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The Pollywaffle chocolate bar was introduced in 1947 by Hoadley’s Chocolates. It consisted of marshmallow inside a chocolate coated wafer tube and became a longstanding favourite with generations of Australians.  Hoadley’s were taken over by Rowntree, then by Nestlé, whose Kit Kat product ate into the Pollywaffle market share. It was discontinued in November 2009. But in January 2019 Robern Menz announced they had bought the brand from Nestlé and planned to manufacture it in Adelaide. More

Domino’s, who pioneered home delivery of pizza in Australia, released its first fast food app in 2009. The app allowed customers to order their pizza on their phones and track the delivery from the store to their door. Other fast food chains soon followed, with Pizza Hut introducing its app in 2010 and Starbucks introducing an “Order & Pay” app to help customers avoid the queues. More

South Australia was the first Australian state to ban lightweight plastic supermarket bags, phasing in the new laws from 1 January to 4 May, 2009. The ban aimed to reduce the more than four billion plastic checkout bags Australians used each year. The Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory introduced similar bans in 2011. At the time of the South Australian ban, China, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Rwanda had already banned light weight plastic bags. More

Residents of Bundanoon, in the New South Wales Southern Highlands, voted to ban the sale of bottled water  in their town, making it the world’s first bottled water-free town.  The bottled water ban was supported by around 99 per cent of the people who attended a meeting in the local hall.  More

The first of the MasterChef Australia TV series went to air on 27 April and kept viewers enthralled until 19 July. The reality TV/cooking show put contestants through a gruelling series of challenges and eliminations. It changed attitudes to cooking and even had 12 year-olds talking about “plating up”. This was to be the first of many MasterChef series. Food writer Matt Preston has been a judge and host of the series since its inception. More

Starbucks closed 62 of their 85 Australian stores across Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, the Gold Coast, Melbourne, South Australia and Tasmania, saying they were under-performing and blaming “business challenges unique to the Australian market”. Meaning, perhaps, that we recognise good (and bad) coffee when we taste it. > The Age More

An AC Nielson survey in April 2008 showed that still water had a 9.9% market share of non-alcoholic ready-to-drink products, with mineral waters having a further 2.2% share. Bottled water was one of the fastest growing beverages over the previous six years with average growth of 10% per annum. More

The NSW and Victorian governments lifted the moratorium on the planting of genetically modified canola early in 2008. With GM canola accounting for  70 per cent of the global canola market, many Australian growers saw the lifting of the GM crop moratorium as enhancing their competitiveness. More

The United Nations declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato, to focus world attention on the role that the potato can play in providing food security. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics,  there are, on average, about 190,000 square kilometres of potatoes under crop every year worldwide. The potato remains Australia’s favourite vegetable, consumed mainly as chips.  More

Launched by three partners in the USA in 2006, Urbanspoon provided an online forum for peer-reviewing of restaurants. The service expanded to Australia in 2008 and and was bought by the India-based Zomato in 2015, after which the original name was retired. Urbanspoon and its competitors put restaurant rating in the hands of customers, rather than professional reviewers. More

The Anzac Biscuit recipe is protected under Australian legislation, policed by the Department of Veterans’  Affairs. Commercially made Anzac Biscuits must be made to the traditional recipe – a task which was too difficult for Subway. The chain ceased to sell the biscuits after a legal challenge from the Department. More

By 2008, approximately 13 million credit cards  and 28 million debit cards were on issue in Australia. Visa said the Debit Card was the fastest growing consumer product ever released by their company.  By 2005, Debit Cards were used an average of 166 times per user annually and in 2006 “tap and go” technology arrived. Shopping with plastic had become a way of life. More

The occasion prompted a feature wherein several of the Good Living writers over the years reflected on changes over the past 25 years. David Dale went so far as to list the various food fads from 1982 (raspberry vinegar) to 2007 (organic everything). Not all readers agreed with his chronology, but most of us remember these culinary milestones, including sticky date pudding, pork belly and scallops, mushroom risotto and caesar salad.

