Africa’s food requirements, along with its population, are growing fast. Three research programmes ask how a better understanding of viruses, parasites and the spread of disease can pave the way to improving agricultural yields.
As the UK prepares to leave the EU, trade regimes are being reconfigured. Research into 19th-century trade regulations by Carolyn Cobbold, historian of science, shows that scientific claims play a significant role in shaping international trade. She urges us to heed the lessons of the past.
The University of Cambridge is one of a number of British universities and companies that have won access to a £340 million EU Innovation programme to change the way we eat, grow and distribute food.
Thought to have arrived from China in 2000 BC, latest research shows domesticated rice agriculture in India and Pakistan existed centuries earlier, and suggests systems of seasonal crop variation that would have provided a rich and diverse diet for the Bronze Age residents of the Indus valley.
Study of bee-manipulating plant virus reveals a “short-circuiting” of natural selection. Researchers suggest that replicating the scent caused by infection could encourage declining bee populations to pollinate crops – helping both bee and human food supplies.
Pablo Monsivais (MRC Epidemiology Unit) and Annalijn I. Conklin (University of California, Los Angeles) discuss what sort of diet can reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Theresa Marteau (Behaviour and Health Research Unit) discusses how to get people to consume less sugar.
People who live or work near to a greater number of takeaway outlets are more likely to eat more takeaway food and to be overweight, but new research indicates that neighbourhoods that are saturated with fast food outlets may be particularly unhealthy for people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged.
Thomas Burgoine and Pablo Monsivais (Centre for Diet and Activity Research) discuss how takeaways can make social inequality worse.
Overweight people make unhealthier food choices than lean people when presented with real food, even though both make similar selections when presented with hypothetical choices, according to research led by the University of Cambridge and published today in the journal eNeuro.
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