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This paper aims to assess the potential of date fruit powder as a refined sugar replacer in rock buns to help promote and diversify the utilization of date fruit.

Date fruit pulp was sun dried, milled into powder, sieved and its proximate composition determined. Refined sugar in rock buns was replaced with date fruit powder at 0, 50, 80 and 100 per cent levels. The samples were then subjected to proximate, mineral and sensory evaluation.

Date fruit powder had 1.47 per cent crude fiber and was high in carbohydrate (82.15 per cent). Carbohydrate content of samples decreased (48.55-29.72 per cent), while crude protein (6.78-9.97 per cent), crude fat (22.74-33.66 per cent) and crude fiber (0-0.49 per cent) contents increased with an increasing substitution of date powder. Of all, 0 and 50 per cent substituted rock bun samples were the most preferred. Date powder significantly (p < 0.05) increased the potassium (0.55-1.57 per cent), calcium (0.08-1.08 per cent) and iron (0.53-0.625 per cent) contents of the samples.

This research assessed the potential of date fruit powder as a replacer of refined sugar in rock buns, as it remains an underutilized commodity in Ghana. Replacing 50 per cent of refined sugar improved the nutrient composition of rock buns, thereby making date fruit powder a nutritious sugar replacer which could be used in pastry products. This when adopted would diversify the utilization of date fruits while providing good nutrition to consumers.

Gillian Chapman and Pamela Mumford of Queen Elizabeth College, London University, suggest economies which can be made while maintaining the nutritive value of the diet, and describe the extra price we must be prepared to pay for palatability.

This study examines the social and economic experiences of female food vendors in the informal economy in urban Ghana using a particularized analysis to challenge prevailing opinions that women working in the informal economy inevitably experience social oppression and economic marginalization.

Synthesizing data from ethnographic field observation of female street food vendors in urban Ghana with past ethnographic research, this study focuses on the cultural, historical, political, social, and economic particularities of the Ghanaian context to understand the experience of female urban street food vendors.

Ghanaian women working in informal food vending in urban environments in the Southern regions of Ghana experience a myriad of social and economic benefits including: strong social support networks, access to entrepreneurial skills and startup capital; heightened social status, resulting from loyal customers and community recognition; empowerment through financial autonomy; as well as pride in providing economic resources for children. These social and economic experiences serve as counterevidence to the dominant perspective that women in the informal economy experience social oppression and economic marginalization.

This research contributes qualitative data regarding the social and economic support systems established by women in the informal food economy in Ghana. Furthermore, it emphasizes that development agencies and policymakers understand the importance of these contextual dynamics in developing policies aimed at the informal economy.

WHEN YOU meet people for the first time and they ask what you do, do you ever hesitate about telling them you're a librarian? Do you ever qualify your self‐description with some such phrase as ‘can't you tell by looking at me?’ or ‘I don't just stamp books you know’? Do you sometimes feel diffident about describing your work? I do. The reason I react in this way is that I know people outside our information world think they know very well what we do, but in fact have very little idea. We seem to have a very strong popular image which it is difficult if not impossible to shake off.

In the House of Commons recently Sir Kingsley Wood, the Minister of Health, was asked by Mr. Rickards, the member for the Skipton division of the West Riding, whether “the new process of adding germicide to milk for destroying bacteria had been brought to his notice?; whether he would have the process tested and investigated?; and consider whether any modification of the Food and Drugs (Adulteration) Act would be required to permit of milk so treated being sold on a commercial scale?”—Sir Kingsley Wood in reply disclaimed all official knowledge of the germicide. He also pointed out that to treat milk with a germicide would be contrary to the provisions of the Preservatives Regulations, and of the Food and Drugs (Adulteration) Act. We understand “germ” to be a more or less popular term frequently and somewhat loosely used when reference in general is made to pathogenic organisms; and a germicide is a material something that kills, or is supposed to kill, germs when it comes in contact with them, or the medium in which they exist. A disinfectant is a germicide. In the simple judgment of the ordinary householder the more it smells the better it is for purposes of disinfection. When a germicide is used in cither medicine or surgery the term antiseptic is frequently employed. Familiar instances of both disinfectants and antiseptics are chloride of lime, carbolic acid, iodine, boron compounds, formalin, sulphur dioxide, or sulphites.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the sensory properties and chemical composition of corn and sorghum flakes manufactured using 25, 50, 75 and 100 per cent date syrup (DS), instead of sugar.

