Now, the new Smart Choices Program will help you quickly spot which food products pass their criteria for “healthy” foods and which products don’t. Also, it will help you spot instantly how many calories and other nutritional information for the product instantly without taking time checking out what’s behind the packaging. They are going to start with this new way of combating obesity and other eating and weight problems by next year.

The labels where you’ll find the calories per serving and the number of servings per pack or bottle will be on food and beverage products from companies such as Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, General Mills and a lot more.

On Monday, October 27, 2008, the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo will unveil their goals for this program. They want the program to help people make the smarter choices so they can quickly improve their own health.

The task of checking out the amount of calories on each of those products may seem simple but would take time and not many people would want to spend hours just checking out the caloric content of their groceries so with this new program, you don’t even have to calculate anything as everything’s being laid out up front to you in a very straightforward fashion.

So basically, the new label program will create two parts for the food labels. The first part will be the Smart Choices program mark where you’ll find a green check when the product meets the nutritional requirements. The second part is the amount of calories per serving and the number of servings per pack.

The way they created the criteria for the program took them two years to finish especially because they don’t want to base the criteria just on the food pyramid because not too many people actually follow the food pyramid and that’s really not how people buy their groceries. Instead, they base it on what foods would be better for you so that when you walk down that grocery aisle you no longer have to check your food pyramid chart to find out which foods would be better for you or your children. You can’t just quickly say that desserts and beverages are bad for you because not all are calorie-packed at all and some of these products taste good and they are quite healthy for you too.

So, the group that created the program had created a total of 18 categories like snacks, desserts, entrees, beverages and cereals. Then, for each of these categories they set a certain guideline. On these guidelines, products are tested for their total fat that are saturated or unsaturated, sugar, sodium, calcium, potassium, etc. They also check if these products contain fruits and vegetables, whole grains, etc. When a certain product meets these requirements then they get a green check mark on their food labels. Take note, these information are found on the front of the packaging and not at the back which we are very familiar of yet uninterested with.

Many companies are already ready to join on the food labeling program and are eager to put up these labels on all or most of their products. This way, consumers can quickly choose which products they want to buy without taking much of their time just figuring out if these products would be good for them.

The overall benefit of this program is on the consumers. This way, we could battle obesity as a community and it won’t be a personal battle anymore. As a community we could all eat healthy and those with weight problems would find losing weight more exciting and less difficult.

You have to be careful with choosing what to eat. Don’t let those food labels deceive you with words such as “healthy”, “contains real fruit”, “no carbs”, “boosts your immune system” or “helps you burn more fat”. These labels would make you want to grab that box of sweets without even really checking out what it contains. Every business owners would want to earn more and would do anything just to convince you to pick their product. These food labels may give you an impression that by choosing to buy those products you are actually picking the healthier products but in fact, you’ve just been lured by the deceiving words created by a copywriter.

There are lots of different and alluring food labels everywhere. Just walk around a supermarket and read the different labels you’d find. If you really come to think of it, all these food labels makes you want to do one thing, to grab them and put them on your shopping card. Now, do you really think their purpose goes beyond that? You may just be dismayed to find out that all those sweet words are only intended just for that purpose so what that really means is, you won’t get what the product promises. Of course nobody would really care to work as a detective and check out each of the products they buy so they just allow these deceitful manufacturers to make them believe what they all just want to believe- that they are binging on healthy foods.

Now, you may think this is just found on packaging found in supermarkets but in fact you are wrong. Go to your favorite milk shake stores and you’ll likely find the same thing. Like, if you are paying close attention to your calorie intake, you may opt to buy a “healthy” mocha shake from your favorite coffee shop where it says that their “healthy” mocha shake contains around 370 calories. You thought of buying it and just cutting on some carbs and other calorie source so you could enjoy a 370 calorie delicious mocha shake. You may be dismayed but several studies and documentations have discovered that those numbers are very deceiving and the 370 calorie shake you just bought may contain over 1000 calories after all. Now, do you still want to believe all those nonsensical words on those food labels?

