Do cows sneeeze in June?

Its that time of year again. If I were a master criminal, this would be the one time of year I would not commit a crime, all Mr. Sherlock Holmes would have to do would be to release grass pollen in my vicinity and he’d track me down by the uncontrollable fits of sneezing. Family…
Read Further

What a load of rubbish!

Last week there was a lot of rubbish on TV and radio. Literally. On Thursday I watched Channel 4’s Dispatches, snappily titled Bin Wars. And Friday evening the topic of recycling popped up again on Radio 4’s Any Questions?. Apparently Britain is drowning in its own garbage and the government can only think of extreme…
Read Further

The art of…boiling broccoli

Anyone out there still boiling your broccoli – stop now! Research from the University of Warwick says that this treatment seriously reduces the cancer fighting glucosinolate content- up to 77% if you do it for half an hour. They also suggest that freezing is not the best way to store these vegetables as it also…
Read Further

Melamine: important information being ignored?

The saga of the pet food contamination in North America (‘The Recall’ as it is now being called) rumbles on with some murky new twists. The culprit seems to be a chemical called melamine, an industrial chemical that boosts the nitrogen content of food giving it the appearance of having higher protein content. There are…
Read Further

Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb…

Spring comes & a young man’s fancy turns lightly to….RHUBARB….. if he’s a fair-weather gardener, that is. If he’s a true obsessive, he’s probably already harvested his first sticks! Mine are still fighting the battle with the slugs. Love it or hate it – you’ve got to admit its versatile and easy to grow. Now…
Read Further

It’s sweet, but is it safe?

It’s sweet, but is it safe? As we reported this week on the In Brief and In Depth section of CABI’s nutrition and food sciences portal (‘FDA Refutes Aspartame Carcinogen Accusation‘, 25/04/07), the FDA has laid to rest accusations that aspartame is carcinogenic. It may not be ‘natural’, but it’s not dangerous. Laid to rest?…
Read Further

Blood transfusion – never entirely safe.

This week an enquiry into the use of contaminated blood by the UK National Health Service opened (BBC story). The enquiry will examine the circumstances surrounding use of contaminated blood in the 1970s and 1980s by the NHS and the exposure of several thousand patients to HIV and hepatitis and their resultant deaths. The accusation…
Read Further

Ticks: be aware, but don’t panic

Over Easter I took the opportunity for a few days’ break in the Scottish Highlands; although it’s a bit too early in the year for blood-sucking arthropods to be a problem, I was reminded of the publication a few months ago of a new edition of ‘Ticks: your pets, your family and you’, by Alison…
Read Further

Wine has many uses

The antioxidant protective effect of fruits and vegetables, notably tomatoes and green leafy vegetables, is well known. But did you know that a wine extract can protect your skin against the damaging effects of UV radiation? Sunburn, immune suppression and skin cancers develop from overexposure of skin to solar UV radiation, which results in the…
Read Further

A healthy dose of stress

Stress may not be good for our health, but it seems that it might be at the heart of the recent crop of reports that organic fruits and vegetables might be better for us than those grown by conventional methods. After a paper published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture found…
Read Further