Incredible Yellow Treehouse Restaurant Rises Above New Zealand. We first showcased this incredible treehouse restaurant years ago while it was still in its design phase, and now we're thrilled to bring you pictures of the completed structure! The Redwoods Treehouse near Auckland, New Zealand is a wonderland of cocoons and walkways built in a redwood forest out of sustainably-harvested pine and poplar slats and locally-milled redwood balustrading. Natural light shines through the slats into the restaurant interior located 40 meters above the ground. Since its completion the treehouse has claimed multiple honors and awards. Located on the edge of a redwood forest with views over open meadows and streams, the treehouse restaurant is a magical integration of nature and function.
Oddly enough though, the restaurant, which was designed by New Zealand-based Pacific Environment Architects, Ltd, is part of a large marketing campaign for the Yellow Pages, a major printer of US phone directories. . + The Redwoods Treehouse + Pacific Environment Architects, Ltd. Rise of the dark store feeds the online shoppers | Business. A picker collects items for online shoppers in Waitrose's 'dark' supermarket in west London. Photograph: David Levene Branches of Waitrose are usually found in only the most chichi of neighbourhoods but its west London branch is in such a grim area – on the edge of the Hanger Lane gyratory system – that even the buildings apologise to passersby. Its neighbour, another squat 60s-style council block occupied by the posh catalogue firm Boden, has a sign hanging outside saying "ugly building, beautiful clothes".
It's just as well no shoppers will ever wheel their trolley over the threshold. It's one of a new breed of so-called "dark stores" or dotcom only stores springing up around the country to satisfy Britons' insatiable demand to shop for groceries from the comfort of their sofa rather than make the weekly shlepp to the supermarket. The round-the-clock operation boasts a mock "shop floor" with aisles presented just as you would find them in a store open to the public. Fast food workers protest low wages, movement catches fire. NEW YORK - Low-wage workers with the help of community groups and labor unions are sending a message to the fast food industry Nov. 29, "We can't live on minimum wages and we won't be intimidated.
" Fast food workers were the latest to take action for dignity and better wages, joining a movement of Walmart retail and warehouse workers, office cleaners and janitors who say, "Stand up! Join together for a better life. " Shaday Martin from New York Communities for Change (NYCC) was on the line at a Burger King here in downtown Manhattan. "I'm here to help fast food wage workers to fight for fair wages and respect in their stores. Fast food workers have been under paid and working out of class and disrespected and cheated out of money for years," Martin said.
Just about every grassroots movement in New York City is involved in this quest to help those who have to make choices every day: either pay bills or buy food or get health care for themselves and their families. Photo: PW/Gabe Falsetta. Bread that lasts for 60 days could cut food waste. 30 November 2012Last updated at 05:00 ET By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent, BBC News An American company has developed a technique that it says can make bread stay mould-free for 60 days. The bread is zapped in a sophisticated microwave array which kills the spores that cause the problem. The company claims it could significantly reduce the amount of wasted bread - in the UK alone, almost a third of loaves purchased.
The technique can also be used with a wide range of foods including fresh turkey and many fruits and vegetables. World of waste Food waste is a massive problem in most developed countries. Bread is a major culprit, with 32% of loaves purchased in the UK thrown out as waste when they could be eaten, according to figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The machine uses similar technology to a home microwave One of the biggest threats to bread is mould. In normal conditions, bread will go mouldy in around 10 days. Question of taste. Chemical Stunts Growth of Bacteria-Carrying Flies. A chemical that inhibits insect growth may help combat the spread of foodborne bacteria carried by house flies, according to new research from the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. Scientists at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service have found that pyriproxyfen – a pesticide that’s been shown to stunt mosquito growth – has the same effect on fly larvae, preventing them from maturing to adulthood. House flies are known to be carriers of foodborne pathogens such as E. coli and Salmonella, which are transmitted via animal fecal matter, where many flies breed. “Pyriproxyfen mimics a hormone in the larval fly,” Chris Geden, an entomologist at ARS, explained to Agricultural Research Magazine. The research team also discovered that they could target larvae by administering the pesticide to adult flies, who then pass it on to immature flies, preventing their growth.
