Food – Page 5 – Impact Lab

Coronavirus, Food, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Walmart is piloting a pricier 2-hour Express grocery delivery service

May 18, 2020

Record usage of grocery delivery services amid the COVID-19 pandemic has led to delayed orders, fewer open delivery windows and, on occasion, an inability to even book a delivery time slot. Walmart now hopes to capitalize on the increased demand for speedier delivery with the introduction of a new service that allows consumers to pay to get to the front of the line. The retailer confirmed today it’s launching a new Walmart Grocery service called “Express,” which promises orders in two hours or less for an upcharge of $10 on top of the usual delivery fee.

The service has been in pilot testing across 100 Walmart stores in the U.S. since mid-April. Walmart says it plans to expand the service to nearly 1,000 stores in early May and it will be offered in a total of nearly 2,000 stores in the weeks after.

Some Walmart customers may have recently received a push notification alerting them to the launch.

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Coronavirus, Food, Hot Issues, Science & Technology News

Indians are waiting to dineout with family and friends post lockdown: Survey

May 17, 2020

The report also revealed that most of India have been craving Pizza since the lockdown has been implemented, except Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata where their popular & indigenous Biryani recipes reign supreme.

As per the report, 77% respondents claimed that they are waiting to dine out with friends and family once the COVID-19 lockdown is lifted.

As the world grapples with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey by restaurant tech platform, Dineout across 20 Indian cities has revealed that diners now rank safety assurance and premier hygiene as top factors when they choose a restaurant to dine out in a post-COVID world.

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Coronavirus, Farming, Food, Science & Technology News

Tyson Foods chairman warns ‘the food supply chain is breaking’

May 15, 2020

The chairman of Tyson Foods is warning that “millions of pounds of meat will disappear” from the national food supply chain as the coronavirus outbreak forces food processing plants to shutter.

“The food supply chain is breaking,” John Tyson wrote in a full-page advertisement published Sunday in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

“There will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed,” he wrote in the advertisement, which was also published as a blog post on the company’s website.

In recent weeks, the major poultry producer has suspended operations at plants across the country. The company halted operations Wednesday at an Iowa plant that is crucial to the nation’s pork supply.

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Agriculture, Coronavirus, Farming, Food, Science & Technology News

U.S. reels toward meat shortage; world may be next

May 13, 2020

Key operations are halted in the U.S., Brazil and Canada, affecting pork and poultry production.

Plant shutdowns are leaving the U.S. dangerously close to meat shortages as coronavirus outbreaks now spread to suppliers across the Americas.

Almost a third of U.S. pork capacity is down, the first big poultry plants closed on Friday and experts are warning that domestic shortages are just weeks away. Brazil, the world’s No. 1 shipper of chicken and beef, saw its first major closure with the halt of a poultry plant owned by JBS SA, the world’s biggest meat company. Key operations are also down in Canada, the latest being a British Columbia poultry plant.

While hundreds of plants in the Americas are still running, the staggering acceleration for supply disruptions is now raising questions over global shortfalls. Taken together, the U.S., Brazil and Canada account for about 65% of world meat trade.

“It’s absolutely unprecedented,” said Brett Stuart, president of Denver-based consulting firm Global AgriTrends. “It’s a lose-lose situation where we have producers at the risk of losing everything and consumers at the risk of paying higher prices. Restaurants in a week could be out of fresh ground beef.”

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Automation, Coronavirus, Driverless vehicles, Food, Science & Technology News

Robot deliveries might end up being common, post-Coronavirus Pandemic

May 2, 2020

Having an unoccupied vehicle deliver your food makes a lot more sense now.

Delivery robots helped deliver food and medicine in Wuhan, China, during the coronavirus-related quarantine.

In the United States, autonomous shuttles from the French company NAVYA have been repurposed as delivery robots to transport COVID-19 tests.

Most of these delivery robots still have human controllers keeping track of them and driving them when needed.

While the Wuhan district in China was under quarantine, news surfaced of robots delivering food and, later, medical supplies. Meanwhile, in the United States, the French company NAVYA configured its autonomous passenger shuttles in Florida to transport COVID-19 tests to the Mayo Clinic from off-site test locations. As the weeks of stay-at-home orders and recommendations slip into months, the delivery robots that were seen as a joke, fad, or nuisance have in some instances found a way into the public consciousness as important tools to combat the spread of coronavirus. The question is, will their usefulness extend post-lockdown?

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Coronavirus, Farms, Food, Science & Technology News

Pork and beef prices surge as meat plants shutter due to coronavirus

May 1, 2020

Hundreds of meat plant workers across the country have fallen ill with the coronavirus, leading to a slowdown in output and surge in prices.

By the numbers, per Bloomberg: The price of wholesale pork rose by 7.2% to 55.86 cents a pound Thursday — the largest increase in more than two years. Choice-grade beef prices rose to a one-month high of $2.36 a pound, climbing for six straight days through Thursday.

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Coronavirus, Food, Future, Robots, Science & Technology News

Five ways that coronavirus will change the way we eat

April 23, 2020

A self-driving food delivery robot might appear in a post-pandemic world in which consumers want to avoid human contact.

