Articles by Sharon Gerdes

Protein is hot. According to a recent survey by the U.S. Dairy Export Council, Arlington, Va., 54% of U.S. consumers say they are trying to get more protein in their diet. One way for consumers to boost the protein content of their diet is via protein drinks. Whether they are high-acid or low-acid, chocolate or vanilla, fruit-flavored or coffee-based, virtually all protein drinks contain a sweetener.

High levels of dietary sodium can increase blood pressure. But the health consequences of population-wide sodium reduction are still the subject of some debate. Americans consume on average 3,400 milligrams of sodium daily.

The first baby boomers turned 65 in 2011. As more of the boomer generation reaches retirement age, the number of consumers 65-plus in the United States will burgeon from 40 million in 2010 to 72 million in 2030. Similar statistics can be seen around the world, with the highest percentages of seniors in Japan and Western Europe, and the highest population of seniors in China, whose citizenry swelled to 132 million people age 65-plus in 2011.

Over the past 10 years, refrigerated yogurt has had a remarkable combined annual growth rate averaging around 30% and nearly 40 million new users.

The time to prepare for a crisis is before it happens. The lessons of the last few years have been vivid – melamine in milk powder, salmonella in peanut butter, E. Coli in spinach and millions of barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

Media sources, from The New York Times to foodandwine.com, frequently tout yogurt as a superfood.

What opportunities exist for formulating new products in the mini-drink category?They say good things come in small packages. Dr. Minro Shirota introduced the first probiotic mini-drink, Yakult, in Tokyo in

When Dreyer’s introduced slow-churn technology in 2005, it was heralded as the first major technological innovation in ice cream since the hand-cranked churn and pasteurization.

Global sales of fermented dairy beverages have skyrocketed.

How can dairy processors deliver more health benefits through probiotics in dairy products?