Even small amounts of pyripoxyfen were effective in stunting larvae growth when applied to egg-carrynig females, according to Geden. SHOO FLY! Role of House Flies in Spreading Salmonella in Poultry. Contents It’s common knowledge that house flies are carriers of disease. That’s why there’s such widespread effort to keep them out of our kitchens and away from our food. But could the common house fly, Musca domestica, also play a role in spreading food poisoning bacteria such as Salmonella enteritidis to chickens—and their eggs—even before the foods get into the marketing chain? Microbiologist Peter S. Holt and entomologist Christopher J. Geden were curious. “We decided to investigate whether infected hens could pass the infection on to flies,” says Holt, “and whether those flies could then infect healthy birds. In three experiments, Holt placed chickens in individual, adjacent laying cages.
“We found that about half the house flies became colonized with Salmonella soon after emergence,” says Holt. Best If Ingested Next, the researchers exposed uninfected hens to the newly infected flies. Peter S. Trends in Food Science & Technology - Food Layered Manufacture: A new process for constructing solid foods. Additive Manufacturing is a digitally-controlled, robotic construction process which builds up complex solid forms layer by layer, applying phase transitions or chemical reactions to fuse layers together. Examples that utilise food materials (Food Layered Manufacture; FLM) are emerging in the public domain. FLM structuring operations are limited to metering, mixing, deposition and fusion; while materials used in FLM fabrication must have highly-standardised flow and setting properties. Therefore the construction of predictable structures by FLM requires a first-principles, materials science approach to formulation design.
FLM is most suited to niche food applications having a strong emphasis on individualised food design or customised manufacturing. Highlights Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. Londons Restaurant Trends plus Food Trends and Menu Trends 2013. www.baumwhiteman.com/2013trends.pdf. Home Aquaponics Kit: helping kids grow herbs from fish poo. Many of us have completely lost sight of where the food we eat comes from. As long as the product is sitting on the shelf when we visit the supermarket, we pay little attention to the process that led to it being there. The Home Aquaponics Kit is designed to counter this ignorance by educating children in the process involved in growing and cultivating food using a self-cleaning fish tank and a self-maintaining herb garden.
View all Aquaponics, a combination of hydroponics and aquaculture, has been around for centuries, but apart from in rice paddies, it's not a farming practice in widespread use today. We've recently seen attempts to bring aquaponics to the masses – like the Fishy Farm – and the Home Aquaponics Kit from Back To The Roots is the latest to take on the challenge. The Home Aquaponics Kit comprises everything an individual needs to start a self-contained herb garden using aquaponics as the method of propagation, barring the water and the fish.
Source: Kickstarter via Core77. Pepsi now selling ‘fat-blocking soda’ | The Sideshow. An advertisement for the new Pepsi Special (Pepsi Japan) Pepsi Japan launched a new line of soda on Tuesday that it claims blocks the body's absorption of fat. Pepsi Special is infused with indigestible dextrin, a synthetic dietary fiber. Even though dextrin has not been proven to have dietary benefits for humans, it has been successfully tested on rats. Which, apparently, is good enough for Pepsi and the Japanese government, which has formally backed the soda manufacturer's claims. The Japanese Ministry of Health says products carrying its FOSHU label are "intended to be consumed for the maintenance/promotion of health or special health uses by people who wish to control health conditions, including blood pressure or blood cholesterol. " In order to received the FOSHU seal, products must meet the following requirements: The average American drinks 44.7 gallons of soda per year, according to 2010 statistics from the Beverage Marketing Corporation.
But don't get your hopes up just yet. Health. Chicago’s urban farm district could be the biggest in the nation. Chicago’s Black Belt area, on the historic South Side, was once a hub for jazz, blues, and literature, but today is riddled with vacant lots, poverty, and blight. Now, a new plan envisions the area as a thriving urban farm district. In the coming weeks, the city’s planning department is expected to approve the creation of a green belt with a strong focus on urban agriculture within the neighborhood of Englewood. The plan is an element of Chicago’s Department of Housing and Economic Development’s (DHE) Green Healthy Neighborhoods initiative, designed to shepherd and foster redevelopment in 13 square miles of the South Side.
Years of disinvestment and population decline have left the area riddled with 11,000 vacant lots totaling 800 acres. Peter Strazzabosco, deputy commissioner for the DHE, says that although the plan lays out a district “with a small d,” the city has a deep history in urban planning know-how. “We are living in a food desert,” Jackson says. These guerrilla cartographers are mapping the edible world. Click to embiggen.
