Earth Day – What’s Your Story?
Fuel shortages, Famine, Disease, Extinction, Floods, Drought…So this is ‘Earth Day’. Hardly something to look forward to is it? At CABI, we work tirelessly under the assumption that most people we’re likely to come across believe that ‘saving the planet’ is a Good Thing. But what are we really trying to save? Are we saving…
April is the cruellest month…
I wonder if T.S. Eliot1 was suffering from diarrhoea when he wrote this line? I believe English literary history generally has him down as recuperating from a nervous breakdown at the time, but who knows?2 So what is the tenuous link between T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and diarrhoea? It’s not necessarily what you’re thinking…
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
The sound of despondent Handpicked bloggers rang through the air at CABI this morning. The corridors were reverberating in despair at the New Zealand Herald‘s frightening headline ‘Climate change could see pubs run dry‘. Streuth! Pedants among you who have checked the link will have noted that the story appeared in last week’s Herald, but…
Greener can be Healthier
Climate change is the theme for National Public Health Week (NPHW) this week. It was the theme of World Health Day this year as well – a reflection of the increased attention health is getting in relation to climate change. Climate change is probably the biggest current threat to the public’s health so its time…
New medicines from fungi.
Many readers will be aware of the potential of living organisms to be sources of useful chemicals such as antibiotics, enzymes and so on — looking at medicinal properties alone, a search of records added to the CAB Abstracts database in the past 6 months finds 4241 indexed with ‘medicinal plants’ and 200 with ‘medicinal…
‘Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much’
This is essentially what a hundred years of nutritional science; and 610,000 records on CAB Abstracts boil down to, according to journalist and author, Michael Pollan, in his latest book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. While I by no means agree with everything that he says in this interview with Terrence McNally on…
Nutrigenomics On The Menu In Paris
Ahhh, Paris! City of food and fashion…But the latest trend to hit the food industry is certainly no fad. Personalised nutrition is the ‘new black’ in the world of food. No longer do we need to embarrass ourselves by appearing at the supermarket with a trolley full of identical shopping to our neighbour. Whether or…
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…
Death by CAP
How EU economists are ‘killing Europeans through CHD’ Surprisingly, it’s not the acronyms that are at the root of the World Health Organization’s damning accusation, it’s our old friends, saturated fats. The common agricultural policy (CAP) was put in place by the powers that be in Europe, not just to confuse any non-economist who has…
‘Nano Inside’
Two words that are unlikely to appear in a supermarket near you any time soon. But not because nanotechnology has no application in food – far from it! The reason that the food industry is unlikely to be advertising the widespread applications of nanotechnology, according to Dr. Frans Kampers, of Wageningen University in the Netherlands,…