Escalating global demand for fuel, food and wood fibre will destroy the world's forests, if efforts to address climate change and poverty fail to empower the billion-plus forest-dependent poor, according to two reports released today by the U.S.-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), an international coalition comprising the world's foremost organisations on forest governance and conservation.

Researchers in Switzerland are reporting discovery of natural plant materials that may regulate starch digestion — slowing down the body's conversion of potatoes, rice, and other carbohydrate-rich foods into sugar. The findings could lead to new functional foods that fight diabetes, they say in a report scheduled for the June 26 issue of the ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

Would people and their communities be healthier if they still got food from local farms?

New research suggests that the average supermarket shopper is willing to pay a premium price for locally produced foods, providing some farmers an attractive option to enter a niche market that could boost their revenues.

Members of the European Parliament Heart Group meet today, 3 June, in Brussels, to discuss the link between nutrition and cardiovascular diseases and how labelling of food can help people choose products that are better for their hearts and vessels.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to urge world leaders on Tuesday to immediately suspend or eliminate many price controls and other agricultural trade restrictions in an urgent appeal to bring down soaring food prices.

One in three elderly hospital patients suffer from malnutrition, but go largely unnoticed by hospital staff, Australian research has revealed.

A new study released today in the online edition of Physiological Genomics finds that individuals with a specific genetic variation consistently consume more sugary foods. The study offers the first evidence of the role that a variation in the GLUT2 gene – a gene that controls sugar entry into the cells – has on sugar intake, and may help explain individual preferences for foods high in sugar.

A program to teach low-income adults about healthy food choices is a good bargain in terms of the health and economic benefits achieved, reports a cost-effectiveness study in the May/June issue of Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

As concern builds around the impact of rising food prices and new restrictions on rice exports from Asian countries hit by adverse climate conditions, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) announced today that African rice breeders have made critical steps towards ensuring self-sufficiency and boosting African rice production.

China, the world's biggest meat consumer, will extend subsidies to large-scale producers of hogs, chickens and milk this year as part of its measures to boost food supplies and control inflation.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said during a spring planting inspection in the northern Hebei Province on Saturday and Sunday that the Chinese people were fully capable of feeding themselves.