Articles

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 […]

Most of us associate flowers with beauty and nature. The Victorians even had a language of flowers: bluebells for kindness, peonies meant bashfulness, rosemary was for remembrance, wallflowers represented faithfulness in adversity – and the red rose, true love. But that was yesterday. This is today when the cut flower world is far from romantic […]

They say what we do to the bees we do to ourselves. Equally, it seems that what we do to ourselves we are more than happy to carelessly inflict on any other living thing, including our bees. If bees are in decline it’s not due to some unexplained phenomena. It’s due to human activity; and […]

Why do farmers use pesticides? Many will tell you that it is to reduce crop losses due to a wide variety of pests including weeds, insects and fungi. Reducing crop losses equals more food for the farmer to sell and more for us to eat. In a world of climate change and population explosion this […]

Increasing quantities of ‘hidden GMOs’ are finding their way into our diet, writes Pat Thomas. They are coming mainly in US imports for supermarkets and caterers, and in animal feeds used for meat, dairy and egg production. It’s time for chefs, pubs, takeaways and restaurants to take responsibility for the food chains that supply them […]

You are what you eat, as the saying goes, and while good dietary choices boost your own health, they also could improve the health care system and even benefit the planet. Healthier people mean not only less disease but also reduced greenhouse gas emissions from health care. As it turns out, some relatively small diet […]