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The term “locavore“ was named the Word of the Year for 2007 in the Oxford American Dictionary. Locavore was coined by a group of women in San Francisco, who encouraged people to eat food produced within a 100 mile radius of where they lived. Runners up for Word of the Year included: cougar: an older woman who romantically pursues younger men and upcycling: the transformation of waste materials into something more useful or valuable. More

Although Australia’s first farmed black truffle was harvested in 1999 in Tasmania, Australia’s first truffle festival took place in an outer suburb of Perth: Mundaring. The truffles came from Manjimup, 300km or so to the south. The festival ran successfully for six years and in 2012 was named among the top five truffle festivals of the world. In 2013, though,  insurance issues brought the organisers into conflict with their State Government sponsors and the  festival was cancelled. More

The Iced VoVo is a sweet biscuit first made by Arnott’s around 1904.  It has two strips of pink icing and a strip of jam on top and is covered in desiccated coconut. Sales of the biscuit were boosted when Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, referred to it in his victory speech after the 2007 election, saying: “Friends, tomorrow, the work begins. You can have a strong cup of tea if you want, even an Iced VoVo on the way through. But the celebration stops there.”
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Two million food books, worth almost sixty million dollars, were sold in Australia in 2006 (Neilsen Bookscan). Writing about food and drink in fiction and non fiction formats makes up a significant proportion of the books written, published, sold and read each year in Australia and other parts of the English-speaking world.

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Thanks to the popularity of the American TV series Sex and the City, these highly decorated little cakes, the signature product of New York city’s Magnolia Bakery, became objects of desire. The cupcake craze swept the world and took hold in Australia. By 2013, business pundits were predicting its demise, but some businesses are hanging on.

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The Adelaide Food Summit on The Future of Food was held between 25-26 October as a Tasting Australia event and made a declaration on the future of food.  It was signed by numerous chefs, producers, food media people and the odd politician and asserted the importance of food issues for society. More

Concerns about seafood sustainability were voiced at Tasting Australia in Adelaide and at a Slow Food conference in Melbourne. The first Sustainable Seafood Guide was produced, identifying species in danger from over-fishing. More

At the second National Australian Farmers’ Markets Conference in Albury Wodonga the first substantive Australian research into farmers’ markets was presented. It put the estimated value of produce sold through farmers’ markets at around $40 million. The report was compiled for the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) now known as Agrifutures. More

As a response to declining lamb sales, the Australian  Meat and Livestock Corporation recruited former Aussie Rules footballer and media personality Sam Kekovich to be their “Lambassador“. Sam’s first 90-second diatribe condemned vegetarians as un-Australian. Annual rants continued to promote lamb for Australia Day, resulting in a spike in lamb sales in the week leading up to the national holiday. More

The American documentary film Super Size Me by director Morgan Spurlock aimed to expose the evils of fast food. The film tracked the dire consequences of eating three McDonald’s meals a day for 30 consecutive days. Fast food retailers countered with the argument that their food was meant to be part of an overall balanced diet, not a complete way of eating. More

Barcelona-born Frank Camorra opened Mo Vida in laneway in Melbourne, with tapas as bar food and more substantial plates to share. The restaurant was named after the Mo Vida movement in music and the arts that erupted in Spain when the dictator Franco died in 1975. It claims to ‘embrace the spirit, the fun, the essence of the great bars of Spain’. More

In 2003 the Federal Office of the Gene Technology Regulator approved GM canola for cultivation in Australia. It concluded that GM modified canola varieties produced by Bayer and by Monsanto, posed no greater risk to human health or the environment than conventionally bred strains. However, despite the Federal approval, most State governments imposed a moratorium on GM crops pending further investigation. More

25-year-old Paul Bassett from Australia was officially named the world’s best barista. He won the World Barista Championship title in the third international competition held in Boston. The runners up were from Iceland and Norway. The competition was broadcast on national morning TV to over 20 million Americans.

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Patties bought Four ‘n Twenty, Herbert Adams and Nanna’s from Simplot, putting the iconic pie brands back in Australian hands and flying in the face of a trend towards foreign ownership of Australian food and beverage manufacturing. More

Woolworths first became active in the petrol market in 1996, with a Woolworths Plus petrol station in Dubbo, New South Wales. However, supermarket involvement in petrol took a giant leap in 2003 with the introduction of fuel dockets. In this year, both Coles and Woolworths introduced the dockets for use at their tied fuel outlets.  More

The Food Standards Code set the standards for food labelling and composition for all States and Territories throughout Australia and New Zealand. It also covers food safety and hygiene standards and fit-out of food premises, as well as primary production standards for Australia.

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The el Bulli restaurant in Roses, Catalonia, under chef Ferran Adrià, was named best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine. Its elevation helped to focus culinary attention on Spain and fuelled a trend towards Spanish cuisine in Australia. El Bulli remained in the top three until its closure in July 2011 and claimed the top spot five times in that period. More

Based on the (false) premise that humans haven’t evolved fast enough to cope with foods introduced since the end of the Stone Age, the Paleo Diet is based on concepts first explored in 1975 by gastroenterologist Walter Voegtlin. The publication of a 2002 book The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain popularised the idea of eating meat, fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds and excluding all grains, dairy, salt and added sugar.

