The Next Idea, Reports On healthy Eating in 2008

Rosemary is good for your brain

The Next Idea, Restaurant Consultants report that the herb rosemary contains an ingredient that fights off damage to the brain. The active ingredient in rosemary can protect the brain from stroke and neurodegenera­tive conditions such as Alzheimer’s, and also from normal aging, a collaborative group of researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research (www. burnahm.org) say. The ingredient, carnosic acid, protects the brain cells from free radicals. The findings were originally reported in The Journal of Neurochemis­try and Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

Rosemary comes from a shrubby evergreen bush with needlelike leaves. It has trusses of flowers that can be white, pink, purple or blue. Rosemary derives its name from the Latin rosemarinus, which translates as “dew of the sea.” Rosemary has a long history as a memory aid. It was also used in the past at weddings to symbolize love and loyalty.

Robert Ancill is CEO of Restaurant Consulting Services Group; The Next Idea. http://www.thenextidea.net. For information about Business Plans, Financial Forecasting and general start up advice please visit our site at: http://www.thenextidea.net

The ”Healh Food” dilema

There’s currently a rising popularity in “healthy” foods, but obesity rates are going up at the same time. Why?

Researchers Pierre Chandon (INSEAD, France) and Brian Wansink (Cornell University) set out to deter­mine why we are eating healthier food and still gaining weight.

Chandon and Wansink found that it’s most likely due to the “health halo effect”, meaning when consum­ers hear that there’s a fast-food restaurant that has “low-calorie” foods, they overgeneralize that all or most of the foods in the restaurant are “healthy.” And that’s just not the case.

In fact, consumers estimated that sandwiches from “healthier” fast-food restaurants contained 35 percent fewer calories than they actually had. And not only that, but as a result of their underestimation, consumers then felt it was okay to load up on beverages, side dishes and desserts containing up to 131 percent more calories when the main course they ordered was advertised as “healthy” as compared to when it was not.

But in their study, Chandon and Wansink found the sandwiches positioned as healthy already contained 50 percent more calories than the “unhealthy” sand­wiches.

What’s a consumer to do? One strategy is to examine whether “low-calorie” claims by restaurants apply to the particular foods you plan on ordering. Learning to think of food in terms of the number of calories rather than whether it is a “good food” or a “bad food.”

Restaurant Consultants, The Next Idea, reported in 2004, that the larger Fast Food and restaurant chain operators, were unlikely to truly recognize the impact their products were having on the population at large. The Next Idea, CEO, Robert Ancill says, ‘since 2004 not too much has changed, and while operators are more inclined to place Healthy Options on their menus, many [operators] still provide over sized portions, questionable ingredients, along with unhealthy desserts and soda drinks’. Ancill goes on to say that; ‘only when restaurant groups demand more from their food vendors, and help educate their customers to eat a balanced meal, will the consumer begin to benefit from Health foods’.

Robert Ancill is CEO of Restaurant Consulting Services Group; The Next Idea. http://www.thenextidea.net. For information about Business Plans, Financial Forecasting and general start up advice please visit our site at: http://www.thenextidea.net

Grape juice: The new red wine?

The Next Idea, Consultants to the Food and restaurant industry reports that concord grape juice stimulates an arterial relaxation effect similar to that credited to red wine, laboratory research has found. The results were presented at the WineHealth 2007 conference in Bordeaux, France. In fact, the grape juice produced a prolonged relaxation effect that red wine has not been cited as stimulating. Researchers say the grape juice causes a vasorelaxation effect by stimulating the production of nitric oxide, which is known to be important in maintaining healthy, flexible blood vessels and helps support healthy blood pressures. The effect of the grape juice lasted for up to six hours, significantly longer than effects noted from red wine. The research seems to point to the benefit coming from the grapes themselves, rather than the alcohol. Concord grape juice is believed to have a blood-pressure-lowering effect, so if you’re looking for an alternative to the red-wine fix, this may be the answer.

Robert Ancill is CEO of Restaurant Consulting Services Group; The Next Idea. http://www.thenextidea.net. For information about Business Plans, Financial Forecasting and general start up advice please visit our site at: http://www.thenextidea.net

Eat your apples and onions

Robert Ancill, CEO of Innovations Food Consultancy, The Next Idea, reports, Apples and onions topped the list of a cancer preven­tion study. Here’s why: Apples and onions are sources for quercetin, one of the most beneficial of flavenols, and could play a role in preventing and reducing the risk of pancreatic cancer, a study has found. All partici­pants in the study experienced reduced risk, however, smokers who consumed foods rich in flavenols experi­enced a significantly greater reduction.

