branding to fix a product or brand in people’s minds and hearts. It is now a globally accepted form of marketing.

“Emotionally attached consumers purchase substantially more than regular customers, which frees companies from having to rely on promotions and discounts to keep them buying the brand. On the flip side, however, while advertisers are eager to create emotional attachments between consumers and their goods, we’ve found forming these deep feelings can be a difficult task,” said Dr Steve Bellman, Deputy Director of Audience Labs.

There were 1025 people involved in the study, which involved them rating brands they had purchased over the last 12 months. The amount of each brand purchased by each was then recorded. The assessment component of the study was a comparison of the rating with the amount purchased as well any emotional attachment felt for the brand.

The study identified that about 25 percent of buyers were emotionally attached to food and related (or hedonic) products. There was a lower emotional attachment to utilitarian products like the laundry detergent, but it was still present and is a good predictor of purchasing behaviour.

Dr Bellman said “Our findings on utilitarian products were surprising, as we don’t usually associate petrol and laundry detergent with emotions like companionship and love”.

The emotional attachment was found to range from a simple trust in the brand to a deep affection for a specific product. Some people even get angry or upset if their favourite product is not available. The study showed that emotional branding is the same for both men and women.

So the line from the movie “the Castle” is right for some of us and for some brands and products, it is just about the “vibe”.

Consumers have an unspoken expectation that the food they are eating will be safe and not make them sick.

One of the important controls that food businesses must have in place to ensure their food is safe, is good hygiene. Part of this is the requirement to have suitable pest management.

Pests in a food business are the rodents and insects (both flying and crawling). All food businesses are required, according to the Food Standards Code, to have suitable pest control in place.

Although there are some very small food businesses that do their own pest control, it is not a recommended practice. This is because these people are not specialists in pest control and may also be using chemicals that should not be in a food business, making it a significant potential food safety issue.

All pest chemicals should be food grade so that if a small amount makes it into food, it will not cause harm to a healthy adult. This is an issue because some of the chemicals that have been used for rodent control cause internal bleeding, so these should not be inside a food business at any time.

Inside food areas, there should be traps not poison, this is to ensure that any captured rodents are contained and not likely to go off somewhere to become potential contamination sources when they die. There are a variety of traps available, from those that kill, to those that simply only contain.

The placement of all traps, bait stations insectocutors (bug zappers) and sprays is the key to any pest control program and it is this knowledge that you are paying for when you use a professional pest controller.

It is strongly recommended that a food business not use just a local domestic pest controller but one that works with food businesses specifically. Therefore the well known names in the industry are well worth approaching about the development and implementation of a pest management program that is suitable for each specific food business.

I was recently asked by a journalist why the food industry just doesn’t do simple food. Well, the answer is very simple – it is because the public want more than just that. It wants; flavour, texture, convenience, long life, portion control, something new, something special, dietary and medical needs met and their favourite product in the shop when they want it.

The Clean Food movement is all about minimising additives in food but unfortunately to do this and achieve the expected public demands, a lot of product and process development is being undertaken.

This development is also ongoing to attempt to meet all the other public demands, so new technology, processing methods and packaging is being developed continuously.

As an example of this, coffee has now overtaken the simple black tea with milk as the beverage of choice in Australia. In part this is being driven by the access to good machine coffee in the home and workplace. It is no longer necessary to visit the local café to get a good coffee. With the advent of the coffee pods and related machines, anyone can now have good coffee at any time. This situation has only come about in the last year or so, and it shows how the food industry has rapidly developed equipment and product to meet a consumer demand.

Cadbury’s have heard the complaint about “the chocolate melts in my hand” for years. Chocolate melts at 33.8°C, which has been an issue since it first became commercially available. If a company could find a way of stopping chocolate from melting, this would make a lot of people very happy, including supermarkets, transport companies and the public.

As part of it’s product and process development, Cadburys have just put in a Patent Application for chocolate that resist heat up to 40°C. This has massive potential implications for the food industry and consumers.

It is being done through an addition to the chocolate process and is yet another example of how businesses in the food industry are constantly working to better meet the needs of the public.

