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Lunch Boxable Snacks for Millennial Parents SPECIAL EDITORIAL FEATURE www.kitchenwarenews.com n JANUARY 2018 n KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW 1 5 3.5-ounce snack packs, so there's a range of sizes that will work in lunches. GoodnessKNOWS Snack Squares are a similar product that amps up the sweetness with more f ruit and dark chocolate. Four bite-size snack squares are packaged together into a bar- sized pack with a 150 calorie count that retails for about $1.49. There are currently six flavors, with five more scheduled to launch in 2018. The current offering includes top-seller Cranberr y & Almond, Strawberr y & Peanut and Mixed Berry & Almond, each of them combining f ruit, whole nuts and dark chocolate. Next year's launches will be nut varieties without f ruit, which will amp up the protein and lower sugar. The snack squares are non-GMO and gluten f ree, and they contain no artificial colors, flavors or sweeteners. They 're offered in 12-count singles cartons and 5- count multipacks. Cheesewich, which is a product with two slices of high-quality cheese f rom Burnett Dairy sandwiched around a slice of deli meat, is currently offered in four varieties: Cheddar Jack Cheese & Hard Scientists Studying Health Promoting Potential of Mangos According to a comprehensive review of the available scientific literature published in the May issue of Food & Function magazine, mangos and their individual components have anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative properties, which may help to reduce risk for chronic disease. In addition to being associated with better nutrient intake and diet quality, research suggests eating mangos may be important for glycemic control, the microbiome, as well as vascular, brain, skin, and intestinal health. Mangos contribute a number of valuable nutrients, including vitamin C, vitamin A, and fiber for only 100 calories per one cup ser ving. Mangos are also a source of phytochemicals –including phenolic acids, mangiferin, carotenoids, and gallotannins –which are associated with a number of health promoting activities including anti- inflammation, antioxidant, anti-diabetic, anti-obesity and anti-cancer. "Not only are mangos one of the popular f ruits in the world, they contain a variety of essential nutrients and distinctive bioactive components that may play a role in supporting key metabolic functions including anti- inflammatory activity," said Britt M. Burton-Freeman, PhD, MS, of the Center for Nutrition Research, Institute for Food Safety and Health, Illinois Institute of Technology, and lead author of the paper. Obesity and Diabetes Over the past two decades, the prevalence of obesity and diabetes has increased sharply; diet plays a critical role in reducing risk of both outcomes. Seven human trials, in which mango f ruit or puree was fed to individuals, have measured obesity or diabetes endpoints; five studies looked at people with type 2 diabetes, and two studies looked at people who were obese or generally healthy. Collectively, research suggests that mango Continued on PAGE 16 Continued on PAGE 16 Continued on PAGE 16 Meat Snacks Made from Grass-fed Beef BY LORRIE BAUMANN Landcrafted Food is a brand that's about an idea as much as about its products. That idea is that there's a place in the American market for responsibly raised grass-fed beef and the family farmers and ranchers that produce it. The company was started a decade ago by Gary Mitchell, Charlotte Hanes and Brantley Ivey, neighbors in Grayson County, Virginia. The county sits in Virginia's Blue Ridge Highlands, firmly at the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, and it's mostly famous for the quality of its bluegrass and old time music. It's unpretentiously rural, and the people who raise cattle there call themselves farmers rather than ranchers. Both Mitchell and Ivey grew up on family farms and wanted to be able to pass that legacy on to their own families. Mitchell's family has farmed in Grayson County for four generations. Ivey moved to the area about 10 years ago to manage the Hanes farm, and it didn't take long after he and his wife showed up in the county for them to get together with Mitchell for a conversation about how they were going to wean their cattle operations f rom the marketplace for commodity beef and generate the revenue that would allow them to give their cattle a qualify life. "The first goal was to raise cattle the way we wanted to and to earn a premium price," says Mitchell. "Selling into the commodity market, there's not much motivation for doing it better." They went to the nearest folks they could find who might be interested in paying premium prices for quality beef – the white tablecloth chefs in Washington, D.C. Once they 'd explained to those chefs how they were raising their cattle – out on pasture year-round, with no hormones or antibiotics — chefs started buying even before the company had its first meat ready for the market. "Restaurants began to tell us they wanted us to be grass-fed, and since we were in the mountains of Virginia, where Continued on PAGE 16 A Serious Foodie Delivers a World of Peppers BY LORRIE BAUMANN Jim Pachence takes peppers more seriously than most. He's the entrepreneur behind Serious Foodie, which offers a line of cooking and finishing sauces that feature fusion flavors, most of which celebrate the flavors of peppers grown around the world. His idea was to focus on the unique flavors of the peppers, rather than relying solely on their burn. Pachence, who has a Ph.D. in biophysics, started Serious Foodie in 2015 after a 40-year career as a serial entrepreneur in the medical devices industry, followed by culinary training in the U.S. and Europe. He and his family then worked for a few years to develop recipes based on the peppers and flavors he'd discovered during his world travels. "I started off as a very serious amateur cook,"he said. "hile phasing out my biotech career, I wanted to do something around the culinary business. We had thought of wanting to do something in culinary art, and I had an interest in –not necessarily hot –peppers. I wanted to know why the world has so many peppers. Why and how do peppers taste different when they're grown in different places?" "Some chilies are very harsh and are bred simply to be hot, not to be flavorful, sometimes painful,"he continued. "e started to look at the opposite: What are the species that are bred to be flavorful? W hy are there a thousand Mexican varietals?" The answer to those questions, he decided, is that different varieties of peppers are cultivated around the world to complement the various flavors that typify their cuisines as a whole. For instance, the aji panca pepper f rom Peru is used in just about every Peruvian dish in one way or another, Pachence said. It 's used both f resh and dried, sometimes in a paste. When it 's f resh, it has a sweet, slightly smoky, f ruity flavor that inspired Pachence to experiment with how it could be used in sauces that would complement the vegetables and proteins that comprise the American culinary lexicon. "t's slightly spicy, has multiple levels of flavor, is truly unique to the cooking of that country,"he said. "he taste is used everywhere. The Peruvians use it on their vegetables, so we played with that. Meaty fish, incorporated into a ceviche –those are some of the examples where we reflect how the sauce is used in the U.S. versus how it 's used in Peru. We made a Blood Orange and Aji Panca sauce, which reflects the bracing acidity that you see in the Peruvian dishes, but using our own fusion twist." The Blood Orange and Aji Panca BY LORRIE BAUMANN The oldest members of the Millennial Generation are now in their mid-30s, which means that a great many of them have become parents who now have school-age children. That simple calculation has the food industr y scrambling to provide products that those parents will feel comfortable about packing into their kids' lunch boxes. As one example, Creative Snacks Co., which just won a 2017 sofi award best new product in the savory snacks categor y for its Organic Coconut Snacks with Cranberries, Cashews, Almonds, and Chia Seeds, also offers Baked Almond Clusters in five flavors that include various combinations of dried fruit, nuts and seeds for a snack the company is marketing as "Real Good, Feel Good Snacks." The Almond Clusters are made in small batches and offer a 28-day shelf life. The 4-ounce bag retails for $3.99. The company is also launching 1- ounce, 2.75- ounce and

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