So, what should you do to be more careful about purchasing your food products? Simple. You have to get past those very encouraging front labels and read the more detailed information that you’d most likely found at the back and with very small fonts. You must first check out the nutrition facts and the ingredient list. Make sure you read the facts very closely as 1 box or pack may be worth more than just 1 serving and you may be deceived and think that a whole box of junk food would just add 50 calories to your diet when in fact, a whole box is worth 7 servings so that’s 50 multiplied by 7 so that’s 350 calories.

Some food labels on the other hand may indirectly be deceiving. Like for example, your favorite green tea beverage promises to burn more fat when you drink more. This may not necessarily be unhealthy for you but because you think you’re burning more by drinking more, you end up binging on more unhealthy foods in the hope that your favorite green tea will just burn it all away. In fact, this may just disappoint you. There are really no healthy foods or beverages out there that could burn away hundreds and hundreds of calories. They may be “healthy” but up to a little extent only so you may just end up hurting your diet more by buying those “healthy” products.

All in all, you have to be wise when choosing the products you want to buy. Be a skeptic and investigate or look a little bit closer so you’d know exactly the full story. Just like the saying, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Make it a habit to read the labels especially those written at the back.

Recently, the world’s leaders had gathered and discussed about the current global situation and had come up with different solutions to the problems. The Kyoto Protocol had produced some very interesting solutions such as Carbon Credit which puts the pollution generated into account in a company’s expenses so the more pollution they produce, the more expensive the cost. This means that each plant and other businesses that produce greenhouse gases will have a carbon credit allowance and if they surpass this credit allowance, they would have to purchase a carbon credit. If their carbon credit allowance is higher than what they produce, they could sell the extra as carbon credit.

Now, what does this have to do with sticker labels? Well, as we all know, it is not just these pollutant businesses that are producing greenhouse gases that pollute our environment. There are millions of vehicles and each one of these vehicles are also producing these greenhouse gases and thus, helps contribute to our global warming problem as well.

Although vehicles must also pass a certain pollution check requirement, there is a much better way to make people have a better idea about what cars are actually more eco-friendly. This is where the sticker labels come in. This is a brilliant idea coming from the U.S. State Ecology Department in Washington who stated that our transportation vehicles are also top contributors in our pollutants and because of this, they have decided to put sticker labels on each new cars starting next year. These sticker labels would give people the information they need about the environmental performance level of that vehicle. These sticker labels will give you an idea on how much smog the vehicle produces and what its greenhouse effect is. This way, each car will have categories and the race for the most eco-friendly car is on.

Everybody wants to buy the best that their money can afford and if there is a sticker label on a vehicle with the greenhouse gas production of those cars, it is much easier for a buyer to choose a better car not just in terms of performance but taking into consideration what its environmental impact would be.

Starting 2009, passenger cars, vans, SUVs and light-duty trucks will have these sticker labels on their windows. It will become a standard for all new vehicles and without these sticker labels then the cars won’t be allowed to be sold. So it is everyone’s right to look for sticker labels when choosing to buy a brand new vehicle. This way you’ll find out whether or not the car you are eyeing is ecological or not.

The U.S. Ecology Department said that with the implementation of these sticker labels, more car manufacturers would produce even more efficient and ecological cars so they would decrease the amount of carbon emissions it would produce. Hopefully it would be a domino effect that will produce very positive results.

It is best to find a solution to a problem and start at the core of the issue. By implementing these sticker labels, the car manufacturers will have no choice but to find a much better way to keep those engines efficient and more eco-friendly. After all, we only have one Earth and without it we really can’t survive.

Hopefully this will trigger and send in the right messages not just for the car manufacturers but to everyone as well. We should all choose what will be more helpful to our environment so we could each contribute to its preservation. The implementation of sticker labels on vehicles is just one of the many ways we can do this and it’s a really good start.

The previous version of HP’s digital label printer is the Web Stream 4000 or WS4000. It was able to print up to 52 feet per minute with 4 colors and just about twice of that for 2 colors. The Web Stream 4000 is able to print up to 7 colors but the number of colors use affects the time required to print per feet.

