By Jenny Packwood, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, KFC Pan-Europe & UK & Ireland, and Kristopher Gibbon-Walsh, Chief Operating Officer at FareShare Currently, more than 11 million people in the UK are living in relative poverty, while over seven million people are living in food insecure households,1 meaning they don’t have reliable access to affordable and nutritious food. This reality has major impacts on those who experience it, often leaving them and their families hungry, isolated, and with declining health. Food insecurity is driven by a range of factors, including but not limi ..read more

By Liljia Polo-Richards, Founder and Director of Allergy Companions Over the last two years, I have had the opportunity to speak with many hospitality businesses, allergic consumers and industry experts, and I have learned to appreciate perspectives and points of view that do not always naturally match and come together. As we know, the last decade has unfortunately been marked by a number of allergy fatalities and serious incidents. These have heightened individuals’ awareness of their potential vulnerability when dining out with allergies. Businesses have, in turn, responded to these events ..read more

I was finally able to visit the ancient capital of China, Xi’an, home of the Terracota Army and over 5,000 years of Chinese history last week. This trip was first planned before the COVID-19 pandemic to support the research work on food authenticity in the country but also to gain more insights into the rich cultural heritage of the country. Perhaps it was due to the fact I will always primarily look through the lens of food security but for me there were multiple lessons to be learned from what I heard and saw. Ensuring sufficient food supplies for the nation in the past was hugely important ..read more

Redistributing food that would have otherwise gone to waste in London beyond, City Harvest London was first launched 10 years ago and has now rescued food for almost 58 million meals, preventing over 85 tonnes of GHG emissions and is now feeding over 120,000 people a week unable to afford food. In a time where one third of all food in the world is wasted, City Harvest made its mission clear: to reduce food insecurity and promote environmental sustainability by redirecting high-quality, nutritious surplus food away from waste and distributing it to individuals in need. In March 2024, New Food ..read more

In the dynamic landscape of the beverage industry, the past five years have witnessed a notable transformation – the rise of canned cocktails. This shift underscores changing consumer preferences, marked by a growing demand for convenience, quality, and sustainability. As a brand turning the dial in this evolving market, my Co-Founder and I have gained valuable insights into the forces driving this revolution and the innovative strategies employed to meet consumer demands. Pimentae, our tequila cocktail brand, stands as a testament to this shift. Our journey began with a vision to bring the e ..read more

The journey towards integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into food safety practices marks a pivotal evolution in how the food industry manages hygiene and safety protocols. Historically, data on food safety is vast but very fragmented. It is often collected through traditional methods that create a lag in providing real-time insights that are necessary for proactive decision-making. However, with the steady implementation of digital transformation programmes across the food production sector, the landscape is shifting. With the increasing adoption of innovative hygiene inspection solution ..read more

By Dr Clive Black is Vice Chairman of Shore Capital Markets Following the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic, war in Europe produced another negative externality that would have a quite material impact upon the mix of products sold in the UK supermarkets as well as where they would be bought. The steep rise in energy and food costs that reflected an amalgam of interconnected processes drove up Office for National Statistics (ONS) CPI to levels not seen for a couple of generations (Q1 2023 food inflation was 19 percent) and with it the steepest rise in interest rates that we have ever seen, the ..read more

Embark on a vibrant journey with Givaudan‘s latest eBook, which unravels the captivating role of colour in the world of food and beverages. Colour contributes significantly to the pleasurable and emotional experience of eating and drinking alongside other visual cues such as size, shape, packaging and labelling. However, it also serves as a gateway for perceiving, identifying and making decisions about food products. In this informative digital book, you will discover how hues guide us in choosing the perfect food sources, discerning ripeness and even detecting potential hazards. You will als ..read more

By Antony Warner, Development Chef and former Head Development Chef at Premier Foods I am a development chef by trade, and I worked for many years developing recipes for large cooking sauce brands. For decades, the biggest selling cooking sauce in the UK was the Homepride tinned Curry Sauce, a product that made the company I worked for a huge amount of money. It was widely seen as old fashioned, inauthentic, cheap and poor quality, but consistently outperformed every other cooking sauce on the market. The funny thing was, every other Indian cooking sauce brand wanted to think of itself as pre ..read more

By Professor Chris Elliott  I attended a lecture recently on the topic of food and farming in the UK in relation to the Net Zero objective. It was an insightful and thought-provoking lecture and I learnt some new aspects and challenges that climate change in particular will bring to meeting the target.   However, the lecture and many other sources of information and personal knowledge did leave me with the feeling that if the UK Government’s Net Zero farming policies continue on the course they are on, without any meaningful policies on food security, the UK faces a v ..read more