Greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach, according to unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency.

The shock rise means the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius – which scientists say is the threshold for potentially “dangerous climate change” – is likely to be just “a nice Utopia”, according to Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA. It also shows the most serious global recession for 80 years has had only a minimal effect on emissions, contrary to some predictions.

Last year, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel – a rise of 1.6Gt on 2009, according to estimates from the IEA regarded as the gold standard for emissions data.

“I am very worried. This is the worst news on emissions,” Birol told the Guardian. “It is becoming extremely challenging to remain below 2 degrees. The prospect is getting bleaker. That is what the numbers say.”

Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire. “These figures indicate that [emissions] are now close to being back on a ‘business as usual’ path. According to the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's] projections, such a path … would mean around a 50% chance of a rise in global average temperature of more than 4C by 2100,” he said.

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Omega 3 fatty acids may be beneficial for more than just the heart. Research at the Indiana University School of Medicine disclosed at a molecular level a potential therapeutic benefit between these dietary supplements, alcohol abuse and psychiatric disorders.

In a multi-year study, researchers showed conclusive behavioral and molecular benefits for omega 3 fatty acid given to mice models of bipolar disorder. The fatty acid DHA, which is one of the main active ingredients in fish oil, “normalized their behavior,” according to Alexander B. Niculescu, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and the lead author of the study reported online in the Nature Publishing Group journal Translational Psychiatry.

Using a stress-sensitive mouse model of bipolar disorder developed in his lab, Dr. Niculescu and his colleagues studied the influence of dietary DHA. The mice have characteristic bipolar symptoms including being depressed and, when subjected to stress, becoming manic.

“The mice that were given DHA normalized their behavior, they are not depressed and when subjected to stress, they do not become manic,” said Dr. Niculescu. “When we looked into their brains, using comprehensive gene expression studies, we were surprised to see that genes that are known targets of psychiatric medications were modulated and normalized by DHA.”

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Imagine picking up a nice juicy burger and taking a bite, only to find out that the meaty burger you’re biting into didn’t come from an animal — it was grown in a lab.

Sound far-fetched? The reality of test-tube burgers in supermarkets may be close to becoming a reality. Scientists at laboratories around the world are currently working to make meat in labs that will eventually look and taste like the real thing, without any animal parts.

Science writer Michael Specter recently traveled to laboratories in the Netherlands and North Carolina to examine the progress scientists have made in developing in vitro meat. He writes about his trip, and the arguments in favor of lab-made steaks, in the May 23 issue of The New Yorker.

Motivation For Lab Meat

Specter explains that part of the motivation for growing meat in laboratories is animal welfare: billions of cows, chickens and pigs would no longer spend their lives force-fed grain and antibiotics or cooped up in factory farms.

“There is something inherently creepy about [growing meat in labs],” Specter tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “But there is something more inherently creepy about the way we deal with the animals that we eat. … They live a horrible life, and they often die quite cruelly. So the idea of being able to eliminate some of that is extremely exciting for a lot of people.”

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There’s nothing like packing your favorite summer cookout foods and enjoying a great picnic spot. But you need to do more than just setthings out, especially when temperatures are expected to climb to 90 degrees this weekend.

When it comes to foods like potato salad and salad dressing, just how long can you keep them out during a picnic?

“Perishables? An hour. Forty-five minutes to an hour,” offered one woman enjoying the afternoon at Coonskin Park in Charleston.

And that is the general rule under certain conditions.

“If it’s 80-degrees, you can leave it out for an hour, or two, that’s about the most. Once it hits 90, you really shouldn’t leave it out for more than an hour,” said Kerri Wade, a WVU Kanawha County Extension agent.

The danger is that certain foods can quickly spoil and lead to food poisoning. Wade said the simplest thing to do is to ice it all down.

“If you keep them on ice, you can pull the lids off of them, but keep them covered. It will stay like this for several hours as long as you keep it iced down,” Wade said.

When it comes to your hot dogs and hamburgers, keep them on ice as long as possible.

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PUNE: Over 75 per cent of the ice samples collected from street vendors, small food joints and juice centres in prime areas in the city were found unfit for human consumption.

