“What Can I Cook with these Ingredients?” - Understanding Cooking-Related Information Needs in Conversational Search

As conversational search becomes more pervasive, it becomes increasingly important to understand the users’ underlying information needs when they converse with such systems in diverse domains. We conduct an in situ study to understand information needs arising in a home cooking context as well as how they are verbally communicated to an assistant. A human experimenter plays this role in our study. Based on the transcriptions of utterances, we derive a detailed hierarchical taxonomy of diverse information needs occurring in this context, which require different levels of assistance to be solved. The taxonomy shows that needs can be communicated through different linguistic means and require different amounts of context to be understood. In a second contribution, we perform classification experiments to determine the feasibility of predicting the type of information need a user has during a dialogue using the turn provided. For this multi-label classification problem, we achieve average F1 measures of 40% using BERT-based models. We demonstrate with examples which types of needs are difficult to predict and show why, concluding that models need to include more context information in order to improve both information need classification and assistance to make such systems usable.

Made in Italy in the Japanese F&B Market and the Marketing of Freedom

Italy in Japan resounds with fashion, lifestyle and most of all food. From HoReCa to home cooking to gifts, Italian F&B products have taken Japanese consumers by storm in the past few decades, imposing Made in Italy as the most loved national brand. But the Japanese market is extremely mature, fast and notoriously one of the most sophisticated globally. Competition is fierce and relying on the quality of the product itself is not enough to secure commercial success in a country where form often prevails over content. That is when (good) food marketing becomes the crucial element in dictating the lifespan of a brand. To what degree are Italian producers aware of this? And what is the best approach to minimize failure?

Associations of Caregiver Cooking Skills with Child Dietary Behaviors and Weight Status: Results from the A-CHILD Study

We examined whether caregiver cooking skills were associated with frequency of home cooking, child dietary behaviors, and child body weight status in Japan. We used cross-sectional data from the 2018 Adachi Child Health Impact of Living Difficulty study, targeting primary and junior high school students aged 9–14 years in Adachi City, Tokyo, Japan (n = 5257). Caregiver cooking skills were assessed using a scale with good validity and reliability modified for use in Japan. Child heights and weights derived from school heath checkup data were used to calculate WHO standard body mass index z-scores. After adjusting for potential confounders, caregivers with low-level cooking skills were 4.31 (95% confidence interval (CI): 2.68–6.94) times more likely to have lower frequency of home cooking than those with high level of cooking skills. Children with low-level caregiver cooking skills were 2.81 (95% CI: 2.06–3.84) times more likely to have lower frequency of vegetable intake and 1.74 (95% CI: 1.08–2.82) times more likely to be obese. A low level of caregiver cooking skills was associated with infrequent home cooking, unhealthy child dietary behaviors, and child obesity.

Results and prospects of the Astrakhan selection of vegetable and melon crops

Relevance. Since the increasing demand for agricultural products, especially at present in the conditions of import substitution, cannot be met without creating new highly productive varieties and hybrids.Material and methods. This article provides a description and comparative characteristics of economically valuable qualities and varieties of vegetable crops, the most common and in demand among the population, created by breeders of the All-Russian Research Institute of Irrigated Vegetable Growing and Melon Growing – a branch of the FSBSI "PAFSC RAS". The experiments were laid on the experimental fields.Results. As a result of many years of breeding work presented varieties belong to different variety types, they differ in groups of precocity, shape, size, color of fruits. Tomatoes – Astrakhan, Bulldog, Avdeevsky, Caspian, Malinovi shar, Moryana, Rychansky, Forward, Orange Avuri, Malinovi Supergol, etc. Varieties of sweet pepper – Atomor, Marble, Novichok VNIIOB, Sprinter, Lyudmila, etc. Varieties of eggplant – Albatross, Diamond, Astrakom, Nizhnevolzhsky, Swan, etc. Since 2021, the Gnomik tomato variety has been entered into the State Register, and the Zarnitsa sweet pepper variety is being tested. The Astrakhan region is also a center for the creation and production of melon crops, their fruits belong to dietary products, are used both fresh and for preservation, preparation of drinks, desserts, home cooking. Watermelon varieties – Astrakhan, Photon, Ilyasovsky, Portioned; melon – Lada, pumpkin – Kroshka and Kapelka, zucchini – Sosnovsky and Jubilee, squash – Tabolinsky.