Do you ever wonder how many vendors at your local farmers market are really local? Cameron Reed did. So she mapped them for a school project. As she expected, the vast majority — more than 80 percent — did indeed come from within 100 miles, but Reed was surprised to find that a wide mix of products were grown and produced even closer to home — within 50 miles of where she lived. An updated version of the map Reed made will appear in an upcoming collection called Food: An Atlas, which will chart the world of food in some of its most inspiring and somber dimensions — from food production, distribution, and food security to cuisine.
“It’s a book about the geography of food,” says Darin Jensen, a University of California at Berkeley professor and cartographer who is spearheading the project. You can also call Jensen a guerrilla publisher. The $20,000 will be used to print the first 1,100 copies. There are also maps for children and a chapter focused on conceptual maps. 'Smart' kitchen appliances connect to web. UK sustainable palm oil statement ‘not really a commitment’: RSPO. A UK government statement drawing together new and existing pledges on sustainable palm oil falls short of a real commitment to sustainable sourcing, according to the president of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Dr Jan Kees Vis. The UK’s department for environment, food and rural affairs (Defra) said on Tuesday that it would only use palm oil from certified sustainable sources in the government’s own catering facilities by the end of 2015, and said it was ‘working towards’ a similar commitment from the various industries that use palm oil, including the food industry, which accounts for about 70% of total use.
“A commitment without a time frame is not really a commitment,” Kees Vis told reporters at the roundtable’s tenth annual meeting in Singapore this week. Kees Vis is also global sustainable sourcing development director at Unilever, one of the world’s biggest palm oil users, with products accounting for about 3% of global volume. Lacking time-bound commitments? Functional bread. New functional bread could aid diabetes and obesity prevention Wheat-rye bread fortified with cereal dietary fiber, beta-glucan hydrogel and sourdough starter culture could be used in diabetes and obesity programs, a study suggests. In research published in the journal of Chemical Papers scientists from Slovakia designed a functional wheat-rye bread to investigate the nutritional impacts and linked it favorably to diabetes and obesity management. Findings showed that wheat-rye fortified with cereal dietary fiber, beta-glucan hydrogel and sourdough starter culture reduced glucose levels after consumption in healthy males.
“The 10% wheat bran and 12.5% cereal beta-glucan addition combined with the lactobacilli starter culture lowered the glucose response at 120 minutes after the consumption of functional bread,” researchers wrote. Nutritional composition differences The bread displayed higher fiber content, and significantly lower glucose and fructose levels compared to the control. Sorting juvenile wild cod in captivity could be way forward.
This project is part of a major initiative by the Norwegian Seafood Research Fund (FHF) in capture-based aquaculture. The overall goal of this project was to contribute to increased profitability for capture-based aquaculture, feed enhancement and processing of wild-caught cod. The cod was divided into two groups, of which one was fed capelin and the other pellet feed. After an introductory three-week period without feed, weaning began. In the group that was fed pellets, interest was relatively stable from the first week of feeding, while in the group that was fed capelin the proportion that consumed capelin continued to increase over the following three weeks.
Significantly more fish accepted the capelin feed than the pellet feed, consumption was higher and there were better growth rates than in the group offered formulated feed (pellets). “In the end we were left with 40 % that wanted pellets, and these had a growth rate in line with the anticipated growth for farmed cod. Greening the supply chain. How We Can Fix The Problems With Mass-Produced Food. In the fairly near future, Earth will have nine billion mouths to feed. To solve this dilemma, Rob Aukerman, president of U.S. operations at Elanco Animal Health, has been a vocal advocate of “proven technologies” to assist farmers in delivering more food using fewer resources.
Citing Elanco’s acquisition of ChemGen—a private food specialization company—Aukerman promoted food enzymes earlier this year as “natural digestives”. His concerns regarding food delivery are well shared. A 2010 symposium hosted by the Global Harvest Initiative in Washington, DC, promoted a need for continuous innovation to meet global food demand, with Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund arguing that in order to do so, “the footprint of food” must be frozen.
“Holding crop area fixed and assuming only historical yield growth, food production will fall far short of the needs by 2050,” Clay’s colleague, IHS global insight managing director of agricultural services John Kruse, agreed. The move towards biotechnology. London bee numbers 'could be too high'