The UK’s Department of Health has launched a new, standardised but voluntary labelling scheme for displaying nutritional information on food products, the aim being to make make it easier for people to make healthier choices. The system when it goes on display will combine red, amber, green colour-coding and nutritional information to show how much fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar, and calories are in food products.

Cassava is a "survivor" crop, able to thrive in the expected higher temperatures caused by climate change. An alliance of scientists has recently been formed to help promote cassava cultivation. The 300 scientists attending the second International Scientific Conference of the Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st Century, held in Kampala Uganda presented a new initiative called Global Cassava Modelling Consortium. The Consortium aims to help researchers share information on this increasingly important crop, to better understand the physiology of the plant and to explore avenues for protecting it from attacks.

This study follows a cohort of around 100,000 people over the course of 20 years.  It looks at the associations between changes in red meat consumption and the incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). All participants started out as red meat eaters.

This study presents different ways of presenting information on food calories and assesses how useful consumers find them. It showed participants of 3 groups the calorie content of a ham sandwich, displaying this information in different formats as shown in the diagram below.

Yet another paper adding to the growing body of evidence that productionist approaches to addressing food security challenges are unlikely to be sufficient (at least not without unacceptable environmental cost).  Shifts towards more plant based diets and measures to address food waste are also needed.

On June 8 2013, the UK government granted £30 million to HarvestPlus to develop and deliver six biofortified crops to several million farming households in Africa and Asia.

The FAO’s 2013 report this time includes a special section on quinoa. The year 2013 has been declared “International Year of Quinoa” by the United Nations General Assembly, a tribute to a little-known agricultural product with outstanding nutritional and agronomic properties grown almost exclusively in the Andes.