Researchers tracked the food intake and health outcomes for 183,518 participants in the Multiethnic Cohort Study for eight years. The study evaluated the food consumption of participants and calculated the flavenol intake (for quercetin, kaempferol and myrice­tin). The study determined that flavenol intake does have an impact on the risk for developing pancreatic cancer. Smokers with the lowest intake of flavenols presented with the most pancreatic cancer, researchers say. It was also determined that women in the study had the highest flavenol intake (when compared with men), and 70 percent of the intake came from quercetin, which is linked to apple and onion consumption.

Flavenols are found in many plants and found in high concentrations in apples, onions, tea, berries, kale and broccoli. Quercetin is most plentiful in apples and onions.

The research was originally published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Robert Ancill is CEO of Restaurant Consulting Services Group; The Next Idea. http://www.thenextidea.net. For information about Business Plans, Financial Forecasting and general start up advice please visit our site at: http://www.thenextidea.net

Tips For Positioning Your Company In Front of Investors

First impressions mean everything when you are presenting your company to a potential investor. Positioning your company so that it attracts the right investors can be a very challenging process. Yet somehow, majority of entrepreneurs forget that the investors that they are presenting to often have started up and sold multiple companies – after all, that is the precise reason why they are angels.

All entrepreneurs must remember one thing: these investors can smell exaggeration and a shaky plan from the first paragraph of an executive summary – 100% of the time. This is no joke!

Having said this, we often review business plans with the same mistakes over and over again. We wish to share some of our insight so that your company does not fall into the same trap. The Next Idea recommends that you follow these simple points before sending any investor your business plan.

1. Be realistic in your financial projection. There is very little reason to believe that you will capture 8% of the US GDP through your proprietary transaction engine or that although you are losing $1million for the first two-years of operation, you will make a profit of $36 million on your third year.
2. Make sure your assumptions are based on sound research, as investors will question you heavily on your financial forecasts. Any declaration that your company plans to ‘Capture 1% of the market’ is a sure way to lose any potential investor.
3. Investors are never interested in ‘who will sign’ a massive contract with your firm in two weeks and that you cannot disclose who it is. Investors want to hear who your current customers are and what your current business development strategy is. The same advice goes for any assertion of signing ‘rainmaker’ personnel once funding is completed. Start ups should be especially cautious about making claims of confirmed accounts or clients.
4. Regardless of what your company is doing, you have competition. There are two levels of competition: direct and indirect. Be realistic and present the threats as they are because the truth ‘will’ surface and when it does, you will lose tremendous credibility. Stay away from making claims that the ‘100lbs gorilla’ of the industry is too slow or too caught up in its own bureaucracy to be able to directly compete with you.
5. BE REALISTIC. BE REALISTIC. BE REALISTIC. Build your business plan with this in thought: if I were an angel investor, why would I sign a $1 million check to fund this idea? Remember again that these people have been ‘around the block’ and that they can sense shaky with a simple glance at your business plan.

Above all – be clear in YOUR proposal.

Robert Ancill is CEO of Restaurant Consulting Services Group; The Next Idea. http://www.thenextidea.net. For information about Business Plans, Financial Forecasting and general start up advice please visit our site at: http://www.thenextidea.net

A scientific reason why red wine is good for you

With all the hoopla about red wine going around, you have to wonder if there’s something to it, or whether some wily French scientists have gotten carried away after a night of sipping a bottle of cabernet.

Robert Ancill, CEO of Food Consultancy, The Next Idea, reports that Researchers already knew that procyanidins, com-pounds commonly found in red wine, are good for your blood vessels and probably contribute to the long life spans found in southwestern France and Sardinia. But according to a study published in the journal Nature, by the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary, University of London, what the researchers didn’t previously know was that levels of procyanidins varied in wines.

Those produced in southwestern France and Sardinia, places where wine is still made in the traditional way and allowed to fer-ment for up to three weeks (as opposed to the modern way of one week) tended to have much higher levels of the compounds—sometimes up to 10 times more. This is because the process allows for the full extraction of procyanidins from the skin and seed of the grape. Scientists believe this in turn promotes artery health and longer life spans.

The Next Idea (www.thenextidea.net) is a Retail Food and Restaurant Consultancy committed to improving the quality and Healthfullness of the products available to the US Consumer.