Cuisine Canada Scene

Canadian Trends in Perceptions of Food

Trends, trends, trends.  Everyone’s talking about them.  Food trends abound, but which ones are here to stay (at least for the time being).  Bensimon Byrne’s recent Consumerology Report focused on food consumer trends for Canadians, and the insight is interesting.  Where we are going, as a nation, with how we interpret food and health, is [...]

Slow Food, Slow Money…

Recent discussions with a friend of mine, Paul Spence, a cash crop farmer from Ridgetown Ontario, really brought home the crisis, the opportunity, and the barriers in diversifying in the agricultural sector today. We all know that many sectors of the Canadian agriculture are in trouble.  Case in point, the pork industry. It’s under catastrophic collapse from fluctuating [...]

An Appetite for Science

I finally got around to reading Massimo Marcone’s book, In Bad Taste?, awarded last year’s Honourable Mention for Special Interest Books at the Canada Culinary Book Awards. Massimo is a friend and colleague of mine, so he has been cajoling me to read the book since it came out. Browsing through the public library, it [...]

Fast food going natural

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 [...]

Field Day!

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 [...]

Horsemeat

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 [...]

Discretionary Fortification – Junk is in the eye of the beholder

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 [...]