Biodiversity World Tour

At 10am central time, a discussion about biodiversity and agriculture will begin as part of the Biodiversity World Tour. The event is sponsored by CropLife International, a consortium of companies and industry groups. The discussion will be broadcast live and you can join the conversation by tweeting with the hashtag #BWT2010. It’s bound to be interesting, I hope you’ll join in! I’ll be covering the event for Biofortified with a blog post along with tweets @geneticmaize when possible.

High Health Care Costs Lead to Healthier Eating?

As employers desperately try to keep health care costs down, some are turning to unexpected measures, according to Health Care Savings Could Start in the Cafeteria in Sunday’s New York Times. Employers, including some big ones like IBM, have programs that reward their employees for joining a gym or following a preventive health care regimen. Now, some employers are trying to affect their employees diets by offering healthier foods in their cafeterias and giving employees coupons for healthy prepared food items stocked in local grocery stores. Full Yield (a company that does not seem to have a website!) is a new company working to prepare the healthy food offerings that employees are encouraged to buy. Together with Harvard Pilgrim, an insurance company, Full Yield will track employee health to see if it improves with their food options.

Why am I bringing this up at Biofortified?

A Vf gene a day keeps the fungus away

Ever gotten apples from the farmer’s market or grocery store only to have them go bad in the back of your fridge? I know I have. Just a few weeks ago, I got about 20 apples from the CSA. Unfortunately, I can only eat so many per day and they started to go bad before I got to eat them. Some of them got really nasty (as you can see to the right) within just a few days despite being in the fridge.

Eating locally is great, but since apples only ripen once per year, and they spoil relatively fast, that means we only have fresh apples for a short time each year. That’s too bad, since apples are a wonderful crunchy snack loved by kids and adults that provide health benefits from their fiber and antioxidants.