The civic body had collected 63 samples from prime areas falling in all the 14 wards within city limits during April and May, and sent them for testing to the State Public Health Laboratory.

The laboratory report has revealed significant presence of coliflora and other microbial content which is unsafe for health in 48 of those samples.

“The report reveals the non-hygienic quality of the products. It suggests an urgent need for developing suitable intervention measures. We have already issued orders to respective ward medical officers to take action against the owners of erring food joint and juice centres,” said R R Pardeshi, health chief of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC)

The samples were collected from street vendors, small food joints and juice centres located near B J Medical College, railway station road, PMT bus stops in 14 city wards, near Central Building, Dhole Patil road and all the prime areas and public places coming within 14 ward offices.

“Action against the erring owners of food joints, street vendors, juice centres will be initiated as per the provision of section 338 and 339 of BPMC Act 1949,” said Pardeshi.

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Protesters demonstrate against GMOs in food at the Whole Foods Market on North Kingsbury Street in Chicago earlier this month. (Alex Garcia/Chicago Tribune)

When a team of activists wearing white hazmat suits showed up at a Chicago grocery store to protest the sale of genetically modified foods, they picked an unlikely target: Whole Foods Market.

Organic foods, by definition, can’t knowingly contain genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs. But genetically modified corn, soy and other crops have become such common ingredients in processed foods that even one of the nation’s top organic food retailers says it hasn’t been able to avoid stocking some products that contain them.

“No one would guess that there are genetically engineered foods right here in Whole Foods,” said Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director of the Organic Consumers Association, which organized the protest. The activists dramatically trashed a battery of well-known health food brands outside the store, including Tofutti, Kashi and Boca Burgers.

Though people have been modifying foodstuffs through selective breeding and other methods for centuries, genetically modified crops differ in that the plants grow from seeds in which DNA splicing has been used to place genes from another source into a plant. In this way, the crop can be made to withstand a weed-killing pesticide, for example, or incorporate a bacterial toxin that can repel pests.

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Reading food labels is an important step in choosing foods that are right for each of us.

We asked our Supermarket Guru consumer panel and our fans on Facebook if and how they read nutrition labels – and we set out to understand how shoppers’ label-reading habits differed from food to food. And boy, were we in for some surprises.

Nearly 70 percent of the panel say they always read the nutrition facts and ingredients on a package when food shopping. That’s the good news.

It appears consumers also look at different information depending on the product, which sheds some light on why we are not eating as well as we should.

In the beverage aisle, consumers are most concerned with sugars (65 percent), calories (61 percent) and ingredients (61 percent) – which is not surprising. But very few – under 5 percent – look at caffeine content.

When it comes to cakes and desserts, people tend to first look at calories (64 percent), then ingredients (63 percent) and lastly, fats and sugars, possibly to avoid the guilt.

With condiments and sauces, their biggest concern are the ingredients (66 percent), followed by sodium (61 percent) and sugars (54 percent).

In the dairy case it is all about fat, with 64 percent of shoppers saying it is their top concern.

It appears more consumers are taking the time to read up on frozen entrees and meals. Seventy percent seek out the ingredients and sodium content, while 65 percent zero in on calories, 61 percent look at fat and 42 percent look at sugars.

This survey underscores that having one uniform labeling system across all foods and beverages will not satisfy consumers’ needs for more information to make proper and healthier food choices, and forcing people to see only calories, fat, etc. is the wrong way path to take.

But perhaps we have all the information we need on labels – we just need to look at both the ingredients and the nutrition facts panel.

One last comment from Facebook fan Jennifer Kupper, which every food and beverage company should read: “I always read nutrition facts and ingredients. If my allergies don’t rule it out, then I look twice at the ingredients – I tend to re-shelve the products that need a chemistry degree to figure out.

“My kids are allowed a certain amount of “junk” food, but it’s minimal compared to what others allow. Life isn’t perfect, but I try.”

BEIJING — China’s courts have been ordered to increase the severity of punishments for food safety cries, including capital punishment for cases that lead to fatalities, Xinhua news agency reported.

The court’s directive appeared to be the latest move to regain public confidence after a series of food safety scandals, including the most serious recent case in which six children died and nearly 300,000 fell ill in 2008 from powdered milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine.

