The warm weather is going away and with the changing season we have another Thought for Food for you. From instagrammable restaurants to vile food museums, we’ve compiled some of the most noteworthy stories from the past two months, in order from local stories all the way to international.
Local
As part of its initiative to become a zero waste city by 2020, the city of Austin has banned restaurants from disposing of leftover food in landfills. The Huffington Post reports that 85 percent of trash and recycling came from commercial businesses, multifamily properties and the food service industry. Restaurants are now required by law to donate their food to food banks, compost it or send the scraps to local farms.
National
Instagram has becoming the dominant social media platform for the millennial generation, so much so that restaurants are now considering their “instagramability,” which is taking marketing to a whole new level. A story out of CNN details a few NYC restaurants that have long lines extending onto the streets because of their popularity online. Standing out in business is hard, but if your restaurant is aesthetically pleasing enough, Instagram will help more than you might think.
Remember all the food recalls from our last newsletter? Well, thanks to IBM, tracking our food sources just became a lot easier. A story from Forbes explains the launch of IBM’s Food Trust Platform that is now available for commercial use. The food source tracker will be a way for retailers to track where contaminated foods were sourced, which will help them stop food contamination before more customers buy the contaminated food.
The ‘artificial flavors’ you see on the nutritional facts may be hiding some cancer causing compounds. Thankfully, the FDA has now banned the use of 7 of these additives that fell under the category of an artificial flavor thanks to a petition by environmental and consumer groups. The story out of NPR details how the petitioners provided the FDA with evidence that these additives can cause cancer in animals exposed to high dosages. Manufacturers now have 24 months to remove these additives from their products.
International
What if the foods we ate displayed their impact on climate change? Well that may soon become a reality, as the danish government discusses a proposal for food manufacturers to label their products with their impact on the environment. As the article from CNN states, the livestock industry represents 14.5 percent of all human-induced carbon dioxide emissions. The goal is for these environmental impact labels to prompt consumers to make more educated decisions regarding their consumption and carbon footprint.
A new food museum in Sweden has us questioning why we find things disgusting. Washington Post reports how the Disgusting Food Museum reminds us all that disgust is in the eyes of the beholder. By featuring delicacies from countries all over the world, visitors of the museum will leave with a greater understanding and, as the creators of the museum hope, a newfound appreciation for cultures unlike theirs.
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