| May 1, 2012 | News for the food, beverage and consumer packaged goods industry |  |  |
| Company Watch |  |  | | - Coke denies Monster Beverage talks
Coca-Cola directly refuted a Wall Street Journal report that the company is in talks to buy energy drink company Monster Beverage. "At this time, we are not in discussions to acquire the Monster Beverage Corp," Coke said in a statement. "We continue to review the best ways to maximize the value of our relationship." Reuters (5/1)       - P&G plans India facility
Procter & Gamble India is planning to build a factory in Hyderabad, adding to the five plants it currently owns in the country. Madhav Rao, associate director for P&G India, said the facility will support "our purpose of touching and improving the lives of consumers, in more parts of India and more completely." ZeeNews.com (India) (4/29)  |  |  | | How to turn money you already spend into points you can use:
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  - The challenge of creating the perfect vegan cheese
Making vegan cheese that imitates the real thing is a challenge that has stumped scientists for years. "The skill of the formulator is to use exactly the right amounts and blend of gums, protein, solids and fats to get a desirable, cheese-like bite and mouth feel while achieving a realistic melt," said Jonathan Gordon of Galaxy Nutritional Foods, which will roll out its new vegan shredded "cheese" product this spring. National Public Radio/The Salt blog (4/30) - Snacking becomes as "culturally relevant" as meals
With 48% of eating occasions falling into the snack category, "snacking has become as culturally relevant to consumers as mealtime," Hartman Group founder and CEO Harvey Hartman said at FMI2012 during the session "Challenging Consumer Financial Realities = In-Store Opportunities." Hartman said people snack nearly twice as often as they did in 1977. Supermarket News (4/30)  | Corporate Social Responsibility | |  | | |  | - Sustainability a purchase factor for 91% of companies
In a survey of companies by Rackspace Hosting, 91% globally and 72% in the U.S. said sustainability is a factor in purchasing decisions. For 26%, cost outweighed environmental considerations, and 54% said they would choose the more environmentally friendly option if presented with two products or services that are otherwise equal. Environmental Leader (4/30)  - Pepsi campaign aims to establish global pop culture
Pepsi hopes that its "Live for Now" slogan debuting this week will associate it with live entertainment, and it is banking on its updated Pepsi Pulse fan dashboard to help foster the idea. Though PepsiCo's chief marketing officer, Simon Lowden, said the brand has been associated with entertainment in the past, "there have been times in the last decade where we haven't been in the right place in entertainment around the world." Pepsi has adopted a theme of emerging artist Nicki Minaj's "Moment 4 Life" song. Advertising Age (tiered subscription model) (4/30)  | Leveraging Cloud Security to Weather Threatening Storms
Web attacks and retribution campaigns are on the rise, and they have become more frequent, more random and more extreme. This paper assesses the current cyber threat environment and discusses the use of distributed cloud services as an effective means to protect against evolving, modern-day IT threats. |
 | Retail Spotlight | | | |
| Health & Wellness | | | | - Food insecurity might increase childhood-obesity risk
Low-income mothers with babies younger than 6 months who reported being food insecure showed controlling feeding practices -- such as food restriction and pressuring -- which might increase the risk of childhood obesity, a study revealed. Researchers also found that food-insecure mothers were more likely than non-insecure counterparts to be worried that their child might become overweight. The results were presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting and will be published in Pediatrics. Yahoo!/Asian News International (4/28) | GMA News | | | |
| Government & Food Safety | | | |
| SmartQuote | | | |  | It may be that those who do most, dream most."
--Stephen Butler Leacock,
British-Canadian political economist and humorist  |
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