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Obesity rates in the United States continue to rise despite national efforts to promote healthy lifestyles and diets. According to a new survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published on Thursday, obesity rates climbed to almost 38% for adults in 2013-2014, up from about 32% a decade ago. “This is a […]

The United Nations have launched the 2016 International Year of Pulses to raise public awareness of the benefits of beans, peas and lentils. A ceremony on 10 November in Rome marked the official beginning of a year-long initiative under the slogan ‘nutritious seeds for a sustainable future’, that aims at encouraging the utilisation of pulses

Weather-driven concerns about sugar and palm oil supplies have pushed up world food prices in October, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Thursday. The FAO Food Price Index, a trade-weighted index that tracks prices on international markets of five major food commodity groups, reached 162 points in October, up 3.9% from September.

The United Nations has warned that climate change is a major threat to food security and has called for a shift from industrial agriculture to agroecology. In a press release on Monday, Hilal Elver, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, said that increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather, rising temperatures and

The cancer research arm of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has linked the consumption of processed and red meats to cancer and advised people to moderate meat consumption. In a report published on October 26, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified processed meat “as carcinogenic to humans” (Group 1), based on “sufficient

The European Patent Office (EPO) has granted Swiss agrochemical giant Syngenta a patent on a seedless pepper derived from conventional breeding. The patent also covers the plants, their cultivation, harvesting and seeds. Syngenta’s invention claim relates to a “male sterile hybrid pepper plant which grows normal-looking edible seedless fruits throughout the whole plant, wherein said

Thousands of Syrian seeds that were withdrawn from a seed vault in the Arctic in September have been safely delivered to Morocco and Lebanon to regenerate ancient food crops lost during Syria’s civil war. The International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), the Syrian gene bank that had originally deposited the seeds

The loss or degradation of key agricultural resources – especially land, water and a stable climate – is leading to a surge in land grabbing, according to a new report published by the Worldwatch Institute in October. The “State of the World 2015: Confronting Hidden Threats to Sustainability” warns that farmland is becoming degraded through

Social protection programmes can help eradicate hunger and break the cycle of rural poverty, especially if they are combined with agricultural policies. This is the main message of „The State of Food and Agriculture 2015“, a report published the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on Monday. In poor countries, social protection schemes –

The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) has adopted a set of 10 principles to guide the transition to sustainable food systems. The panel is a new initiative that brings together experts from different disciplines to support, inform and advise the policy debate on how to reform food systems across the world.