More good news for coffee drinkers!
Winter is traditionally a season of excess followed by deprivation. Not only do many of us inflict misery and suffering on ourselves in the form of New Years’ resolutions at a time when we really want to be tucked up under the duvet with a boxful of chocolates, but, just as we start to look…
Water or biofuels? You choose.
A recent editorial written by Fred Pearce in Sugaronline.com points out the alarming possible repercussions of growing biofuels for the world’s water supply. As the policy makers seriously consider this option as an apparently climate change-friendly method of fueling the world, we have to consider what affect this might have on other, already stretched, natural…
Seeds of Doom
When I first heard about the Svalbard International Seed Vault or "Doomsday" seed bank, I felt quite alarmed. Why was it being built into the side of a freezing Arctic mountain hundreds of miles from anywhere? Was some great catastrophe about to hit the earth and obliterate all forms of life? However, it seems that…
Can weeds be our friends?
A recent post on the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog by Luigi set me thinking (ouch!) about water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), weeds in general and the useful things it’s possible to do with them. Luigi tells us about a magazine rack that he bought in Nairobi that was made from fibres of the invasive aquatic weed. It’s…
Trans fats — the wrong target?
Trans fats. I keep seeing them in the news: New York restaurants have banned them, McDonalds as well, but how much effect is this likely to have on the public’s health? In my opinion attention would be better focussed on the daily diet not on eating out and on saturated fat not trans fat. Trans…
UK hopeful Bird flu has been contained
Following the outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza at a turkey farm in Holton, Suffolk, there is hope that the situation is under control. The cull of all 159,000 turkeys on the Bernard Matthews farm is now complete and an extensive clean-up operation is in progress. The disease appears to have been restricted to a single…
Measuring out their lives in coffee spoons
Many of us sit down with a cup of coffee and surf the internet for news on the environment; however, our daily latte may be harbouring an environmental disaster all of its very own. It appears that illegally-grown coffee plantations have begun to encroach on the natural habitats of the Sumatran rhino, tiger and elephant.…
‘I love you like meat loves salt’
For a long time it was assumed that salt was a necessary additive in food processing, especially meat. In fact, the food industry resisted calls to reduce its use of salt for many years, often launching scathing attacks disputing the mounting evidence that it was bad for us. The quote above, in case you’re interested…
The hypertension controversy
Suggesting that there might be controversy in the link between salt intake and hypertension in itself might seem a little controversial, given the vast amount of media attention that our salt intake has received over recent years. But controversial it is. Some 45 published papers on ‘salt and hypertension’ were uploaded onto the CAB Abstracts…
Whitefly and Virus Team Tactics
The notorius ‘B’-biotype whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, can act as a vector for viruses, transmitting them between plants as it feeds. Nothing new there? Yes actually, in an interesting twist, researchers at Zhejiang University, China have found that certain viruses repay the favour by increasing whitefly performance on the infected plant. Comparisons of B whitefly fecundity…