These are unprecedented times. One thing is for sure— with the widespread acceptance that coronavirus originated in an exotic meat market in China, there has been a massive consumer rethink around food.

This shift is impacting the type of food that is consumed, where it is obtained, how and where it is prepared and how it is produced and stored.

The overarching theme? Fear of contagion and oftentimes human contact.

Here are some predictions of how coronavirus will change the way we eat, based on recent surveys and forecasting.

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China, Food, Legal Issues, Science & Technology News

Shenzhen becomes first Chinese city to ban consumption of cats and dogs

April 17, 2020

(CNN)Shenzhen, in southeastern China, has become the first city in the country to ban the consumption of cats and dogs, the government announced Thursday.

Under new rules which will come into effect May 1, the government said it will be illegal to eat animals raised as pets.

In February, following the coronavirus outbreak, China passed a law to ban the consumption of wild animals.

China has made eating wild animals illegal after the coronavirus outbreak. But ending the trade won’t be easy

Now Shenzhen will prohibit the consumption of state-protected wild animals and other terrestrial wild animals taken from the wild, as well as captive-bred and farmed terrestrial wild species.

In addition, the consumption of animals raised as pets, such as cats and dogs will also be banned.

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Business, Coronavirus, Food, Science & Technology News

Coronavirus is hurting the restaurant industry. Here’s how it could change the future of food

April 16, 2020

Dan Barber, the vanguard chef behind Blue Hill at Stone Barns, earned two Michelin stars as he championed the farm-to-table movement in New York State. But rave reviews have spared no one in the ailing food world, as restaurants have gone into perilous hibernation, leaving workers unemployed and thoroughfares eerily quiet around the country.

Barber shut the doors of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in Westchester County, and a second location in New York City in mid-March. With hopes of keeping some income flowing to struggling employees and suppliers, his team started offering to-go boxes of produce, meat, fish and other items that loyal patrons could make and consume at home. But even at prices ranging up to $170, Barber says, it’s hardly a drop in the bucket. “It’s like whack-a-mole,” he says. “There’s problems everywhere with everyone.”

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Food, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

How long could you live off body fat alone?

April 16, 2020

In this extract from Fat: The Secret Organ, obesity researchers Mariette Boon and Liesbeth van Rossum explain the purpose of fat in the body and how long it can keep us going without food.

When we talk about the fuel ‘fat’, which is suspended in our blood and which can be absorbed and burned by organs, what we’re referring to are fatty acids. These are long ‘tails’, or chains, that are usually made up of 16 to eighteen carbon atoms.

Just like glucose, fatty acids are cleverly packaged so that large numbers of them can be stored without taking up too much space. You can compare it to a zip file on your computer. This is why fatty acids are stored in bunches of three in the form of what are known as ‘triglycerides’.

Thousands of tightly packed triglycerides are stored in a single fat cell. This is a huge amount of fuel, a real goldmine. As soon as you haven’t eaten for a few hours, or if you’ve been physically active for an extended period of time (for example, exercising or doing housework), this fuel will be tapped into.

Continue reading… “How long could you live off body fat alone?”

Coronavirus, Electric Vehicles, Food, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Illegal e-bikes OK’d in NYC as food delivery lifeline amid coronavirus crisis

April 9, 2020

New York City’s ban of electric bicycles has been shelved to help support food delivery during the coronavirus crisis.

Despite the growing popularity of electric bicycles, they have been outlawed in New York City.

The issue has largely been centered around throttle e-bikes, which use a hand throttle similar to a motorbike and don’t require the user to pedal to engage the electric motor.

These types of electric bicycles were the go-to method of transportation for NYC’s approximately 40,000 food delivery workers, according to the New York Post. The crackdown on these workers, who are mostly from foreign and minority backgrounds, has long been considered discriminatory by many activist groups.

Efforts have been made to legalize e-bikes in NYC, including the popular throttle-powered e-bikes. But after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed the latest bill seeking their legalization in December 2019, such e-bikes have remained banned.

Many restaurants have now shifted to take-away and delivery-only options, temporarily ceasing in-restaurant dining.

In response, New York City has decided to temporarily suspend its crackdown on electric bicycles like those used by food delivery workers. The suspension in enforcement means that the NYPD will no longer issue tickets or confiscate electric bikes during the crisis.

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Coronavirus, Employment, Food, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Instacart is hiring 300,000 grocery shoppers

March 29, 2020

The company will provide with paid sick leave in case they’re diagnosed with COVID-19.

Instacart plans to hire an additional 300,000 “full-service” contractors to help it deliver groceries to people during the coronavirus pandemic. With so many individuals and families stuck inside as a result of social distancing measures and shelter in place orders in states like California, Instacart says order volume has increased by 150 percent over the last few weeks, with people buying more per cart as well.

The company currently operates in about 5,500 cities across the United States and Canada. Instacart’s plan will see it hire broadly in states like California and New York. In the former, for instance, it plans to bring on approximately 54,000 new full-time shoppers. In other states like Texas and Florida, it will hire thousands of new contractors as well, and provide them with paid sick leave if they’re diagnosed with COVID-19 or need to self-isolate.

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