WS4000

The WS4000 is actually quite efficient but with the more competitions and the higher demand, their speed is just not enough and the demand for a faster and more efficient digital label printer increase.

HP debuted their latest version of digital label printers at the Labelexpo trade show in Chicago last September and they are planning on selling their newest version of digital label printers by end of the year. Their newest digital label printer version is called Web Stream 6000 or WS6000.

WS6000

The Web Stream 6000 digital label printer promises to double the amount of prints per minute as compared to the older version, WS4000, which can only make 52 feet of digital labels in a minute on 4 colors. The WS6000 can print in 4 colors at about 100 feet of prints in a minute and up to 200 feet of prints per minute if only two colors are used. That is about twice the speed of the WS4000! The WS6000 digital label printer can also print up to 7 colors just like the WS4000.

The WS6000 is said to make digital printing even more attractive for even more jobs. The break even for the WS6000 is higher as well. For WS4000, the break even point is said to be about 50,000 labels but with the WS6000 it would be around 100,000 to just break even. The break even point depends on different factors that should be considered such as the amount of ink needed and labor.

Digital label printing has several advantages compared to other forms of printing. First of all, when you digitally print a label, the labor cost would be greatly reduced and at the same time, the amount of waste generated would also be greatly reduced. This means, by concept, that when you use a digital label printer, you are being more economical and at the same time being more ecological as well. And of course, with digital label printing, the job is done a lot faster. Much more now that the new WS6000 promises to even double the speed.

So how does the WS6000 double its speed compared to the WS4000? One reason for the speed increase is that the WS6000 has a larger area for imaging to the maximum possible imaging coverage area for each impression. Therefore, the repeat area for the WS6000 is now 12.48×38.58 inches compared to the 12.1×17.7 inches by the WS4000. Also, the WS6000 uses less ink because of better opacity and therefore the drying time for the ink is also much less.

The speed offered by WS6000 is remarkable and rather tempting but when you take a look at its price you would have to consider first whether or not your printing company can already afford to buy it now. The WS4000 is worth about $500,000 for 4 colors or it would be upgraded at no charge to have the capacity of the WS4500. The new WS6000 is quoted to be worth $800,000 for 4 colors or up to $1 million for seven colors without including the price for its inline accessories. So, basically, the price for WS6000 is also double that of WS4000.

Of course, considering the double of the price compared to the previous version doesn’t mean that there aren’t any real advantages to owning this new version of digital label printer. It is much better to maintain one equipment than maintaining 2. The overall cost for WS6000 is set to be much less compared to maintaining 2 WS4000 printers.

Since the beginning when digital label printing had been introduced over 10 years ago, we have seen some great changes to the digital label printing world. With more and more companies are becoming more conscious about their digital labels, the demands for much better digital label printing machines does not stop. Labels must meet the company’s criteria and they must get the approval of the consumers as well.

Around 5 years ago, the digital label presses had barely reached 200 all in all. Since then, the demand for custom labels is getting higher and higher and it’s at its all-time high now and by next year it would be even higher and so on. The digital label printing process became mainstream and many companies became curious about this new way of printing labels that eventually it became one of the most popular forms of custom label printing.

Now, the competitions get tougher and tougher and the growth of digital label printing had given the consumers an even better media in label printing. As the usual trend in everything, the more the competition the better the products become.

The more the global industry require the more the digital label printers must meet the needs for packaging and labels. Now, digital label presses are much better and they are easily available on the market a swell. The new generation of digital label presses have much better image quality with a higher optical resolution than ever, it got speedier, the pixel exposure is more accurate and the usual maximum printing speed is at 63 ft/minute regardless of the different colors being used or the stock of labels being used.

As with any products, digital label printers are also not created equal. Some digital label printers have better advantages compared to others and it really depends on what their purpose are. What’s more important now is that digital label printing is actually far more ecological than other conventional methods. With digital label printing, the waste produced is much less. No need to dispose of polluted water since water is not used in the process of printing, VOC emissions is almost zero as well. There is very little waste from the raw material as well therefore companies need not spend more money to their prints which in turn will just be thrown away in the form of trash.

