By Katherine Rich I was hoping 2019 would be a year of constructive reports on issues around obesity and wellness so we could make further headway on them. But it was only mid-January when British medical journal The Lancet published a report calling for people to eat...
By Katherine Rich I’m picking a very interesting year ahead for the FMCG sector. There’s no doubt from a suppliers’ point of view that profitability will be the main focus, but issues such as labelling, packaging and obesity will continue to loom large, as they have...
The management of supermarkets and consumer goods companies has taken on quite a change in recent times – and there’s more to come. After decades of grocers scurrying around filling boxes with shoppers’ orders, and decades more of them carrying plastic bags to the...
Workplace Wellness programmes are often thought to be the domain of only large corporates, and beyond the resources of smaller businesses, but this does not need to be the case. When I look around the members of the New Zealand Food & Grocery Council, I often see...
In the debate around how to tackle the complex issue of obesity, sugar continues to attract the most attention. For the most part, those railing against it believe taxes to be the single best solution. But with the Government saying it prefers to work with the food...
Chief among the benefits that companies get from belonging to the Food and Grocery Council is exclusive access to information, seminars and networking events. These cover anything from export, health & safety, and sales strategies, to retail data and insights,...
People often do and say silly things where alcohol is involved. I’m not meaning just those who may consume too much of it, rather those who try to make it as difficult as possible for reasonable New Zealanders who want to supply or purchase beer and wine from a...
Now they’re going too far. As if years of using erroneous figures as “evidence” to back calls for taxes on sugar in everyday foods and beverages wasn’t bad enough, anti-food campaigners are now turning to some of the things that bring a little joy to our lives –...
Last month I wrote about predictions by some food industry experts on the shape of the food industry in 2050. When some of panelists from our industry were asked at the Food for the Future summit in Singapore what they thought the food world would look like in 30...
The newspaper headline was enough to get nutritionists wondering: “Fat enzyme breakthrough kept mouse thin on pizza and burgers diet”. Those of us with a questionable diet were wishfully thinking that at last here was something that meant we could eat fast foods to...
No stock farms, no animal ingredients in any foods, and definitely no meat section in supermarkets. It doesn’t sound right, but according to some food industry leaders it’s what the food world could look like just 30 years from now. Last month I was at the Food for...
As predicted, the food industry year is shaping up to be dominated by what more can be done to reduce obesity. This is no surprise since New Zealand’s obesity rate remains one of the highest in the developed world. It’s a problem everyone should be concerned about. As...
