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Purple haze

Sorry to pour cold water on the news splashed across the papers today, but I don't think the new purple tomato is going to protect us all from cancer.  The research conducted by a team of researchers...

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Cutting down on caffeine

Today the Agency has published new advice for pregnant women on the amount of caffeine they should drink, or eat, during pregnancy. Previously, our advice was that 300mg a day was a sensible limit ­–...

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Sweet science

Times columnist Alex Renton last week wrote about a personal experiment he undertook to see what would happen if he let his son eat as much sugar as he wanted for a day. This, he maintained in an...

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Out with the old

Science and the media are strange bedfellows and share a complex relationship. Usually scientists bemoan the fact that science is misrepresented by journalists, either by using studies that grab...

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Making sure it all adds up

I’m often on record saying that science is fundamental to the FSA’s work – it drives our investigations and understanding of the risks to consumers. Of course, the statistics and other analytical...

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High caffeine intake linked to hallucination proneness

Most people love their cup of tea or coffee, however, in this week's papers you may have read that people who drink too much coffee could start seeing ghosts or hearing strange voices. The research,...

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Ignorance isn't always bliss

Lucy Mangan, writing in Saturday's Guardian newspaper, laments the Agency's initiative to have calorie counts printed next to dishes on the menus of restaurants, canteens and takeaways. Lucy thinks we...

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Cancer prevention is a team effort

Today the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) published a policy report to show how we can all work together to prevent cancer.If you cast your minds back to November before last, you might remember that...

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Green light for single food label system

You may have read in the papers recently that, according to Which? research, the most popular brands of cereal have high levels of sugar. Many of these are targeted at children and beg the question:...

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National Allergy Week

This week is National Allergy Week and Coeliac Awareness Week, highlighting important issues for nearly two million people in the UK who are affected by these conditions.There are approximately 200...

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Snow and social science

Last week I finally got to welcome Professor Sir Roger Jowell to the Agency to present the third lecture in my Chief Scientist’s lecture series. I say ‘finally’ as we had to postpone his original...

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Anecdotes, science and aspartame

What role does ‘anecdotal evidence’ play in science? Truly anecdotal evidence is not evidence in the scientific sense, it's observation, it’s often subjective, and the effects seen may be due to a...

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Launch of Fera

Sadly I was unable to attend last week's official launch of Defra's new national research centre for food and the environment.  The Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) was officially launched...

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Unknown unknowns

You might have seen the media reporting yesterday that ham sandwiches shouldn't be included in children’s lunchboxes. While there is some evidence linking bowel cancer to red and processed meats, there...

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Science can simply be ambiguous

You may remember that at our Board meeting back in December, we decided that our advice on eating peanuts when pregnant, breast-feeding and weaning needed to change. This is because a major review by...

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Advising on folic acid

It was interesting to hear the news story from Scotland on the reported increase in babies being born with spina bifida. This links to work the Agency has done on this very issue, looking at ways of...

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Stay out of the sweetshop and out of jail

'A sweet a day helps your children grow up violent' is the headline in The Independent this morning, which is reporting on a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Now, it's not every...

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RSC Chemistry Week 2009

Throughout this year the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has had a series of events showcasing the vital role of chemistry in food. It’s therefore not surprising that they chose food as the theme of...

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Marketing gold or practical innovation?

As I write this, some of my colleagues are at a conference in Amsterdam, working with their counterparts from all over Europe to review and refine procedures to assess the safety of new foods and...

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Using science: the principles and practicalities

The Agency is committed to a science- and evidence-based approach in all that we do, and this is reaffirmed both in our new strategy and our new science and evidence strategy (which we will publish...

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