Browse Food Stories - Page 3

When government officials need expert opinions, they often turn to academia for advice. The University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety has a long history of working with such entities to help ensure a safe global food supply, and its involvement in government matters deepened last fall when the center’s director participated in a high-profile review of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The University of Georgia’s Food Product Innovation and Commercialization Center helps small businesses and entrepreneurs make their mark on the food industry through research, formulation, prototyping and more. With a focus on small businesses and entrepreneurs, FoodPIC is committed to helping its clients hone their products, like Lova Naturals Beauty Repair.

Economists at the University of Georgia say to brace yourselves for an economic slowdown in the upcoming months. The best consumers can do is deploy cost-saving strategies at the grocery store and build a buffer through increased savings when possible.

Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday for food. On the fourth Thursday of November, people across the country sit down at the “good dining table” (or the broken folding table for the kids) and eat the same thing — copious amounts of turkey. Vegans and vegetarians may find this holiday to be a more difficult one. What can a person on a plant-based diet eat on Thanksgiving without missing out on the holiday fun?

Candy corn is either the first or the last piece of candy you reach for around the Halloween season. Regardless of your opinion, candy corn is a mysterious confection. Its flavor, texture and history are unique, making this variegated sweet more than meets the eye.

According to the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety study, SARS-CoV-2 experimentally introduced onto berries remained infectious on frozen berries for at least a month. Refrigerating berries at 39 degrees Fahrenheit showed a 90% reduction in SARS-CoV-2 infectivity over the course of three days, as did washing berries before freezing.

The University of Georgia Cooperative Extension’s novel Master Forager program has spots available for curious Georgians interested in learning how to safely harvest and use herbs, fungi and more. The first class for the program, which begins Aug. 24, will be held at the UGA Research and Education Garden in Griffin, Georgia.

Food technology entrepreneur James Gratzek will serve as the next director of the Food Product Innovation and Commercialization Center on the University of Georgia Griffin campus, according to the Department of Food Science and Technology at the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Foodborne illnesses affect more than 600 million people each year worldwide. In 2018, the U.N. General Assembly established June 7 as World Food Safety Day to bring awareness of foodborne risks and “to celebrate the myriad benefits of safe food.”

As home canning season approaches, a University of Georgia food safety expert stressed the need for proper precautions to avoid foodborne illness. A recent death in Washington state was attributed to botulism, a toxin that is a byproduct of the heat-resistant spores of a bacterium called Clostridium botulinum that likely originated from a home-canned food.