The demands for digital label printing continue to rise and the industry had matured as it continues to grow. Now, printers are looking for ways to get immediate result which paved the way for the new wave of digital label printing. Now, you can digitally print images straight from the internet. You can now print on-demand and printers can quickly modify those images with no sweat. Also, with the advancement in digital label printing, the label industry’s technology allows the printing labels on various substrates and on different sizes of substrates as well.

With the different forms of label printing, the digital label printers are becoming more and more the ultimate choice by many companies. It’s hassle-free, quick and is far more cost effective if considering all factors. This technology continues to advance as more demands need to be met. The future can only tell us that the digital label printing world will continue to advance and will give us better quality and even more realistic printing results. And, also, with the great competition we would eventually enjoy digital label printing at a much cheaper cost. The consumers will definitely be benefiting more from this technology advancement.

 Everything that is coming from other countries will have their very own label stickers. This way you’d know if your apple, milk, lettuce, sugar, coconut, durian and other fruits and products were imported (if ever they are) from a safe country especially when there is an ongoing report about a certain country exporting goods that are contaminated with something. 

These custom labels had been approved back in 2002 and it’s just recently that adding label stickers finally took effect.  These are custom labels where each country will have their own label stickers for their different products. These labels need not just be in a form of label stickers but they can be a placard, a sign or anything that would inform a buyer as to where the product came from.  Milk, frozen or fresh fruits, fish and all meats and vegetables will have these sticker labels or signs except for organ meats.

These custom labels would benefit both the buyer and the farmers especially the U.S. farmers who had originally requested for this because they believed that consumers would be more happy knowing that what they are eating are actually grown in their country.  Now, because label stickers are now around, they are very happy and they applaud the measure stating that by having these custom labels or label stickers the consumers are given valuable information and they have a better choice of which ones to buy.

The implementation is ongoing but a spokeswoman of Hy-Vee supermarket believes that for the next six months the enforcement would be quite slow. Hy-Vee supermarket, on the other hand, plans to have sticker labels on most of their meat products and other products as stated as soon as they can.  Other supermarkets will implement this too especially because you can really never be too sure about the products you buy and consumers have the right to know if the food they are buying are actually safe to eat or not.

Now, we have the better option during our grocery shopping.  When buying your groceries, it’s better to check out the labels of the foods you buy and it’s better to be alert of the world problems especially if there are products being distributed by a certain country that are suspected to be dangerous to your health.

Now, you are a lot safer but it’s still really up to you to choose wisely. These sticker labels are your friends and it’s great that we could finally ask our favorite grocery store to follow the implemented rule about labeling but if we don’t watch what we buy and if we don’t read what those cute label stickers say, then you are still as vulnerable as without them.

Disc labeling had never been considered as a good idea for business up until now. Since the invention of discs, people resort to using stickers or pens to distinguish individual discs from the other. Thinking of printing onto the disc seemed impossible back then but now, new and awesome technology are sprouting here and there. You can enjoy LightScribing your discs but you would still need a special type of disc for this and if you want a more colorful and better way of printing onto your disc, you may want to check out the new Aleratec Robojet Disc Printer. It can print onto any disc such as Blue Ray disc, CDs, or DVDs and you get to enjoy a rich color prints and not just a grayscale version of the photo or image you want to print.

So, how does this actually work? If you look at the printer closely, you’d notice that it looks just like an ordinary printer but instead of printing on paper, it prints directly onto the CD. There is a top loader for the blank CDs and one by one, these CDs go into the printer and they are printed on just like with a regular printer printing onto paper. There is a transparent casing on the printer so you could watch the printer do its business. Once the disc printing is finished, the CD would then be ejected onto the bottom CD tray. You don’t need to watch it while it’s printing as it will automatically print onto the CDs as you have specified. No need for assistance from you so you can do other tasks while waiting for your CDs. This great new disc printer is capable of printing up to 100 discs at a time! That’s a lot of discs and you don’t need to keep on adding more CDs onto the tray after every few minutes since it has a big capacity. You just need to come back to check if all the CDs are finished. You don’t need to worry about the discs getting blots and smudges on them due to piling because the ink quickly dries up. What you will be getting are professional looking disc labels with no smudges. That is perfect printing all the time.