Ten individuals assessed the overall acceptability, taste, texture and aroma of flakes. The chemical composition of each type of flake was determined, and these characteristics compared with those of control corn and sorghum flakes (without DS).

The overall acceptability of sorghum flakes ranged from 6.3 (100 per cent DS flakes) to 6.8 (25 per cent DS flakes); however, the difference was not significant. Values for taste, texture and aroma of sorghum flakes ranged from 5.3 (taste of 100 per cent DS flakes) to 7.2 (texture of 25 per cent DS flakes). For corn flakes, values ranged from 6.20 (aroma of 100 per cent DS flakes) to 7.20 (texture of 25 per cent DS flakes). For both sorghum and corn, the colors of 25-100 per cent DS flakes were significantly different from controls (p = 0.0002). The total carbohydrate, fat, protein and ash contents were 81.669 per cent, 1.545 per cent, 13.27 per cent and 3.52 per cent for corn flour, and 83.38-85.78 per cent, 1.7-2.0 per cent, 10.02-12.13 per cent and 2.36-3.92 per cent for sorghum flour, respectively. The total carbohydrate, fat, protein and ash contents were 81.63 per cent, 5.75 per cent, 9.80 per cent and 2.82 per cent for corn, and 86.31-84.99 per cent, 3.15-4.27 per cent, 7.64-7.94 per cent and 2.92-2.79 per cent for sorghum flakes, respectively.

Corn and sorghum flakes produced with DS are acceptable to consumers, and their nutrient values indicate potential health benefits.

From time to time we report cases of food being sold under false and misleading descriptions, where the defence claims the consumer is really expecting too much for her money; like Pip, she has “great expectations.” The sale of food and drugs abounds with deceptive descriptions and devices; clever, subtle, attractive and far more extensively practised than in the old days when analysts and inspectors sought out the adulteration of food. Their annual reports contain the more lurid examples, which are but a fraction of the whole. The price of genuine products has risen out of all proportion in recent years and the introduction of artificial and synthetic materials in substitution is regrettably inevitable, but the importation of price into the offence of misdescription is likely to bring to confusion law that is probably more complete than ever before. It is the essence of all false descriptions that they should in fact mislead, but it is garnishing the point to suggest as many a defending counsel and not a few magistrates do, that the price paid must be taken into account in any alleged misdescription; that if it is low for such an expensive commodity as “cream,” then a purchaser should not be deceived into believing she was obtaining genuine cream, even if the name “cream” was being applied. As the County Magistrates at Leicester were recently asked to decide, “Who would expect real cream in a fourpenny cream bun ?” (p. 70). Still less so, if a fancy name such as “Kreem” is used; all this, Section 47, Food and Drugs Act, 1955, notwithstanding. In the case quoted, evidence was called to show that if a shopper requires a cream bun containing real cream, she will ask for a “dairy cream bun” and that the witnesses would only expect to receive the genuine article if they went to a dairy; that when buying cream confectionery from a confectioner's shop, they did not expect to receive anything but imitation cream.

Under this melodramatic title the B.B.C. devoted forty minutes of their programme time during the evening of December 28 to the subject of food additives. It was described as an enquiry, asking the questions “Are the chemicals we put in food dangerous to human beings?” Are the sytems of testing and control good enough? Should more money be spent on research now? There was a panel of experts—Professor E. Boyland (Chester Beatty Research Institute), Professor A. C. Fraser (University of Birmingham), Dr. L. Golberg (British Industrial Biological Research Association), Dr. H. G. Saunders (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries & Food), Dr. Magnus Pyke (a food expert) and Lord Shackleton, who frequently speaks on the subject in the House of Lords.

The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Minister of Food and the Secretary of State for Scotland, appointed a Working Party in May, 1951, “to examine the present structure of producers' prices for milk and to advise whether it is desirable and practicable to make revisions which would promote an improvement in the composition and quality of milk sold off farms in the United Kingdom”. The Working Party has now issued a Report (H.M.S.O.).

Salt (sodium chloride) is used in a variety of processed foods. It not only confers its own specific flavour on products, it is also used to enhance and modify the flavour of other ingredients. The reasons for using salt can be divided into three broad categories: processing reasons, sensory (taste) reasons, and preservative reasons. In some cases it performs all three of these functions, and in many situations the distinction between them is not clear‐cut.