“Food safety concerns the people’s interests and livelihoods, social stability and the future of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” the court said in a statement on Friday, adding that major cases should be held in open trial.

The Supreme People’s Court ordered lower courts to impose larger fines on people guilty of food safety violations, and suggested courts ban criminals from producing and selling food during their probation period, according to the court statement.

The court further urged severe punishment for government officials who shield people who commit food safety violations, take bribes or neglect their duty.

Numerous crackdowns on China’s food sector apparently have had little effect, as the country continues to be beset by poisonings and toxin scandals that have shaken consumer confidence.

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I just don’t know what to buy,” despairs Rashmi Gupta, a housewife in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar area who was recently diagnosed with gluten allergy. Negotiating the grocery aisle now takes up a lot of Gupta’s time as she tries to read the labels and figure out what food is suitable for her. Hardly any carry the gluten-free label.

Numbers do lie: Do nutrition labels give misleading information?

Forget allergen warnings (such as gluten and peanuts), even basic nutritional information is often missing from food labels in India, despite the Food Safety and Standards Act. Such labels that do exist are often adept at ambiguous vocabulary better suited to an advertorial, leaving the health-conscious consumer confused—or worse, misinformed.

Act diktat hardly in action

Only as recently as 2006 did the Union government make it mandatory for all processed foods made or sold in India to carry nutritional labelling. The Food Safety and Standards Act 2006, amended in 2008, says food items should carry labels that include the weight of the product, list of ingredients present and nutrition information—including total calories (energy value) as well as amounts of protein, carbohydrate, fat, sodium (salt), sugars, dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals. Labels are also supposed to include trans-fat levels. Over and above this, according to the Act, the packaging and labelling of a food product should not mislead consumers about its quality, quantity or usefulness.

“Despite this Act, the small-scale manufacturers either skip this labelling procedure or mislead the consumers through false claims,” says Swati Bhardwaj, nutritionist, National Diabetes, Obesity and Cholesterol Foundation (N-Doc), New Delhi. Even larger companies, some playing by more stringent rules in international markets, are guilty of misleading with labels such as “heart healthy”, “fat free” or “sugar free”, based on myths and half-truths.

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Food prices are rising, but the impact is not being felt equally around the world, says environmentalist Lester Brown.

Brown, the founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, argues that food has quickly become the hidden driver of world politics in a piece published in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy.

“If you’re in Pakistan, and you go to the local market to buy wheat to hand-grind into flour to make chapati, and the price of wheat doubles, the price of your chapati basically doubles,” he tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “They’re not insulated from the doubling or tripling of world grain prices the way that we [in the United States] are. … And this is one of the factors feeding the unrest in the Arab world, North Africa and the Middle East.”

Brown says the world’s rapidly expanding population has created elevated demand for grain, milk, cheese and eggs, but changes in climate and irrigation have made it increasingly difficult to increase production accordingly. Increased demand has also stripped the world of much of its excess crop surpluses. For example, Brown says, in 1965, when the Indian monsoon failed, the United States sent a fifth of its total wheat crop to India to avoid famine.

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Lovers of rare meat rejoice – it is now okay to eat pink pork

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture has revised the recommended safe cooking temperature for whole cuts of pork from 160 F to 145 F .

“Historically, consumers have viewed the color pink in pork to be a sign of undercooked meat. If raw pork is cooked to 145 °F (63 C) and allowed to rest for three minutes, it may still be pink but is safe to eat. The pink color can be due to the cooking method, added ingredients, or other factors,” the agency said in an issued statement.

The three-minute rest phase is important since the heat at this phase will destroy pathogens.

Celebrity TV chefs were quick to applaud the move.
“Finally, the government does something I completely and totally agree with,” tweeted Alton Brown.

“USDA confirms what chefs have been saying for years Pink Pork is Safe,” agreed Tom Colicchio.
Still these new guidelines are likely to cause confusion for North American diners who have come to believe that undercooked pork could carry salmonella and food poisoning.

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Uncle Sushi and Grill in Cranston has shut down after health inspectors found mouse droppings and evidence that a baby’s diapers were being changed in the kitchen, among other violations.

