Dairy Foods Columnists

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It's time to celebrate milk - real milk, that is. World Milk Day, an event established by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) back in 2001 to recognize the importance of milk as a global food, will take place on June 1.

Clean label is big business. Euromonitor International estimates that global sales of clean-label food products will reach $180 billion by 2020.

We have often noted the importance of various phenomena, including the agglomerated fat matrix and the size of ice crystals and air bubbles, to the sensory appeal and structural properties of ice cream. Key to managing these phenomena is a complex set of highly variable (sometimes unknown) functionalities.

For about the past 20 years, the food and beverage industry has used high-pressure processing (HPP) to improve the safety of products. Foods such as sliced meats, avocado dips and certain beverages have especially benefited from this technology. Could the dairy industry also profit?

Large companies will be required to list "added sugars" on their Nutrition Facts panels by the end of this year.

People are interested in foods that can decrease inflammation. According to consumer insights from The Hartman Group, Bellevue, Wash., contemporary diets are personalized and all about balance, wellness and energy. This includes a consumer desire for diets that reduce inflammation.

As consumers worldwide look for ways to increase their protein intake throughout the day, multinational food and beverage companies are looking to diversify sourcing. Selecting a single protein source has advantages.

Yet again, European Union (EU) intervention stocks of skim milk powder (SMP) have effectively been drawn down to zero. When this happened in 2007, EU and U.S. prices ran up to new record highs.

A shelf-life study is used to evaluate the time, under specified storage conditions, that a food will tolerate without producing unacceptable microbiological, chemical, physical and/or sensory changes.

It seems that every year I learn about another exotic tropical superfruit brimming with healthy phytonutrients. But the reality is that most fermented dairy products in the United States rely on a fairly narrow list of traditional and cost effective fruits in their flavor lineup.