Dollar for dollar, Americans are paying more for their wheat bread, and they're happy to do it.

At least, that's the message that can be inferred from the fact that dollar sales of packaged wheat bread have surpassed white bread for the first time in U.S. history.

Pre-packaged white bread has been an American staple since the early 20th century, when companies such as the ever-popular Wonder Bread began to market loaves that had been prepared and sliced in advance.

But the flour used in making white bread isn't nutritionally dense, leading to fortification, and in recent years, the growing popularity of healthier wheat breads.

White bread is made of flour that has its grains crushed fine in the process of milling. This process removes the fiber of the flour, as well as the oils that could lead the bread to go bad sooner.

So while white bread lasts longer, it isn't as good for you as bread that hasn't been refined in the same way.

In the last 15 years the popularity if wheat bread has been brought about by diets that focused on the importance of fiber and nutrients. And while the purchase of white loaves still outnumbers the purchase of wheat loaves, the fact that Americans are willing to pay so much more for healthier bread says a lot about the current health trends going on in the U.S.

For food manufacturers and distributors, this news only supports the notion that offering consumers healthy alternatives, including whole grain flours, is a wise move.

The days of people enjoying white flour items - including pastries, breads, and processed foods - aren't over by any means. However, the market for healthier flours and breads is a strong one that seems resilient, even in the face of the current economic downturn.

In the battle against childhood obesity a new food additive may be on the way that can preserve the sweetness of favorite treats while still reducing calories up to 25 percent.

Reb-C, as it's called, is a sweetness enhancer, not a sweetener in its own right. However, with its apparent ability to magnify the sweetness of foods, it may be easier to minimize the use of sugar, corn syrups, and other sweeteners while maintaining the same flavor loved by kids (and grown-ups!) around the world in their cereals and baked goods.

Reb-C is a derivative of the stevia plant, the same one that produces the "natural" sweetener of the same name that has recently gained public attention. In the quest to provide us with sweet foods that are somehow tasty, low-calorie, and "natural," stevia is the newest contender.

However, Reb-C and it's flavorful uses aren't limited to sugar and stevia itself. According to The Food Navigator in it's recent article on artificial sweeteners, Reb-C shows promising results when combined with sucralose and aspartame.

This means that when combined with Reb-C popular food items could rely less on artificial sweeteners altogether.

However, food distributors and manufacturers will still have to wait awhile before they can enhance the power of their sweets with Reb-C; it's still in the testing phase, and though it's creators are excited to get it on the market "very quickly" there's still a lot of work to be done before Americans will find Reb-C on their list of food ingredients at the market.

While it's only gotten somewhat easier to find gluten-free foods these days, those with Celiac Disease, or who avoid gluten for other reasons, may soon have good reason to be pleased.

Bean starch is on the way.

Okay, so bean starch may not sound like something to be ecstatic about, but if you've ever had a slice of gluten-free bread that tasted dry and crumbly, you'll understand more of why bean starch could be a big deal.

Gluten-free breads and pastries have been made in recent years with flours that can stand-in for wheat, including rice flour, soy flour, almond flour and potato flour. However, due to the chemical processes that gluten provides, gluten-free breads don't have the same taste as good ol' fashioned wheat breads.

As it says in the article by Food Navigator, gluten-free bread tends to exhibit poor crumb and crust characteristics as well as poor mouth feel and flavor.

In other words, it doesn't taste as good.

But with the addition of bean starch gluten-free, breads retain moisture levels that compare favorably with traditional breads.

Bean starch is already used to make asian-style noodles, and even a jelly. But for food manufacturers and distributors interested in a gluten-free line of products, including bean starch could be a smart way to boost quality while tapping into the billion dollar business of providing foods to those who don't or can't consumer gluten.

Salt intake and the perils of consuming too much sodium have been all over the news this year. Recent studies have found that lowering the sodium in your diet could prevent stroke, hypertension, and heart attacks.

And since then the food manufacturing industry has been struggling to find a way to lower sodium levels in their foods without sacrificing taste. This can be hard to do for a variety of reasons.

But mainly, this is difficult because Americans want to minimize their salt intake without sacrificing the flavor they enjoy.

And apparently we aren't the only ones trying to strike a balance between flavor and function. In the UK, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently made suggestions for the progressive reduction of sodium for manufactured foods that could go on indefinitely.

According to NICE, salt intake could be minimized by reducing the sodium in foods "by 5-10% a year," going on indefinitely because "most consumers don't even notice any difference in taste."

This statement, according to FoodManufacture UK, is not true at all.

In fact, for those who work in food manufacturing this approach to reducing sodium levels really doesn't work no matter what continent you live on. Anyone involved in manufacturing and/or distributing food items knows that there is indeed a cut-off point where consumers will notice that there isn't as much salty flavor in their food.

But even if they didn't, there's an important factor in the manufacture and preservation of foods that has been lost in the concern over salt intake - salt minimizes water activity in food, which in turn prevents spoilage and many bacterial invasions that can be dangerous for human beings.

