Food, Agriculture

Genetically engineered corn has a higher yield than similar non-GE varieties and lower levels of commonly occurring toxins.

The issue: Some spurn genetically engineered crops as Frankenfoods while others see them as a natural progression from the kind of selective breeding practiced by farmers for thousands of years and brought into the academic mainstream in the mid-19^th century by Gregor Mendel.

Just two years ago, the College and University Food Bank Alliance, which helps schools establish food pantries, had 184 members. By the end of 2017, the number had more than tripled to 573.

The expansive promise of the new year often morphs to a fine point: This year, I will change my body; this year, I will lose weight.

Healthy eating challenges and promotional offers for diet plans abound in the early days of January. But soon, many people will have cast aside aspirations for the comfort of old habits.

If you’ve ever pumped gas in the United States, you’ve seen the sticker: “This product may contain up to 10 percent ethanol by volume,” declares one at a Massachusetts Shell station. Since 2005, Washington has mandated that an increasing amount of ethanol be mixed into gasoline every year, encouraging refiners and retailers with cash incentives.

People who get food stamps have lower annual health care expenses than other low-income adults.

Author Michael Pollan discussed the Farm Bill’s far-reaching impact on the U.S. food system and the environment, how journalists can better cover food policy, and more during a visit to Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy. Below are the highlights:

Evidenced by the rapidly growing salmon-farm industry, salmon is one of the world’s most popular fish. The volume of farmed Atlantic salmon increased almost 1,000 percent between 1990 and 2015, according to United Nations statistics; 75 percent of all the salmon we eat is farm-raised. Wild-caught salmon, meanwhile, has become a luxury; it’s harder to find and generally more expensive.

There are many ways to visualize data these days, as well as an increasing number of places from which to draw datasets. But it’s not always easy to figure out the shortest path to production for media use, especially on deadline. Here, we’ll focus on just one use case, the classic time-series graph — the display of the change in a variable, or variables, typically over hours, days, months or years.