When I’m traveling I pay more attention to things that would normally go unnoticed. Like this Starbucks’ bag from an afternoon snack I had in New York.
I’m not sure how natural a marshmallow square can be, but apparently mine  was made without artificial ingredients. With the promise of “more to come” I wonder if organic is next on this coffee giant’s agenda.
A couple of days later I ate at Pret a Manger, a fast food chain that started in London, UK and has expanded to the States. Their policy? To …

It is easy to fall into stereotypes.  It’s easy to think that Canada is so cold that we can’t grow exotic fruits and vegetables found in other countries. But as we highlighted recently, diversification into new crops, such as quinoa, is the new trend. All it takes is a few adventurous farmers to push the limits on what we can grow in Canada. Season extension, appropriate cultivar selection, and creative use of thermal resources has even allowed producers to grow tropical crops such as olives and lemons with great success.
The …

Here’s a topic you won’t see in the food magazines — horsemeat. Chef’s love it, animals lovers balk at the idea and the Japanese want us to ship more.
But this $60-million industry has virtually no regulations and generates a lot of controversy.
To set the record straight, Cuisine Canada’s intrepid Dana McCauley did a lot of digging. In her article Behind the Barn Door: The Hidden Facts about Canada’s Horsemeat Industry, McCauley logs dozens of hours talking to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, meat specialists, the Horse Welfare Alliance of Canada …

The CBC, CTV, and a variety of media outlets have recently highlighted a Food and Consumer Products of Canada and Canadian Medical Association Journal report on discretionary fortification, with the intent of streamlining regulation to allow the addition of vitamins and minerals to a wider variety of food products.  It sounds like this is a new thing, but Health Canada has been investigating the issue of discretionary fortification for more than a decade.  Even before the advent of calcium fortified orange juice, Health Canada has deliberated with how to regulate …

Yet another press uproar, yet another set of watercooler debates. The Food Standards Agency in the UK reopened the debate over whether organic food is more nutritious than conventional food. Their two full reports (First Report and Second Report) and accompanying article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggest that there is no difference when it comes to the nutritional content, and the health impact. And this has people talking.
After a thorough review of several hundred papers, extraction of relevant data, and comparison of conclusions, in general …

New Cuisine Canada member, Dana McCauley, brought this article to my attention. As a food trend expert, Dana keeps her eye on what’s hot and what’s not in the food world, and it looks like the push for local food is getting a bit of backlash.
In the recent Boston Globe article, “A Bitter Reality”, Tom Keane writes, “The local food movement is an affectation based on bad logic and bad economics.” While he claims local food tastes better when in season, he says the sustainability claims are myth. He points …

These are the practiced hands of Natasha Akiwenzie. She and her husband Andrew own and operate Akiwenzie’s Fish. Their whitefish, pulled responsibly right from Georgian Bay, makes its way to Toronto Farmers’ Markets and onto the menus of top Toronto chefs like Jamie Kennedy. They’re a small. They’re struggling. And I suspect they aren’t alone.
So when I read Taking Stock of Fish in the Wall Street Journal, it got me thinking. Some CSAs in the US are branching into fish. Is this a effective way to support sustainable seafood and …

This is the new Dairy Farmers of Canada label.  “100% Canadian Milk” under the happy blue cow gives a clear message. It’s a simple and wonderful difference. DFC, through their new branding initiative, has made it just that little bit easier to select a Canadian product among Canada’s convoluted product origin labeling.
What do you think about Taste of Place Labeling? It’s an interesting situation.
Where would you draw the line?
Traditional, derived-from-place foods, like maple syrup, fiddleheads and wild blueberries are easy to identify as Canadian. The …

Fire up your grill, May is National Barbecue Month!
If you haven’t already done so, the Victoria Day holiday is the unwritten season-opener for many backyard chefs. Around this time of the year, I look forward to receiving the latest Weber Canadian Grillwatch Survey results from fellow Cuisine Canada member and friend, Theresa Stahl, Director, Public Relations, Weber-Stephen Products Co., Canada. I was never a statistical whiz in university, but I can’t resist reading the mathematical research of others, especially when it pertains to food.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of …

In a recent speech by Dr. Harvey Anderson, Director of the Program in Food Safety, Nutrition and Regulatory Affairs at the University of Toronto, he suggested that in Canada, “We have no national nutrition policy.” Hearing speakers from around the world at the opening of University of Guelph’s Human Nutraceutical Research Unit, it was easy to see that Canada is nutritionally “all right” as a nation, and that our state of public health was not as bad as many other industrialized countries.  But we could be doing more, and in …