We have Twitter and we have Facebook, but sometimes the best form of conversation is face to face. We are often out and about with our stands, communicating about the composition of foods and nutrition labelling to an eclectic bunch. Here are a few examples of the conversations we have.
We do love to talk.
Students:
“Oh my goodness YOU produce THIS book, wow, we use it all the time, how is exciting!”
“Have you got any jobs going?”
“Can we come and work for free it would look great on our CV if we could say we worked with the producers of the UK food tables”
Food producers:
“I am so glad I met you, I have been confused about how to label my sweets for 6 months”
“You can do this for £35 pounds?? Wow thank you”
*Calls friend over “This software is going to help us so much”
“So, I don’t need to do anything with my honey label except use the data in your book?”
“I am going to market this food that my grandma makes, where do I start?” (sits down, this is going to be a long chat!)
“I’ve got a novel date ball recipe” (err based on the amount of people we have spoken to, we bet you haven’t)
“Do I have to bother with labelling on my product?”
“Can you calculate the nutrition in my product that has loads of really weird vegetables?”
Scientists
“Do you have information on phosphorus in the diet?
“How does calculation compare with analysis?
“Who does your analysis?
“We are very interested in the opportunity to work together”
Consumers
“Tolerances are THAT much?! Wow that makes my food choices very different”
“But what does that traffic light label really mean?”
“Sugar is bad for you it’s processed, honey is good, it’s natural” (and many other random conversations around organic sugar being better for you than white sugar).
Honest, we smile sweetly while trying to clarify the situation.
“Who decides what a portion size is?
“Pesticides have reduced the amount of moths in the world”
“Will you write a blog about this for our recipe page?
We hope to get a chance to talk to you at an event soon. Next stop is Food Matters Live, 21 – 23 Nov 2017, ExCeL London, where we will be joining Nutritics on their stand, number 564.
If you don’t have a chance to speak to us soon, please do visit our websites:
Food Databanks, Quadram Institute Biosciences: Information on Food Composition, access to UK food composition data, project work https://fdnc.quadram.ac.uk/
Nutritional Information Solutions: Food nutrition labelling calculation service, FAQs, blogs http://www.nutritionalinformationsolutions.com/
NutriticsNIS Free seven-day trial of self-calculation software and compliant full label preparation https://www.nutritics.com/welcome/nis