The inspection took place on Monday when health officials learned that eight people who ate at the restaurant on May 19 became ill with vomiting, diarrhea, nausea and abdominal cramps.

Based on the symptoms, the illnesses were probably caused by norovirus, said Health Department spokeswoman Annemarie Beardsworth. All employees were asked for stool samples, and so far three have tested positive for norovirus, she said.

Although the owner, Thong Den Vongvixay, closed the restaurant voluntarily, the Health Department issued a compliance order to make sure that he does not reopen until all violations are corrected, Beardsworth said.

The restaurant, at 570 Reservoir Ave., opened in January 2005 and was last inspected on April 22, 2009. Rhode Island has only seven food inspectors for 8,000 establishments and cannot keep up with routine inspections.

These are the key violations that inspectors found:
– Mouse droppings were found in flour, jimmies and noodles and on the doilies on which sushi is served.
– Vinegar was being stored in container previously used for laundry detergent.
– Rice was kept at room temperature in a turned-off cooker.

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MYTH #1: “Overweight” Means “Unhealthy”

A debate has raged in medicine for years: Can you be fat and fit? To a degree, this debate boils down to a numbers game. Many doctors use body mass index (BMI) to determine whether a patient’s weight is healthy or unhealthy. The BMI is a number that describes the ratio of your weight to your height. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, having a BMI under 25 means your weight is normal, 25 to 25.9 means you are overweight, and 30 or higher means you are obese. It’s clear, however, that this breakdown is oversimplified and in some cases inaccurate. For starters, many buff athletes with chiseled pecs and bulging biceps have high BMIs, since muscle weighs a lot.

MYTH #2: Your Fate Is Already Sealed

You often hear this kind of fatalistic remark from people whose parents died young of heart attacks or cancer: “What’s the point of jogging and eating broccoli if my lousy genes are going to kill me anyway?” Furthermore, each passing week seems to bring news that scientists have discovered yet another “disease gene.” If our health destinies are preprogrammed, does it really matter whether we take care of our bodies?

MYTH #3: Prescription Drugs Are Guaranteed Safe

It sure looks that way on the slick ads that fill the airwaves and magazines. As we noted earlier in this chapter, however, about 10 percent of prescription drugs that hit the market are later discovered to cause serious side effects that didn’t turn up in clinical trials. With that in mind, you might think that pharmaceutical companies would want to keep close track of whether people become ill when they take new drugs the companies market. In fact, the FDA requires them to do just that. Yet drug companies fail to perform these follow-up studies 70 percent of the time, says Paul Brown, a consumer health advocate with the US Public Interest Research Group.

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The Swedish company has already committed to using HDPE plastic from sugarcane but in the future its plastic packaging could be made from the same trees used to make its carton.

US partnership

Michael Grosse, head of R&D at Tetra Pak, told this publication that the carton packaging firm has teamed up with a research partner to explore the potential of forestry waste.

Grosse said: “We engage a lot in partnerships with universities and institutes and that is one area where we are in close collaboration with an institute in the US.”

The R&D chief added that academic institutions in the US and Japan are leading investigations into the use of forest waste and other types of waste in plastic packaging.

PepsiCo has already announced that in 2012 it plans to trial a PET bottle made from its own agricultural by-products such as orange peel, potato peel and oat hulls. It claims the innovation “far surpasses” existing technologies.

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Save money on medical bills and doctor’s visits and let your kitchen help you become a part time doctor yourself. Soothing minorcomplaints has never been this easy. You don’t need to look any further than your very own kitchen.

How? From salt to haldi, since times immemorial these around-the-house daily ingredients used in our cooking are some of the best natural cures for everyday health concerns. Sunita Roy Chaudhary, Senior Dietician at Rockland Hospital, New Delhi tells us about the top 10 food items that are easily available in our kitchens and are full of medicinal properties:

Salt
- Good for people with low blood pressure.
- Required for the absorption of glucose.
- It should be used in sweet drinks like sweet lemon water/soda to improve absorbability, especially for -people who are vomiting or have diarrhea.
- Helps maintain the body’s electrolyte balance.
- It is also required for proper nerve stimulation.

Tonic water

- Tonic water is a preparation of quinine and is therefore useful as a treatment for malaria.

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