Food security: food is not just an energy source, it keeps you healthy

The UK news services may now be focused on swine flu and the death toll of our soldiers, but food security (access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life) has not gone away. We all have to face up to it. AS I fight the daily battle with wasps…who, in…
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Tea … will a cuppa see you through novel H1N1 influenza?

Still popularly known as swine flu here in the UK, the novel pandemic H1N1 influenza makes you feel really ill even if you experience the "mild" form.  On a BBC radio 5 program in the first week of July, controversy arose over a recommendation to drink lots of fluids and to avoid tea… because it…
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Flu panic in Argentina

A CABI sales colleague now in Argentina reported on June 30th that meetings had been cancelled, ministers were resigning and hospitals & schools faced closure, all through the fear of the novel H1N1 influenza pandemic the entire world is now experiencing. The Argentine Post points out that Argentina is now entering its winter, and that…
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Health systems: fuzzy or not?

Despite swine influenza calling world experts home to advise their governments, it was business as usual here on Tuesday April 28 at the World Congress for Public Health in Istanbul. Tuesday was the first full day with 9 concurrent sessions. I sought out those which addressed health systems, as this is an area finally recognised as…
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Joined at the hip

2 news items this morning on BBC Radio 4 struck home: secondary school canteen providers are up in arms declaring that meeting the new food quality regulations for the meals they deliver, will reduce variety and the children will go elsewhere. [Over a 3 week period school meals will have to reach a certain level…
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Hot off the press: ebola structure and sick pigs

Iremember as I struggled through my PhD in the 1980s wondering what the lab next door was up to as I never saw anyone there in a lab-coat. No-one there struggled with vast cell cultures to get a few ug of material as I did or God forbid had to proactively source chicken hearts from…
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A word to the wise (Aspergillosis)

As I accidentally breathed in the blood, fish & bone powder I was feeding my plants yesterday, I was reminded of a case which made the front cover of The Lancet last week entitled: gardening can seriously damage your health. It highlighted a case report of an unfortunate man who succumbed to aspergillosis, a fungal…
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Be KIND to nettles

AS an avid reader of fairytales in my youth, I was always intrigued by the story of the seven ravens. Seven princely brothers condemned to be ravens by day can only be rescued if their beautiful sister is prepared to pick nettles, barehanded, spin them into thread and weave the lot into seven shirts. Unfortunately…
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Mines a pint…

In the UK, alcohol abuse is a prime cause of morbidity & mortality, a burden on Accident & Emergency hospital admissions, and a major cause of antisocial behaviour. Last Friday (March 14) at the British Medical Association (BMA) Public Health Medicine annual conference in London, the Minister of State for Public Health, Dawn Primorolo, announced…
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Beetroot with everything

I heard today that drinking a pint of beetroot juice (500ml) lowers your blood pressure, effects are seen within one hour. Good news for the EU (all those sugarbeet fields: what a quandary do they make sugar, use it for reaching their 10% biofuel goal OR change the type of beet so they can juice…
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