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"There is a biological story with information. I have been repeating that in a natural environment, a stressor is information. So too much information would be too much stress, exceeding the threshold of antifragility. In medicine, we are discovering the healing powers of fasting, as the avoidance of too much hormonal rushes that come with the ingestion of food. Hormones convey information to the different parts of our system and too much of it confuses our biology. Here again, as with the story of the news received at too high a frequency, too much information becomes harmful. And in Chapter x (on ethics) I will show how too much data (particularly when sterile) causes statistics to be completely meaningless. Now let's add the psychological to this: we are not made to understand the point, so we overreact emotionally to noise. The best solution is to only look at very large changes in data or conditions, never small ones"

""It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others." - M.F.K. Fisher Human beings are notoriously terrible at knowing when we're no longer hungry. Instead of listening to our stomach - a very stretchy container - we rely on all sorts of external cues, from the circumference of the dinner plate to the dining habits of those around us. If the serving size is twice as large (and American serving sizes have grown 40 percent in the last 25 years), we'll still polish it off. And then we'll go have dessert."

"If you were a bacterium, the virus M13 might seem innocuous enough. It insinuates more than it invades, setting up shop like a freeloading houseguest, not a killer. Once inside it makes itself at home, eating your food, texting indiscriminately. Recently, however, bioengineers at Stanford have given M13 a bit of a makeover. The researchers, Monica Ortiz, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering, and Drew Endy, PhD, an assistant professor of bioengineering, have parasitized the parasite and harnessed M13's key attributes - its non-lethality and its ability to package and broadcast arbitrary DNA strands - to create what might be termed the biological Internet, or "Bi-Fi." Their findings were published online Sept. 7 in the Journal of Biological Engineering."

"A study conducted by researchers at cancer centers across the US has found a link between omega-3 fatty acids and an increased risk of prostate cancer. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in fish including salmon, trout, and fresh tuna, and in fish oil supplements. The study, published online July 10 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, looked at blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids in some of the men enrolled in the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT) of more than 35,000 men over age 50 in the US, Puerto Rico, and Canada. The study did not collect information on the men's diets. Therefore, it's not clear whether the omega-3 fatty acids in their blood came from food or from supplements."

"Everybody likes a simple cause and effect - something we can point to and say (ommitting a few choice words to the perpetrators), 'Fix this and the bees will be right again.' Reality is rarely so straightforward. As the bee decline has progressed I've lost count of the simple 'causes' that have been presented. Among the more memorable are: * mobile 'phones (the absolute 'definite cause' of choice a couple of years ago) * mobile base stations, power lines and other strong electromagnetic sources (a perennial favourite for any malaise) * alien abduction (hopefully they have smaller probes for abducted bees...) * God's punishment (pro gay-marriage states in the USA have more cases of CCD) Leo's article shows neonicotinoids are at least a plausible candidate and they are surely not good for bees, but the argument for these being the explicit 'cause' of global bee decline is still not particularly strong. The risk here is that the media and vocal lobbyists are going off on a righteous crusade to the detriment of more diligent, and maybe less newsworthy, efforts to get to the root of a complex problem. Rather than reviewing the evidence here, I recommend a visit to Randy Oliver's website where his two recent articles from the American Bee Journalon this topic can be found, along with some further commentary on his home page. Interested readers can also directly access the study by Henry et. al. (2012a), the commentry on this study by Creswell and Thompson (2012), the response to the comment (Henry et. al. 2012b) and to the meta-analysis of toxicological studies on imidacloprid by Creswell (2010). An example of one such study is Cutler and Scott-Dupree (2007). Links to all are included below. These are original material rather than reportage and demonstrate the complexity of the issue. As food for thought, I'll leave you with the following: * Neonicotinoids are widely used in Australia and our bees are not (yet) in decline."

Researchers have for the first time identified changes in sex hormones associated with bisphenol A exposure in men, in a large population study. BPA is a chemical commonly used in food and drink containers.

"The water content of leaves, their thickness, their density and other properties can now be determined without even having to touch them. A team of researchers from the CSIC Institute of Acoustics and the Agri-Food Research and Technology Centre (CITA) of Aragón has just presented an innovative technique that enables plant leaves to be studied using ultrasound in a quick, simple and non-invasive fashion."

More than 6,000 different species living on the sea-floor have been identified so far and more than half of these are unique to the icy continent. A combination of long-term monitoring studies, newly gathered information on the marine life distribution and global ocean warming models, enable the scientists to identify Antarctica's marine "biodiversity hotspots". Researcher Griffiths describes how krill populations (the shrimp-like invertebrates eaten by penguins, whales and seals) are reducing as a result of a decrease in sea-ice cover. A much smaller crustacean (copepods) is dominating the area once occupied by them. This shifts the balance of the food web to favour predators, like jellyfish, that are not eaten by penguins and other Southern Ocean higher predators. Sea-ice reduction is also affecting penguins that breed on the ice.

"Like much of the other containers and food scraps from the North Baltimore farm-to-table restaurant Woodberry Kitchen, the oyster shells don't go in the trash. The raw bar castoffs -- about 2,000 per week -- are sent to an Eastern Shore oyster hatchery and then back to the Chesapeake Bay."

"Individuals whose diet includes more salad dressing, nuts, fish, poultry and certain fruits and vegetables and fewer high-fat dairy products, red meats, organ meats and butter appear less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the June print issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals."

ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2010) - Two researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that our 98.6° F (37° C) body temperature strikes a perfect balance: warm enough to ward off fungal infection but not so hot that we need to eat nonstop to maintain our metabolism.

ScienceDaily (June 27, 2011) - While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration notes "some concern" with the controversial chemical BPA, and many other countries, such as Japan and Canada, have considered BPA product bans, disagreement exists amongst scientists in this field on the effects of BPA in animals and humans. The latest research from the University of Missouri shows that BPA causes male deer mice to become demasculinized and behave more like females in their spatial navigational abilities, leading scientists to conclude that exposure to BPA during human development could be damaging to behavioral and cognitive traits that are unique to each sex and important in reproduction.

Chick peas have so many health benefits and can be used in so many varieties of food. It makes chick peas growing a must in everybody's home garden.

The field of agriculture encompasses a wide range of activities wherein the cultivation of plants, animals, fungi and other life forms is done for fulfilling the requirements of food, medicine, fiber, bio fuel etc. to sustain and improve human life.

Organic gardening is the need of time and there are many people, who practice container gardening to grow organic foods in home.

"SOCIAL insects are often dismissed as slaves to the collective mind of the hive. But individual members of colonies do have brains and are technically capable of making their own decisions. Indeed, several studies have shown that insects such as ants and bees sometimes ignore shared information in favour of what they individually know. What drives them to act independently has been something of a mystery. New research shows that when a tasty source of food is available the hive mentality is blatantly ignored"

Okra plant generally takes around 45 to 60 days to become ready to harvest fruit. Okra is said as a health food because it is blessed with a high fiber, high antioxidants, Vitamin C, calcium, potassium and folate content.

"Win lots of virtual badges by completing the different challenges that get you thinking about where food comes from, and how it gets to your table."

Agricultural productivity is important for a regions growth and development and in turn to the country's economy. Besides producing more food an increase in productivity increases the competitiveness of the region in the agricultural market.