Our attraction to foods bloated with energy has made excess body weight increasingly common, particularly in the West. Hence, people’s health has been affected.

Darwin would be puzzled. He described natural selection as a slow process, selecting for the most suited organisms to a given environment.

Despite its splendour and beauty, nature is full of imperfections. Indeed, the process of natural selection relies upon minor errors in genetic duplication to produce new variants, better suited to a given environment.

More than the 70 percent of the protein sources required by animals bred in the European Union are imported from non-EU countries . Soybean dominates the protein supply for animal feed .

The importance of healthy eating for our well-being is scientifically proven and having a varied diet goes without saying.

Millions of people across Europe have enjoyed soaring temperatures in the summer of 2017 , with sizzling barbeques, good food, and fine wine.

Mark Miodownik will never forget the day he became obsessed with materials. He was a schoolboy in 1985 when he was stabbed in the London Underground. “ When I saw that weapon in the police station later, I was mesmerized.

For the first time in its history, the Global Seed Vault on the Svalbard Islands, Norway, has authorised a withdrawal. It was requested in 2015 by Syria, a country where the war is endangering the local agricultural seed collections.

Good news for those planning to build a new home: novel insulation materials based on plant waste , such as straw, clay and grasses could offer 20% better insulation than traditional materials.

African swine fever , or ASF, is a viral disease that kills almost every pig it infects and is likened to Ebola . It gained a foothold in Georgia in 2007, when contaminated pig meat landed from a ship from South-East Africa and was fed to local pigs.

Imagine living in an inner city and buying your vegetables and fruit just moments after they’ve been harvested. Imagine waking up to the rustic sound of a cock crowing.

Ecosystem services are free, but often hidden. They include pollination and killing of crop pests by beneficial insects. Now, QuESSA , an EU-funded research project, due to be completed in 2017, will try and increase the visibility of such services.

Imagine if oil spills could be completely cleaned up soon after a marine accident. And this could be made possible thanks to none other than warrior microorganisms who attacked and completely broke down the oil.

Low-cost sensors and wireless communication technologies have enabled moves towards smart homes and smart cars. Using similar technologies, scientists involved in an EU-funded project called ALL-SMART-PIGS are now developing technologies that turn pigs’ farms into smart farms .

About 20 million Europeans are subject to food allergies. Now scientists are looking at these allergies in new ways. It involves the food industry in its work and pays special attention to the link between early diets and allergy in later life .

When on April 7 th World Health Day is celebrated, most experts will be blaming insects for the rising problem of vector-borne diseases. In some parts of the world, however, these little bugs are considered a healthy and tasty source of food .

Statistically, drinking water in Europe is the safest in the world. But according to the World Health Organisation every year more than 300.000 Europeans are falling ill due to contaminated tab water. ...

Holstein cattle - the black-and-white dairy cows you might see in a child’s picture book - have been bred in northern Europe for hundreds of years.

Food scare make authorities uneasy. In previous cases, national food safety agencies have not always known how to react , making the public wary. For example, in 2011, the German health authorities incorrectly linked the deadly E.

You may think that climate change is being caused by burning oil, coal and gas. But not so fast! The emission of methane from cattle is a surprisingly important factor .