What is the Meaning of Fresh Foods?

What is the Meaning of Fresh Foods?
The word fresh in the marketing of foodstuff has become something of a mantra in the past decade. However what the manufacturer and retailer mean by fresh and what the consumer understands are sometimes very different. We understand that the fresh bread has been baked within the last 48 hrs and fresh milk came from the cow within a similar period of time. So can fruit juice (the raw material could be weeks old), just because it has been pasteurized and required chill chain distribution be justifiable called ‘fresh’? Also, ‘fresh’ fruit juice could have 30 day best before life: is it still ‘fresh’ after 30 days? ‘Fresh’ fruit and vegetables could be several days old at the point of sale.

‘Fresh’ has three connotations to the consumer: the first is a about how recently it was derived from its source, the second is about minimal processing and the third about its eating quality. Pasteurized milk could be less than 24 hrs from the cow when place on sale. UHT milk when processed is no older than pasteurized milk but no one would describe UHT milk, even on the day of processing, as fresh. In a supermarket, fresh fish means raw fish: it was probably caught several days ago and has been frozen.

The consumer does not experience age of product or type of process: the consumer will buy fresh foods on the basis of a superior eating quality, often expect to pay a premium and accept a short shelf life. For the industry to offer both better value and greater convenience in the fresh foods market, we need to better understand that the consumer experiences as fresh food and how they discriminate ‘fresh’ from ‘processed’ foods. It is better be able to offer the fresh foods eating experience that is both good value and convenient.
What is the Meaning of Fresh Foods?

Raw Materials for the Markets

Raw Materials for the Markets Both conventional breeding and more particularly the promise of direct genetic modification of genotype offer the potential for changing the marketing dynamic of fresh produce, milk and meat.  

Fruit and vegetables marketed to the consumer are still predominantly producer led; what is offered is what can be grown. Quality criteria reflect, not what is desired but the limits within which a product is acceptable or tolerated. 

By using advanced breeding techniques the food industry would want the potential to match a fruit or vegetable to the consumers’ preference and the consumers’ mode of using the product. This would be true of fresh produce for manufacture, too. 

The dream is to be able to specify the ideal quality criteria of a fruit or vegetable and know that a grower is able to match the characteristics accurately and consistently. The desirable characteristics would include flavor, sweetness, texture, nutrient content and durability in storage. No doubt the growers would want to specify such characteristics as yield drought tolerance, insect resistance and ease of harvest. 

Similar scenarios can be imagined for milk and meat. As the market demand for butter fat, casein and whey protein moves, one or other component is in surplus, another is dearth. Although some changes in gross composition have been achieved through conventional breeding and feed regimes, could milk composition be more closely tailored to market demand by a better understanding of feed conversion or by altering the genotype? 

In the livestock market, the demands for the different cuts of meat must be managed. Chickens yield a fairly steady ration of leg to wing to breast meat. However, the market does not necessarily reflect this balance. Beef muscle is selected from different parts of the animal according to the desire for leanness, tenderness and flavor, but the market for hind and fore quarter does not necessarily reflect the fat that for every forequarter there is exactly one hindquarter. Raw Materials for the Markets