Articles

The EU has failed – once again – to agree on how to proceed with the relicensing of glyphosate, the active ingredient which underpins Roundup, the world’s most widely used herbicide. Yesterday representatives of Member States in the European Council voted on a proposal, put forward by the European Commission, to relicense glyphosate for a […]

A new international report, to which I made a small research contribution, has revealed a shocking lack of science behind the infant formula ranges sold by baby milk companies – and some pretty shady marketing tactics.

Recently a UK analysis of the benefits for newly licensed cancer drugs dropped a bombshell. The research, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) found that nearly two thirds (57%) of cancer drugs authorised by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) between 2009 and 2013 were approved without any clear evidence they improved the quality or […]

In a series of tests on Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sold in the UK and EU, worrying levels of glyphosate were found. Here’s what that means – and how Ben & Jerry’s responded and why you shouldn’t be too hopeful.

In a week when the world has watched as man-made climate change whip up spectacular, scary, damaging weather – along with continued and ridiculous debate – two stories have emerged that underscore the links between food, farming and climate change. We ignore them at our peril. In the early days of our awareness of climate […]

These are stressful times The effect on our mental and physical well-being from life events such as divorce, a death in the family, money worries, dysfunctional relationships and job pressures are all well researched. Less well studied – though maybe someone should – are the geographical and sociopolitical stresses we all face: climate change certainly, […]

It’s one of the most depressing aspects of environmentalism that pressing needs for change inevitably get turned into saleable products. As the need to reduce our meat consumption rises so too do the number of so-called ‘meat substitutes’, products which aim to get us to eat less meat while still pretending that we are eating […]

Yesterday a blow was struck for both press freedom and health freedom too. A project called the Poison Papers makes available to the public decades of newly digitised data on the dangers of industrial chemicals – and the practices of the companies that make them. Most of the documents – which include scientific studies and […]

You can hardly open a newspaper these days without seeing reports about the devastating state of our oceans, in particular from plastic pollution. Microplastics contribute up to 30% of the ‘plastic soup’ polluting the world’s oceans. In developed countries they can be a bigger source of marine plastic pollution than plastic waste. This form of […]

Of all the subjects in health and medicine, the link between what goes on in our guts and what goes on in the rest of our bodies is arguably one of the most exciting. Exciting not only because it suggests a more subtle and complex network inside of us – something we are only beginning […]