The UK’s national academy of science has recently chosen refrigeration as the most significant food related invention in history.

The Royal Society says that “Refrigeration has played the biggest role of any innovation in improving the diets of millions of people. It is responsible for bringing a more varied, interesting, nutritious and more affordable diet to an ever increasing number of people”.

Refrigeration is the top of a list of 20 that the Society has chosen as the most significant food related inventions in history. The original list was 100, and was pared down by the Steering Committee to the final 20, based on accessibility, productivity, aesthetics and health.

Two of the top three were invented in the UK, with refrigeration credited to William Cullen, who demonstrated it for the first time in 1748, at the University of Glasgow.

The third in the list is Canning. The tin can was patented by Peter Durand, a British merchant, in 1810. Interestingly, the way we now use commonly for opening cans, the can opener was not invented until around 1860.

The Society believes that the second most significant innovation is Pasteurisation / sterilisation. This has allowed milk and other foods to be available for longer times and had a major impact on food safety.

The Top 20 food related inventions of history are;

1. Refrigeration
2. Pasteurisation / sterilisation
3. Canning
4. The oven
5. Irrigation
6. Threshing machine / combine harvester
7. Baking
8. Selective breeding / strains
9. Grinding / milling
10. The plough
11. Fermentation
12. The fishing net
13. Crop Rotation
14. The pot
15. The knife
16. Eating utensils
17. The cork
18. The barrel
19. The microwave oven
20. Frying

Do you agree with the Royal Society?

A Food Dictionary is being developed by The Radboud University Nijmegen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and food research company Wageningen UR as part of a special project in Europe.

This may not seem like any big thing, as there would be millions of food related dictionaries around the world.

So what makes this new Dictionary such a special thing – it is because, it is an Ontology.

An ontology is a way of collating information into a structure that is based on classes and then parts within those. It is designed to make finding information easier whilst also allowing for ready jumping between different classes due to the links that are shown and made.

This Dictionary is a database of over 20 million documents, including books and scientific literature with summaries, and is arranged in a way that makes finding specific information much easier.

It is expected that this compendium will be an absolute boon for those doing product development, because an immense amount of food related information will be in the one place for the first time. This will mean that developers will be able to access data and make new combinations of foods more readily.

Ontologies have been the domain of the artificial intelligence world until now. This will be a term that will become more well known by the rest of the world as more industries take up the methodology and advantages that this type of structure gives in using them.

For more information about what an ontology is and why they are being used, have a look at this article from Stanford University.

So would a vaccine simply solve the whole gluten free thing that we are confronted with every time we go shopping or in our food businesses?

Is the massive increase of gluten free foods actually about helping people with celiac disease or is it really about sales?

These are two questions now begging answers with the news that by 2017 there may be a suitable vaccine available for those who are currently unable to eat foods containing gluten.

A potential vaccine is about to start human trials and it is expected that within five years it will be available commercially. It contains very small components of the vegetable protein and when given in a series of increasing more concentrated doses the body builds up immunity to gluten.

Gluten is an essential part of a vegetarian’s diet as one of the replacements for the primary proteins found in meats, poultry and seafood. It is not something that will be going away anytime soon.

The alternatives to gluten in foods are more expensive so these foods are usually at a higher price, but people are paying this premium because the whole issue of gluten free is now getting confused into the health domain. Many people now eat gluten free not because it is essential to prevent an allergic reaction, but because it is now being seen as a healthy alternative – and can even “reduce weight”.

In short, the whole gluten free thing is huge and becoming a very big market (in the US alone, Celiac.com reports that sales were US$ 2.64 billion in 2010) with much confusion both within the food industry and by consumers.

A vaccine will potentially ease this rapidly growing issue, however what will happen to the massive numbers of products that are now being developed and labelled gluten free.

The concept of a gluten vaccine is being challenged by some individuals and groups on the basis that this disease and condition can be diet controlled – so why is there a need for a vaccine?

Many of the fast food chains are now serving gluten free but have said that they can always guarantee that the food is in fact free of gluten. This is not isolated to just the fast food industry, and raises the questions about what gluten free actually means.

We will just have to wait to see what happens.

