How Stew for a Cold Day Became a Lesson in Label Reading Today the weather in New Bern, N.C., is a bit nasty — rainy and cold. To beat the dank and dreary day, my mom decided to make some stew, a comfort food she has made for as long as I can remember. It is a delicious dinner that would warm our bodies and our souls — as is only right for a home-cooked meal made by mom. When I went into the kitchen to make lunch, I noticed she had already cut up the potatoes and carrots…
Due to the growing awareness of food allergies and the reoccurrence of what could have been preventable deaths and injuries related to those allergies.
The meetings industry has come a long way in understanding the importance of identifying allergens at group meals. Labeling buffet items and identifying ingredients in menus is pretty much standard procedure for hotels and caterers. In the consumer sector, this progress started in 2004 with the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act. The legislation required manufacturers to identify if their prepackaged foods contained one of the eight major allergens in the U.S. – milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and tree nuts. At the time, these accounted for 90 percent of U.S. allergens. Eleven years later, a…
Expectations of the dining experience have many influences for attendees. Among those influences are the generational expectations of food, food culture, and how we dine together. While some trends change year-to-year, we can also observe trends in expectations generation-to-generation. Ultimately, different age groups respond differently to trends in food service and in turn, we try to manage a responsiveness to expectations. Boomers were king in the 80s, and so was Caesar salad, hot sauce, ranch dressing, and buffalo sauce. The flavor lifecycle is about 5-8 years. We saw the hot sauce peak and give way to familiar global cuisines, such…