The Aleratec Robojet Disc Printer is perfect for custom labels on discs. You can create your own image through photoshops and other software that you are comfortable with then you use the disc printer’s software to align the photo in terms of the disc so you won’t have any problems when the printing is over.

The Aleratec Robojet Disc Printer is an inkjet disc printer. Unlike other types of disc printers, there are no external robotic arms so you don’t need to worry about the amount of space the printer will be consuming. After all, the entire disc printer is just as big as any ordinary disc printer you have at home. It’s small but it’s very powerful.

The disc printer also incorporporated the HP’s photoREt color-layering technology for better ink placement. The tones of the images are much smoother and there will be no grain-like images as these problems are eliminated through this technology. After all, HP is well-known for photo printing. The HP engine produces high quality and clear images in nice and brilliant colors. This printer also uses the standard ink cartridges being used on HP printers.

So, the question now is this- how much does this awesome inkjet label disc printer cost? Brace yourself. The retail price for this wonderful new disc printer is an amazing $2099. It’s not as cheap as how we’d want it but for those who are in serious need of an awesome disc printer such as this, this price is just a bargain. For the rest of us who just wants a disc printer for regular use, this may be too much. Let’s just wait for a cheaper version of these disc printers in the future. But, with the release of this new and great disc printer, we may be able to find disc printers on printing shops where we could pay them for a disc print.

LightScribe laser labels lets you print directly from your PC with the labels you want or the designs you want for your CDs or DVDS. It’s so cool and very exciting to use but you can’t just use any ordinary CDs and DVDs for this as you still need to purchase a LightScribe CD or DVD that are available in many online stores and retailers. They’re not expensive anyway and a few extra bucks worth for CDs that eliminates those disgusting ink blots and pesky stick-on labels is definitely worth it.

So, how do you get to enjoy this Lightscribe laser label option? Well, first of all, you’d need to have a LightScribe CD or DVD driver on your PC.  That means you got to throw your old CD or DVD driver away or resell them so you could purchase your very own LightScribe CD or DVD driver.  You’d know it’s a LightScribe driver because it has the LightScribe logo embossed on it though for slim notebooks, these LightScribe drivers does not have the LightScribe logo embossed but rather, a LightScribe sticker is attached to the notebook so you have to check that out.  Usually the LightScribe software is already included in your purchase and you just have to install that and you’d already be ready to use this cool new way of laser labeling your discs!

When you burn files to your CDS or DVDs, you would then later be prompted to LightScribe your disc. When you are prompted, you could either choose to just type in the label or you could copy a design of your choice so your CD or DVD would look more creative.  You could make your own drawing or just use a photo that will then be printed onto your CD or DVD. The LightScribed version of that photo or drawing will then be printed on top of the disc but of course there is no ink being used and the printed version on your LightScribe disc will appear grayscale just like a black and white photo.  If you want to add a bit of color onto your disc, your only option is to purchase colorful LightScribe CDs or DVDs that comes in gold, orange, yellow, green blue and red so instead of mere black and white it’s like gold and white, orange and yellow, and so on but it’s still grayscale but only with a colored background. LightScribe software varies and there are those that are just basic and come available to you once you purchase a LightScribe disc drive. These software products would already allow you to laser label your LightScribe labels but there are many other software that allows you to be more creative but these are most often being used by professions or artists or people who just want to add more creative juices into their “artwork”. These software can be downloaded online with trial versions from different software providers so you could test run them and see if you’re happy then you could purchase them online. Keep your creative juice flowing and add life to your CDs and DVDs collection.  Throw those stick-ons already! They’ve let you suffered long enough!