I have never been a spicy food kind of girl. Jalapenos? No thanks. Hot sauce? Never.

So, in some ways I was surprised when I visited OSI Group’s headquarters in Aurora, Ill., for this month’s cover story and learned from executives there that spicy foods are hotter than ever.

Ask me about “emerging markets” and chances are, I’ll talk about what’s new in ready-to-go packaged meals or side dishes.

My old roommate was the manager of a locally based gourmet chocolate company. We're talking gourmet, as in $30 for truffles flavored with ingredients such as chili powder, blood orange and rose water.

In a January 2008 report titled, Convenience Foods in the U.S.: Fresh and Frozen, Packaged Facts wrote that retailers - and refrigerated and frozen prepared convenience foods, in particular - will benefit greatly from busier consumer lifestyles, Americans’ growing concern with health and their interest in ethnic cuisines and flavors.

By now you've probably heard about Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, published this January. In it, Pollan addresses a question that any American consumer might ask when faced with so much variety on supermarket shelves, "What should I eat?"

Fortune recently named Unilever USA - the subject of this month's cover story - as one of the nation's most respected consumer food product companies.

One of the industry’s most talked about topics? Co-manufacturing.

Falling home values. Rising transportation costs. Soaring food prices. It’s not hard to see why consumer confidence is at its lowest level in years.

What does healthy mean anymore? In researching this month’s product development feature on organic food formulation, I came across an article that stated “better for you” doesn’t necessarily mean “healthy” - rather it could mean that a food product is made from higher-quality or organic ingredients.

They say February is the cruelest month. Like so many people wanting relief from winter, food processors last month looked to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for some signs of relief from record commodity feed and/or ingredient costs.