Making news in food this week

15th January 2022 | Eativity editors

Each summer, Meat & Livestock Australia releases a special summer lamb ad campaign. It’s always good fun, but this year’s ad is a cracker. You can watch it below. Also making news in food this week, Tasmanian cherries look to boost their presence in the Taiwanese market and Queensland Strawberries’ “pick and win” campaign names its winners. Plus, the CSIRO offers new hope for those looking to lose weight, Tasting Australia announces its 2022 program and Google reveals our top recipe searches for 2021. No sourdough this year.

Making news in food this week: Tasting Australia releases 2022 program
Tasting Australia has become one of the world’s most exciting food festivals.

Experience every flavour of South Australia

Overnight experiences to unexpected places, a Town Square dinner that embraces sustainability and reduced food waste, an ode to the humble instant noodle and an open-flame progressive dinner at Adelaide’s hottest new restaurant arkhé are just some of the unique events on the menu when Tasting Australia returns this April. The 2022 event features the most diverse program yet. It showcases the best that South Australia has to offer across more than 200 events and 11 regions over 10 delicious days from April 29 to May 8. Tickets are now available from tastingaustralia.com.au.

Making news in food this week: Queensland Strawberries announces PickPackWinners
Pam from Ashbern Farms was just one of the 10 lucky winners.

Qld Strawberries PickPackWinners announced

Last year, Queensland Strawberries came up with a unique way to encourage locals to take up fruit-picking work. PickPackWin allowed workers to earn points that counted as entries into a draw. The longer you worked on a farm, the more chances you had to win. By the end of the campaign in October, more than 5500 people had registered. Around 2500 went on to work on participating farms across Queensland strawberry-growing regions. At the end of the season, all points earned were converted into draw entries. A computer randomiser then selected 10 winners. With so many workers staying at their chosen farm for the entire season, the total draw entries from 2500 people was an astonishing 8,294,300.

Making news in food this week
Tasmania produces some of the largest, sweetest and most flavoursome cherries in the world.

From our island to yours: Tassie cherries in Taiwan

Fruit Growers Tasmania is running the first-ever promotional campaign for Tasmanian cherries in Taiwan through Facebook and YouTube. Taiwan is Tasmania’s third-largest international market for fresh cherries, which it supplies in January and February and, importantly, during the Lunar New Year holiday season. The Taiwanese market has grown steadily for Tasmania, increasing by 25 percent over the last five years. It’s a market that Tasmania would like to grow further. The campaign encourages consumers to send Tassie cherries to their fellow islanders in Taiwan as part of their Lunar New Year festivities.

Sharing the lamb this summer

Meat & Livestock Australia’s “Share the Lamb” summer campaign is back in a new and delightfully witty TV commercial that celebrates Australia reuniting with the rest of the world after years of isolation. An Australian tradition, the annual lamb campaigns have built a strong legacy of highly topical advertising and thought-provoking creative content. The ads continue to generate widespread conversation and subsequent publicity for Australian lamb. The campaign also encourages consumers to buy more delicious Aussie lamb.

Billions of blossoms to bloom

Flow, creator of the revolutionary Flow Hive, has launched its Billions of Blossoms impact project to help to arrest the drastic decline in insect populations worldwide. The project is a partnership between Flow and some of the world’s best reforestation and conservation projects. The goal is to create billions of new flowers for pollinators through a mix of reforestation and habitat protection. For more information about the Billions of Blossoms project, including Flow and its partner organisations, head to honeyflow.com.

Claw & Tail
Roll up to Prahran Market this February for a Claw & Tail prawn and lobster roll.

Plenty of fish at Prahran Market

Prahran Market’s Plenty of Fish in the Sea seafood sessions kick off in a few weeks. Held every Friday in February from 5pm, guests can enjoy food pop-ups, games, local DJs and entertainment. Think balmy nights in Market Square with the very best in local seafood delights. Plenty of Fish will be serving up eats such as prawn and lobster rolls from Claw & Tail, fish tacos from Dingo Ate My Taco, calamari cones from Ink-redible Calamari, sizzling seafood barbecue by The Que Club and Stix cheesecake on a stick. Entry is free, but registration is a must as spaces are limited. Head to prahranmarket.com.au to register.

Drumsticks
Peter’s Drumstick is an Aussie summer classic that’s now taking on the world.

Serving up Aussie ice cream to the world

The federal government is helping Australian-made ice cream to reach taste buds around the world, with record exports worth $46 million in 2020-21. Popular Australian brands like Drumstick, Bulla, Weis and Magnum are now being sold in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland China, Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, the UK and the US. Victoria’s Bulla Dairy Foods doubled its exports to Malaysia in 2020. It also employed an additional 200 people to meet the demand for its products domestically and overseas. In South Australia, dairy co-op Norco recorded strong export sales across the financial year. It achieved record returns for its 300 farmer-owners operating across south-east Queensland and northern NSW.

Making news in food this week
Struggling to lose weight? There’s hope for you yet.

New hope for weight loss

The CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet has unveiled a new artificial intelligence weight-loss coach, Hope, which uses psychological techniques to prompt and motivate members throughout their weight-loss journey. Hope has been developed through research from the CSIRO, which has uncovered the three critical behaviours that, when put into practice regularly, have the biggest impact for people looking to improve their health and lose weight. Hope is designed to help Australians embrace these important behaviours and achieve their weight-loss goals. You can find out more by heading to totalwellbeingdiet.com.

Making news in food this week: watch out for Lunar New Year biosecurity risks
The Year of the Tiger is coming. The tiger is a symbol of strength, exorcising evils and bravery.

Give the gift of biosecurity this Lunar New Year

Minister for Agriculture David Littleproud is reminding those celebrating Lunar New Year that they need to ensure any gifts sent or brought to Australia from overseas don’t pose a biosecurity risk. Lunar New Year sees an increase in biosecurity risk items intercepted at the border. Gifts that might pose a risk include those containing meat, eggs, fruits and vegies, plant material and herbs used in traditional medicines. Some popular Lunar New Year gifts contain pork, which could carry African swine fever; fruit can carry invasive pests such as exotic fruit flies and diseases like citrus canker. For more info, go to awe.gov.au.

Making news in food this week: top recipe searches on Google in 2021

Top recipe searches for 2021

Google has released its Australian Year in Search report, which provides a round-up of what we searched for most on Google in 2021. Food-wise, it seems we were pretty keen for a chip and a dip last year, as we looked up guacamole and tzatziki recipes. For our heartier meals, we returned to classic comfort food – gnocchi, lamb shanks and minestrone soup. We did, however, also seek out some adventure and spice; curried sausages became an unexpected recipe trend last year. And while the menu for 2021 was mostly savoury, we also squeezed in some sweets, with Anzac biscuits and rocky road.

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