The following is a Product recall notice and is included with permission from Food Standards Australia New Zealand.

Lenard’s minced chicken products – presence of foreign matter (wood and metal)

Lenard’s Pty Ltd has recalled the following a range of minced chicken products available for sale in Lenard’s retail outlets in WA only, due to the presence of foreign matter (wood and metal). Customers should not eat these products and should return it to place of purchase for a full refund.

Date notified to FSANZ: 3/12/2012

Food type: Poultry and Game

Product name: Range of minced chicken products available in various flavours/varieties

• Sausages
• Patties
• Jumbos (Patties)
• Thai Chicken Burger
• Mini Strudel
• Lenny Pops
• Mixed Vegetable Loaf
• Hi Top Muffins
• Pinwheels

Package description and size: The products of various sizes and flavours were sold unpackaged to consumers.

Date marking: Product was available for sale between 27- 30 November 2012, inclusive.

Country of origin: Australia .

Reason for recall: The presence of foreign matter (wood and metal) which may cause injury or present a choking hazard if consumed.

Consumer advice: Consumers should not eat this product and should return the product to place of purchase for a full refund.

Contact: Lenard’s Pty Ltd Freecall 1800 068 111 www.lenards.com.au

The recent annual scientific meeting of the Australasian Society of Child Immunology heard that current research shows that Australia has the highest prevalence of food allergy in the world.

The meeting was told by Professor Johan Garssen of the Danone Research – Centre for Specialised Nutrition and Utrecht University –Department Immunopharmacology, Utrecht, the Netherlands, that in the latest research approximately 20 percent of the Australian population has a food allergy, with around three percent of children having a cows’ milk protein allergy.

Although the rest of Asia has lower rates of food allergy at this stage, it is being well recognised that with the increasing western diet in these countries, this will be changing, as immigration studies are showing these populations are more susceptible.

During the keynote speech at the meeting, Professor Garssen suggested several potential reasons for the increase in food allergies and allergic diseases, including;

• a failure of immune tolerance,
• microbial exposure (“hygiene hypothesis”)
• infections
• diet and air pollution
• postnatal development

Evidence currently supports that changes to microbial exposure patterns has had a significant impact on the rise of allergy related disorders. It is likely to not be the only factor however, with dietary changes appearring to contribute to pro- inflammatory conditions.

It has been long believed that breast feeding is one of the best starts to life. Evidence is showing show that by consuming human milk, infants can develop protection against some immunological diseases and improve immune systems. Components of cows’ milk protein are being tested in high risk families to reduce the incidence of allergies.

There are medications that reduce the symptoms of allergies but to this point there are no cures for a food allergy, except avoidance.

Food businesses have a key role in food allergies and must take this role seriously at all levels.

Homo sapien is an omnivore. This means humans eat both meats and vegetable matter.

Meat has different meanings for different people, but essentially it means the muscle or flesh from living animals, birds and seafood.

Vegetarians and Vegans will usually define meat as being from animals, birds and seafood, whereas there are other people that will only call the material from animals meat.

Regardless of what each person calls meat, it has now been found that it is likely that humans have been eating it regularly for 1.5 million years.

This finding is based on the discovery of a human skull in Tanzania. The skull was from a two year old and showed evidence of anemia and was also lacking B9 and B12. All of which indicates that the child, or it’s mother, was not eating any meat at the time of it’s death.

The size and development of the skull also reinforces the new research that it is the regular eating of meat that has allowed the human brain to develop to the point it has. Previously it was believed that humans were meat eaters when the opportunity arose, however this new study is showing that the species was an active hunter and meat eater more than a million years ago.

The study said; “The presence of anemia-induced porotic hyperostosis…indicates indirectly that by at least the early Pleistocene meat had become so essential to proper hominin functioning that its paucity or lack led to deleterious pathological conditions.”

This study would support the belief held by many medical and nutritional specialists that children should not be given a purely vegan diet, as there may be a reduction in brain development as a result.

For those adults choosing to live a vegetarian lifestyle, this study supports the concept that it is essential to have a well balanced diet with regular consumption of good quality secondary protein sources.