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Coles Bay has a permanent population of around 200, and is located on the edge of the Freycinet National Park and Wineglass Bay in Tasmania. To provide a safer environment for the area’s wildlife and marine life, the town became the first in Australia to ban non-biodegradable plastic shopping  bags at checkouts. By 2019, most Australian states had banned single-use shopping bags.

Precious spelling (with a lower case d and a full stop) didn’t prevent this ABC-backed magazine from proving a success. Benefiting from promotion on the ABC television network and contributions from cooking show personalities, delicious. magazine challenged Donna Hay in the new magazine wars. More

The concept of the glycemic index was developed by Canadian Dr David Jenkins in 1980-81.  His research showed that some starchy foods could have similar effects on blood sugar to simple sugars, depending how quickly they were absorbed.  Although other books preceded his, Rick Gallop popularised the GI Diet as a means to weight loss with a series of books, the first being published in 2002.   More

The Graduate degree program in Gastronomy (which lead to a Master of Arts in Gastronomy) was a collaboration between Le Cordon Bleu academy and The University of Adelaide.  Headed by Barbara Santich, the gastronomy degree catered to people looking for a gastronomy-related career in hospitality, media or tourism. The course is no longer offered. More

The former food editor at Murdoch Magazine’s Marie Claire, Donna Hay had a trademark style of simple recipes and clean, minimalist photography. When Murdoch’s denied her the opportunity to open a magazine under her own name, she went to News Corp with a proposal and a mock up. They said yes. Donna Hay magazine was the first of a new wave of food magazines. The launch issue (at left) featured a simple cup of ice cream. More

Muzz Buzz, a drive-through coffee chain, was founded by Craig Muzzeroll, who opened the first outlet in Belmont, Perth. The idea came from the United States where drive-through coffee (although not espresso) was well-established. It was the first drive-through coffee operation in Australia.

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Although coffee culture began seeping into Australian life in the mid-20th century with the introduction of the espresso machine, it took a sharp upward swerve in the 1990s. In the mid ’90s the term ‘barista’ began to be used for the person who made the coffee. The first  annual Australian Barista  Championship took place in 2001. It has since become the Australasian Barista Championship and has been held in various centres including, oddly enough, Thailand. More

The German chain Aldi opened its first Australian store in Sydney in 2001 and by 2004 had 54 stores across the eastern states. Aldi claimed that its proposition of ‘smarter shopping’ was supported by having no artificial colours in any produce, a high proportion of local produce and everyday low prices rather than fluctuating ‘specials’. More

Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation:The Dark Side of the All-American Meal explores the global influence of the American fast food industry. It first appeared in serialised form in Rolling Stone magazine and was later made into a film. In 2012 a new edition appeared with a ‘afterword’ commenting on other issues such as the increased interest in organic food and the exploitation of poor workers in the food industry. More

The worst drought in living memory hit Australia’s south east and south west, impoverishing farmers and increasing food prices. The drought increased the concern about climate change and water management, particularly in the Murray-Darling basin. Dubbed the Millennium Drought, it was only partly relieved by rains in 2008, while some regions remained dry until 2010. More

The 1999-2000 Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study indicated over seven million, or 60% of adult Australians aged 25 years and over were overweight. Of these, over two million (21%) were obese. Sixty seven per cent of men and 52% of women in Australia were now overweight or obese. More

The pioneers of the juice bar  as we know it, Boost Juice and Viva Juice, were both founded in 2000, selling exotic juice mixes and smoothies. “Do you want wheat grass with that?”  Young urban adults wanted a fast meal substitute with a health benefit and juice bars filled the bill. More

The Australian Federal Government passed the Gene Technology Act in December 2000 to regulate the research, use and release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in Australia.  Its object was “to protect the health and safety of people, and the environment, by identifying risks posed by or as a result of gene technology, and by managing those risks through regulating certain dealings with genetically modified organisms (GMOs)”. More

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) was introduced, providing another incentive to eat at home. Food for human consumption was exempt, but take-away and restaurant food incurred the 10% GST. It was another blow to the restaurant industry where many were forced to absorb some of the price increases to maintain custom. More

The ABS Household Expenditure Survey (2000) found that the average household spent $127 a week on foods and non-alcoholic beverages, with meals eaten away from home occupying the largest percentage of this spending (26.77%). Spending on takeaway and fast foods accounted for 55.88% ($19 per week) of all meals when Australians ate out. More

Chains like Starbucks and Gloria Jeans were to coffee what the Eurovision song contest is to rock and roll. Their menus contained strange, sweet concoctions like GJ’s Arnott’s Tim Tam Chocolate Chiller or Starbuck’s White Chocolate Mocha Frappucino. When Starbucks launched in Australia the chain enjoyed a brief flurry of popularity, especially with the teen set who wanted a clubby atmosphere. More