Produce Less – Exploring Degrowth

In the United States, around half of the food that people eat every day is ultra-processed—industrially manufactured products, like chips or candy, that are made by breaking down whole foods, modifying and combining them with additives to make them more attractive in the way they look, smell and taste. Scientists have linked consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) to obesity  and other health issues such as cancer and diabetes. Now they are starting to discover why people eat more UPFs and gain excessive weight.

In “A Southern Panther,” movement elder Malik Rahim talks about his lifetime of battling racism and fighting for peace and environmental justice. Former Louisiana Panther Malik Rahim first came to national and international attention in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. “This is criminal ” is his harrowing account of how mostly poor Black people struggled without water, electricity, food, or sanitation, many trapped in the upper floors of flooded buildings waiting for rescue if they hadn’t drowned. Mary Ratcliff, Editor of the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper , managed to reach Rahim on the phone two days after the flood and transcribed it. “There are gangs of white vigilantes near here riding around in pickup trucks, all of them armed,” he said, “and any young Black they see who they figure doesn’t belong in their community, they shoot him.”

Ancient oak trees rise above gigantic boulders scattered across a high desert mesa in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest. This is Oak Flat (Chi’ chil Bildagoteel), a sacred site for Native Americans, including the Western and San Carlos Apache. And like many other lands across the West, it’s under grave threat from multinational mining interests, all in the name of climate mitigation, but most importantly, for the money. “Here is the creation story of where a woman came to be, and where the holy ones came together,” Wendsler Nosie, tribal leader of the San Carlos Apache tribe, explains. “This is where we originated as people.” Beneath this biologically rich landscape, home to a variety of dry-land species including the endangered hedgehog cacti and the ocelot wildcat, lies a rich deposit of copper, the conductive metal vital for the technologies needed to power the world’s green-energy transition.

A series of developments and new information that has come to light in recent months have raised further questions about the planned Rs.80,000 crore mega infrastructure project on Great Nicobar Island (GNI). The NITI Aayog–piloted initiative has four components: a transshipment terminal in Galathea Bay, an airport, a greenfield township, and a tourism project and gas-powered power plant.

New research highlights potential health risks of a common food color additive banned in Europe, found in candies and ultra-processed snacks. The tiniest particles of titanium dioxide—commonly used to make candies, cookies, and other ultra-processed foods look brighter and more visually appealing, especially to kids—can raise blood sugar levels and impair how the body processes glucose, among other health harms, according to new research in mice.

Dr. Lauren Collins reports on the positive results coming from new drugs that the world hears little about because they are developed in Cuba.  With aging populations increasingly common around the world, degenerative brain disease is on the increase. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, has a devastating impact on the lives of patients and their families.

It’s a historic anniversary that the US ruling class and its allies around the world wish we would forget. Fifty years ago, on 30 April 1975, US imperialism suffered the worst military defeat in its history as troops of the North Vietnamese Army and South Vietnam National Liberation Front took complete control of Ho Chi Minh City (then called Saigon) and the few scattered areas of the south that had not yet been liberated.

Tiny bits of plastic pollution are found all across the natural environment from the deep ocean to Arctic ice. This widespread contamination comes from the manufacture and overuse of plastics which degrade over time and leach toxic chemicals into the environment and the food system. The chemicals in micro-and nano plastics (MNPs) cause a plethora of health impacts including harming people’s hormonal systems leading to infertility, and neurological and behavior disorders among other issues, says a new review which unpacks the mechanisms of how plastics harm health.

The battery fire that should change the world—and could affect people who eat lettuce or strawberries