Senior-friendly future: South Korea lays out governance for elderly-friendly foods based on ingredient ratios South Korea has finally laid out the governance rules for ‘elderly-friendly foods’ based on main ingredient ratios, with experts believing that this will have a significant impacts on a number of categories.
South Korea first created the elderly-friendly foods category in 2018, amending the local Food Code to establish this as a separate section.
Here, elderly-friendly food refers to foods manufactured and processed to have physical properties suitable to aid the elderly to eat or digest it, or to have nutritional profiles suitable for the elderly.
“[The elderly-friendly foods category has been established to] improve the convenience of intake as well as nutritional provision for the elderly, as this group may [face challenges] due to weakened chewing or swallowing or impaired nutritional intake due to this,” the South Korean Ministr
Japan nuclear monitoring: Tests show radioactivity concentration decreased in most foods products within five years Monitoring tests of Japan’s food products after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident showed that drinking water, milk and infant food were within the radioactivity concentration limits after five years, but some samples from the wild animal meat and agricultural categories still showed high radioactivity.
The Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident occurred in March 2011, releasing radionuclides into the environment.
In 2012, the government set standard limits for radionuclide in foods, specifically radioactive cesium.
The limits were set at 10 Bq/kg for drinking water, 50 Bq/kg for milk and infant food, and 100 Bq/kg for general foods which includes wild animal meat, fishery and agriculture.
Subscribe
Food allergies in children: More credible labelling policies as well as avoiding cross contamination crucial – HealthNuts study lead By Pearly Neo More effective policies to prevent allergen cross contamination are needed in Australia’s food industry, while voluntary labelling needs to more accurately reflect the risk profile, said a lead investigator of HealthNuts, the world’s largest comprehensive study on childhood food allergy.
The HealthNuts study has been ongoing for some 15 years, comprising data from children across Australia, Singapore, South Africa, 10 countries in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States.
According to HealthNuts project lead and Co-Group Leader of the Population Allergy group Dr Jennifer Koplin, there needs to be an effective strategy to protect children both pre and post allergy.
Subscribe
South Korean supplement trends: Red ginseng and probiotics popular as 69% say they use health functional foods By Tingmin Koe Nearly seven in 10 Koreans said they had bought and consumed health functional foods last year, according to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) involving 1,500 men and women aged 19 and above.
The new data comes after the number of South Koreans consuming health functional foods has risen steadily in recent years.
In 2012, there were 50.2 per cent of South Koreans purchasing such product, which increased to 60.6 per cent in 2017, 63.6 per cent in 2018, and 67.6 per cent in 2019.
Japan will need to place more focus on processed value-added foods and supply chain development beyond agricultural products if it wishes to hit its food exports target of JPY5tn (US$45.9bn) by 2030.
Japan announced ambitions to expand its food and agricultural product exports to JPY5tn by 2030 late last year, with mainly agricultural products such as wagyu beef and rice in the spotlight as key export items – but government ministers have now voiced doubts that depending on agricultural products as a key strategy is sufficient to hit this goal.
In a recent Shugiin (Japan’s House of Representatives, the lower house of the National Diet or legislature of Japan), Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Norikazu Suzuki highlighted that of total Japanese exports in 2019 valued at JPY921.1bn (US$8.5bn), some JPY327.1bn (US$3bn) of this was from processed foods.