Salt is also crucial when it comes to food structure, texture, and the chemical processes required of baking.

So what should food manufacturers do to minimize sodium levels and still create products that are both delicious and safe for human consumption?

For now, until guidelines are clearer, it's best to use sodium where it is needed, and minimize it if possible.

But don't get too caught up in cutting salt intake; consumers want taste before function, and creating a product that tastes bad isn't going to make anyone happy--least of which you with your bottom line.

The rising popularity of products featuring "natural" sugar have led food manufacturing giants Coca Cola and PepsiCo to feature a new line of beverages that offer old fashioned sugar instead of sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup.

And consumers are loving it.

Now a report on food news from Mintel finds that all foods featuring a label that includes "natural" claims are doing well.

In fact, while the popularity of "plus" and "minus" labels have dropped - meaning labels that feature ingredients that have been added or removed from a product - natural labels have grown in popularity by one third.

Including the natural sugar craze; with the continuing unpopularity of corn syrup, sugar has become the healthier (though not lower in calorie) alternative. This goes double for unrefined sugars, and even brown sugar.

A perfect example of this trend is the new ice-cream line by Haagen-Dazs called "Five." It features only five ingredients, all of which are listed on the front of the package. Consumers seem to be more comfortable purchasing foods that they feel are less complicated, have fewer preservatives, and are closer to nature.

Other "buzzwords" connected to the natural labels craze include "wholesome,""naked," and "authentic."

The children's foods market is also one that has done very well with the drive towards less processing in foods, as parents search for things they can feed their kids that don't feature many preservatives or manufactured ingredients.

Food manufacturers and distributors who want to capitalize on the popularity of natural sugar products - and the natural line in general - can do so by featuring a simpler line of ingredients. The down side to this trend is that food lacking in preservatives doesn't last as well as traditionally packaged foods.

This might mean that such foods would require refrigeration, or at least, less time in transit and on the shelves.

It's Wonder Bread's 90th birthday, and the old-fashioned staple of America's diet is retaining its long standing popularity by competing in the whole wheat flour and bread market.

Wonder Bread's success is simple: they're flexible and they keep an eye on what the people want. In the 1930's Wonder Bread supplemented their bread line with vitamins and minerals designed to combat diseases of the era like pellagra and beriberi.

And along with its debut as one of the first sliced breads available in America, it was immensely popular...the people ate it up.

In the 1960s they sold their product as a means of building healthy, strong bodies.

And today they're focusing on the whole wheat flour market by offering a line of breads that feature a soft texture and the nutritional value of whole grains.

These lines include "Wonder Kids Bread," which is a vitamin enriched bread made of whole grain flour designed to appeal to kids, and "Wonder Smartwhite" another whole wheat bread that even looks like traditional white bread in order to please picky eaters.

This allows parents to feel good about what their child is eating, while children get to eat something they love.

Baking Management's recent article on bread flour suggests that the key to success is to know how to make formulaic adjustments to your recipe so that your bread still tastes great, but offers the nutritional value that consumers want.

Wonder Bread's ability to do just that with their whole wheat line explains why they've been going strong for 90 years, and likely to keep going for 90 more.

Finding an artificial sweetener that will adequately replicate the flavor of sugar has been a holy grail in food ingredients of sorts for the last 25 years.

The original sweetener of choice was Sweet n' Low, or saccharin, created in 1879 and featuring a sweetness that is from 300 to 500 times more powerful than that of sugar. Diabetics and those avoiding sugar for other reasons rejoiced that everything from ice cream to soda to cookies became available to them again thanks to saccharin.

The next big contender was aspartame, also known as Equal. It's 200 times as sweet as table sugar, and was discovered in 1965. It's never fared as well in baked goods, but many people prefer the flavor of aspartame for their beverages.

And fairly recently Splenda--formally known as Sucralose--hit the market. This artificial sweetener is heat stable, meaning that it makes many baked goods taste just as sweet as sugar. In most cases regular sugar is also added to the mix in order to facilitate the chemical reactions needed in baking, but for the most part Splenda has been the new darling of the artificial sweeteners craze.

But it appears that stevia may soon take its place--at least in some capacity. Stevia is actually a plant derivative cultivated in Paraguay, Brazil, Japan, and China. Previous criticisms of artificial sweeteners revolved around their "unnaturalness" as chemically created compounds. Being of a "natural" source, stevia is touted as a healthy alternative to artificial sweeteners that still supplies the sweetness of sugar.

And now recent sweetener taste tests find that stevia fares best when combined with another favorite - chocolate. Stevia flavored chocolate beverages were judged to be the best because it tasted well, was moderately sweet, and provided a well-balanced flavor.

Food manufacturers and distributors may soon find that their chocolate products will fare well with stevia. It's sweet, it's calorie free, and it maintains the best chocolate flavor. However, they'll have to get in line behind Coca Cola and PepsiCo, both of whom have already designed beverage lines featuring stevia and hitting the shelves already.