Food, clothing and shelter are the three main things which are required by humans to survive. Though shelter and clothing are equivalently important, food is probably the greatest necessity of man. This is the reason that so much research and development is done on the food industry globally. People have also become extremely careful and cautious regarding the kinds of foods that they intake. Health-consciousness has increased significantly among people and they count their calories while eating. This is because health hazards like overweightness, obesity, high cholesterol levels are on the rise.
Nutritional labelling and its growing importance
You might have seen that in many restaurants and coffee shops, there is nutritional value of the food mentioned along with the name and the price of the item. This helps in keeping a track of the calorie intake. Infact this has become a subject of great study and research currently, though the results obtained are quite poor as biasness is common when it comes to food items. It has been thought by research teams that with nutritional labelling, the amounts of calories ordered and purchased in restaurants, cafés etc. can be reduced significantly. As per reports, it was found that intake of almost 48 calories could be reduced in restaurants where nutritional labelling was done.
There have been lots of questions raised on the quality of these studies. There were total 28 studies in the entire review. Majority of them were US-based; while some were UK based and so on. Some studies were based on nutritional labelling on buying foods and drinks from vending machines, grocery stores or in other real-world settings. It has been noted that no significant results could be drawn from the studies because of the low quality. As per experts and research geniuses, though no clear and quality result is obtained from the study, yet it is true that nutritional labelling is a strong way of addressing the ever-growing problem of obesity in a great way. Along with this, they also emphasize on the other methods which can help in keeping overweightness and obesity at bay successfully.
Food safety – the associated hazards and steps to overcome them
We consume various kinds of foods all throughout the day and all throughout our life. But do we ever think about food safety seriously? With increasing levels of pollution and use of superficial items for food processing, food safety is becoming an important concern for sure. There are some parameters which need to be measured for food safety, but there are many questions which need to be answered in this regard too. ‘What will be the measurement all about’, ‘how will be the measurement done’, ‘who will carry out the process of measurement’ and so many others.
While creating food safety plan, these are some essential questions which need to be answered. Many food companies are questioned regarding the standards that are followed for food safety. Keeping a close check on the procedures will keep troubles away for the food companies. There are basically three ways in which the food companies will be benefited with the monitoring process. They are as follows:
• Tracking and controlling critical limits
• Understanding when there is need of real action when there is some deviation for critical limit
• Providing records that there was a compliance plan which had been followed
For complete success of the process, the process of monitoring should be continuous. Sometimes, it might be a time-consuming thing where physical as well as chemical protocols have to be kept into considerations along with other things. The processes vary greatly depending on the product and the way it is processed.
There are two things which are common in all monitoring processes. First is personnel training and second is attention for finer details. A structured monitoring protocol is to be designed so that teams working on such issues can work in specific manners for obtaining the best details.
With constant experimentation in the food industry, steps are being taken to improve the quality of food which is being offered to customers. Research and development in the field is bringing in fruitful results which are being constantly implemented for upgradation and betterment.