Don Genova's Blog

Hi everyone…this week on Food For Thought I take you to a factory north of Toronto where they specialize in making naan, an East Indian style flatbread. The company is called FGF Brands, which stands for Functional Gourmet Foods.   In Canada you will find their flatbread products in Loblaws and Real Canadian Superstore outlets, with further availability described on the company website.  Jim White, a former Toronto Star food columnist and inventor of many President’s Choice products, teamed up with experienced commercial baker Sam Ajmera to create a production process that could manufacture naan on a large scale, but have the product remain very authentic.  You can see some of the naan coming out of ‘the world’s largest tandoor’ oven, according to Sam, in the photo at left.  I couldn’t take pictures of any other parts of the oven…the technology is a closely-guarded secret.

FGF Brands is also making muffins for Starbucks now, with no added preservatives or artificial ingredients.  They can produce thousands of muffins in a day, again in a special oven and cooling rack.

Here is a naan all tricked out as a pizza!  Red onion, tomato, fresh basil, mozzarella, couldn’t ask for much more.  You can find recipes like this on the FGF Brands website.  To listen to my story, just click to play the 5 minute documentary in MP3 format.

This week on Food For Thought, I look at changes Kellogg’s is making to the way it markets its food products to children and hear from some health professionals about how processed food advertising effects young viewers, listeners and surfers.

Here is the mp3 audio file of this week’s program.

To see a pdf of the Kellogg Company announcement regarding its new initiatives, click here.

Here is an interesting commentary on the move from the National Post newspaper. (this link may not work if the Post moves the commentary to its paid archive section in a few days)

You will find much more reaction to the move by just doing a Google News Search on Kellogg’s.

One of the people you heard from in today’s story was Michele Simon from the Center for Informed Food Choices.

Michele has authored a new book, Appetite for Profit.  She talked about it at the conference I attended, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.  But the subtitle, How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health, and How to Fight Back is intriguing and I’m sure you will find lots of fascinating information in it.  You can order it from amazon.ca by clicking here and save 27 percent off the cover price.