The Chancellor's recent announcement about a tax on sugary drinks is a step in the right direction towards fighting obesity, but we will need to use lot of different approaches simultaneously to make big changes, writes Dr Jean Adams from the Centre for Diet & Activity Research, Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit.
We know a lot about food but little about the food choices that affect the nation’s health. Researchers have begun to devise experiments to find out why we choose a chocolate bar over an apple – and whether ‘swaps’ and ‘nudges’ are effective.
Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Next Einstein Forum (NEF) Global Gathering 2016, an international conference focused on the development of science and technology in Africa, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz emphasised the importance of partnership.
Pablo Monsivais (Centre for Diet and Activity Research) discusses obesity and the influence of socioeconomic circumstances in shaping food choices.
A new report from experts and Government around the world addresses threats to animal pollinators such as bees, birds and bats that are vital to more than three-quarters of the world’s food crops, and intimately linked to human nutrition, culture and millions of livelihoods. Scientists say simple strategies could harness pollinator power to boost agricultural yield.
Increased farm yields could help to spare land from agriculture for natural habitats that benefit wildlife and store greenhouse gases, but only if the right policies are in place. Conservation scientists call on policymakers to learn from working examples across the globe and find better ways to protect habitats while producing food on less land.
Bhaskar Vira (Department of Geography), Gemma Cranston (Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership) and Jonathan Green (Department of Geography) discuss what global powers need to do to tackle some of the biggest threats facing society.
New research shows a cereal familiar today as birdseed was carried across Eurasia by ancient shepherds and herders laying the foundation, in combination with the new crops they encountered, of ‘multi-crop’ agriculture and the rise of settled societies. Archaeologists say ‘forgotten’ millet has a role to play in modern crop diversity and today’s food security debate.
New research suggests that feeding our food waste, or swill, to pigs (currently banned under EU law) could save 1.8 million hectares of global agricultural land – an area roughly half the size of Switzerland, including hundreds of thousands of acres of South America’s biodiverse forests and savannahs – and provide a use for the 100 million tonnes of food wasted in the EU each year.
Dr Bhaskar Vira (Department of Geography) is co-editor of the open access book Forests and Food, which will be launched at the Global Landscapes Forum in Paris next month. Writing in The Conversation, Dr Vira explains the importance of the world's forests in protecting global food security.
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