Denis Papin's digester and its eighteenth-century European circulation

The digester, invented by Denis Papin in the 1680s, was a rudimentary pressure cooker used to soften hard bodies by boiling them at high pressure. In this paper, I propose a reassessment of Papin's work on the digester, arguing that his research was located at the intersection of the chemical laboratory and cooking practice. I then examine cases from the eighteenth-century European circulation of the instrument in Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands in order to showcase the different practices in which the digester was embedded, including chemical research, philanthropic projects to feed the destitute, and proposals for the improvement of home cooking. The digester's history represents a key episode for demonstrating the intertwined nature of natural-philosophical research and the practice of economy or ‘thrift’. All users of the digester engaged in a rationalization of its functions through quantification, not only to fulfil a concern for precision but also to display the device's potential to reform practical daily life. The digester could save time and fuel, reduce material waste, make cooking easier and foster collective meal preparation for the needy.

Spices and Seasoning Mixes in European Union—Innovations and Ensuring Safety

Spices are an important group of food products of great importance in nutrition and food technology. They are mainly used to shape the sensory properties of food in gastronomy, in home cooking, and in industry. Ensuring quality and safety is one of the basic tasks of spice producers. The aim of this review is to present the threats to the consumer related to the presence of spices and seasoning mixes in the diet. Therefore, special attention was paid to such risks as excess sodium chloride (and sodium) in spice mixtures, the use of additives influencing the sensory experience, and irregularities in the labeling of spices and seasoning mixes for the presence of additives and allergens. The threats regarding microbiological safety and the presence of heavy metals, pesticides, plant protection products, as well as synthetic fertilizers and undeclared additives are also presented and the issue of adulteration and lack of authenticity of spices and spice mixtures is discussed. Using data from IJHARS planned inspections and notifications registered in the EU Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) for 2015–2019, as well as the results of own research, an analysis of the risks caused by herbs and spices was carried out. Strategic activities of companies producing spices focus, among others, on improving production and expanding the commercial offer with new, attractive products. The article reviews product and process innovations in spice mixes and the methods of ensuring safety in this group of food products.

Techniques for postmortem tenderisation in meat processing: effectiveness, application and possible mechanisms

Developing efficient and promising tenderising techniques for postmortem meat is a heavily researched topic among meat scientists as consumers are willing to pay more for guaranteed tender meat. However, emerging tenderising techniques are not broadly used in the meat industry and, to some degree, are controversial due to lack of theoretical support. Thus, understanding the mechanisms involved in postmortem tenderisation is essential. This article first provides an overview of the relationship of ageing tenderisation and calpain system, as well as proteomics applied to identify protein biomarkers characterizing tenderness. In general, the ageing tenderisation is mediated by multiple biochemical activities, and it can exhibit better palatability and commercial benefit by combining other interventions. The calpain system plays a key role in ageing tenderisation functions by rupturing myofibrils and regulating proteolysis, glycolysis, apoptosis and metabolic modification. Additionally, tenderising techniques from different aspects including exogenous enzymes, chemistry, physics and the combined methods are discussed in depth. Particularly, innovation of home cooking could be recommended to prepare relatively tender meat due to its convenience and ease of operation by consumers. Furthermore, the combined interventions provide better performance in controlled tenderness. Finally, future trends in developing new tenderising techniques, and applied consideration in the meat processing industry are proposed in order to improve meat quality with higher economical value. Graphical abstract