food

When an unprecedented heat wave bore down on Portland, Oregon, in June 2021, Jonna Papaefthimiou, the city’s chief resilience officer, immediately thought of the city’s most vulnerable populations: older people sweltering, often alone, in their homes.

On a clear morning in April, after milking his seven cows, Tim Sauder looked over the pasture where he had just turned the animals out to graze. Like many dairy farms, Sauder’s fields swayed with a variety of greenery: chicory, alfalfa and clover. But they were also full of something typically missing on an agricultural landscape — trees. Thousands of them.

Faced with a wall of egg cartons at the grocery store, all plastered with different labels and phrases, it’s hard to know what to choose. Which is better: cage-free, free range or pasture-raised? What does “farm-fresh” mean? What lies behind the USDA Organic label? Are vegetarian-fed hens healthier and happier? Without uniform regulation of these […]

There’s a new banana in town, and it’s been genetically modified (GM). Scientists at Australia’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have developed the first GM banana in the world, a variety of Cavendish banana known as QCAV-4, designed to help save the species. The GM version of the tropical fruit was engineered to withstand a […]

Toxic polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) “forever chemicals” have been found in everything from products like cleaners, cosmetics and grease-resistant food packaging to air, water and soil — even in remote locations — as well as human blood. Now, some of the most commonly used food pesticides in the U.S. have been found to be contaminated with […]

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on April 17 that the city would aim to “reduce absolute carbon emissions from food purchases across its city agencies by 33 percent by 2030.” This was after the city’s Department of Environmental Protection began to incorporate food emissions data into its overall greenhouse gas inventory, discovering that […]

A newly published study has found that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) added to packaging can migrate into food and drinks. The study noted this phenomenon occurring with subgroups of PFAS considered safer than previous PFAS additives. PFAS are a group of chemicals added to many products, from outdoor gear to carpeting, for their waterproof, […]

Women who work in agriculture face significant inequalities, and the climate crisis is only making the situation worse. That’s the conclusion of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s first report in more than a decade focusing on women who work in agrifood systems. “Women who work in agricultural production tend to do so under […]