Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
WHO has time and again said that the strategy is based on scientific evidence, successful campaigns against NCDs in several countries and on recommendations from health and nutrition experts from across the globe. But the sugar and food industry and their lobbyists have tried to discredit the strategy by saying …
Obesity has become a worldwide concern because people in each and every nation are falling prey to it. WHO defines obesity as a body mass index (BMI) of at least 30 kg/m2 and overweight as a BMI of at least 25 kg/m2 (BMI is calculated by weight in kg divided …
India embarked on its present path of economic liberalisation relatively late. The infamous Manmohan Singh budget of 1991 set the trend that was followed in the following decade and a half. Among other things, liberalisation involved savage cuts in budgetary support to the health sector. In the last 15 years …
Struggling with non-communicable diseases, the WHO and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) set up a study group in January 2002 to discuss the problem with health and agriculture experts. The result was TRS 916, a technical report. It says that calories from sugar should form 10 per cent of the …
Tuberculosis (tb) kills two million people worldwide, one-third of the world's population is currently infected, of them roughly eight million develop active tb each year. But at the Stop tb Partnership Summit held in New Delhi on 24-26 March 2004, moods were buoyant. The World Health Organization's (who), The 2004 …
us citizens need beneficial dietary guidance, indicates a 30-year-long study of the us Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. As per the research, calorie intake of the nation has increased manifolds
while the Joint Parliamentary Committee's (jpc) report on pesticide residues in soft drinks has set in motion the process of fixing standards for aerated water, the concerned authorities seem to have charted a circuitous route to achieve the same. The jpc had tabled its report in parliament on February 4, …
Throughout the 1860s a frail young European woman with a medicine chest was a conspicuous presence at the women's ghats of the river Yamuna in Delhi. This was Priscilla Winter, an Anglican missionary who had absolutely no training in medicine. Missionaries like Winter were quite common in European colonies in …
an optimistic note, about wiping out polio from the six afflicted countries, was to be sounded at a conference organised by the World Health Organisation (who) in Geneva on January 15. Instead, the sudden re-emergence of the disease in two African nations
The World Bank has approved a grant wherein giant pouched rats will help detect tuberculosis (tb) bacteria in human saliva. The project will be carried out in Tanzania, Africa; tg cases there are expected to quintuple, to 8 million, by 2015. The rat (Cricetomys gambianus) can sniff about 120-150 human …
On the eve of World aids Day (December 1), Union health minister Sushma Swaraj announced that aids medicine would be made available through the national aids control programme from next year. The plan hinges crucially on an agreement with the Indian generic drug industry to supply medicines cheap. Indeed, companies …
function openfact(){ var popurl="image/20031231/60.jpg" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=350,height=450,scrollbars=yes") } Click here to view the graph • The consumption of caloric sweeteners (sugar, maple syrup, corn syrup, sorghum) in the world has increased by 74 kilo calories per day since 1962. The increase is more in the lower and the middle-income countries as compared …
an experimental vaccine against the lethal Ebola virus has been administered to humans for the first time in November 2003. If the trial proves successful, then the vaccine will be commercialised by 2006, a decade sooner than the time, it was thought, it would take to develop the inoculation. The …
Bhopal is the name of the place where, once upon a time, a vast plume of poison burst upon 5,20,000 people. But that happened 20 years ago. Now Bhopal is a metaphor for disaster, industrial and human. It has been the object of much speculation and typically endless litigation. A …
As the Bhopal tragedy enters its twentieth year, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has identified the country's newest disease: the Bhopal Gas Disease. Down To Earth has exclusive access to an unpublished ICMR document which defines the disease as "a condition of ill-health due to exposure to Bhopal's …
