Food and Environment

By Maria Prihtamala Omega The food groups consist of fruits, vegetables, protein, grains and dairy that have been used as a basic guidance to eat balanced and healthy meals. Firstly, vegetables have essential nutrients that are needed to grow and stay healthy. For example, dark green vegetables like broccoli, spinach, and collard greens have calcium which the bodies need to grow strong bones. Carrots, sweet potatoes, bell peppers, squash, and beets have vitamin A which helps to protect and heal the bodies. Beans are also part of vegetable groups. They are good source of protein which is needed to build strong muscles including the heart. Humans should eat different vegetables in order to get different nutrients. Children should get about one-and-a-half cups of vegetables a day, including a small salad at lunch and vegetables at dinner. Secondly, fruit is also an important part of a balanced meal. For instance, fresh apples, oranges, bananas, and o...

by Yadav Sharma Bajagai Today, developing countries are facing severe problem of household food and nutrition insecurity caused by multifaceted reasons ranging from low agricultural productivity, limited livelihood opportunities, inefficient food distribution system, weak market linkage, poor infrastructure and lack of awareness on healthy food and care habit. Demographic and Health Survey reports from these countries have shown that proportions of underweight children, prevalence of stunting among children and micro-nutrient deficiency in children, pregnant and nursing mothers are high and widespread. The situation is more severe in the countries affected by conflict and the countries in the transition. Fortunately, many international development partners and the state governments are working together to fight against this problem and working through several global and national initiatives to attain objectives of Millennium Development Goal 1 by 2015. These initiatives ad...

                                  by Maria Prihtamala Omega There are differences among normal and autistic children in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt to the environment, to learn from experiences, to engage in various reasons, to overcome obstacles by taking thoughts and solutions. Therefore, the child’s intellectual performance is various depending on different occasions and criteria. For example, intelligence is attempts to organize the complex set of phenomena and systems of abilities which can be captured by standard psychometric tests (Neisser, et al ., 1996). The psychometric approaches include the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (a childhood verbal intelligence) and Raven’s Progressive Matrices (a non-verbal inductive reasoning about perceptual patterns). Another psychometric analysis of Halstead-Reitan Categories test (a non-verbal abstract thinking ability) and Wechsle...

1          Summery Genetically modified (GM) foods are any foods obtained from plants, animals or microorganisms in which original genetic makeup is deliberately changed by using recombinant DNA technology with one or more altered characteristics. GM foods are matter of significant public controversy in many countries of the world. Many public healths related and environment related issues have been raised against the GM foods. Significant trade dispute have been experienced among different countries regarding export and import of these products. Attitudes of peoples and authorities of different countries vary regarding GM foods and their effects on health and environment. This article will try to discuss the issues raised against GM foods and reality behind those issues. Public attitudes and technical scientific knowledge about GM foods will also be discussed briefly.   Safety and regulation of GM foods will also be reviewed bri...

Background Household food deficiency due to low agricultural productivity, limited livelihood opportunities, inefficient food distribution system, weak market linkage, poor infrastructure and lack of awareness among general public about healthy food habit are some of the development challenges in Nepal. Within the country western Nepal suffer more from poverty and hunger with 37% of the people living below the poverty line compared to the national average of 25.16%. Similarly, productivity of major crops is significantly lower than the national average which is already among the lowest in South Asia. Per capita consumption of animal products (32 litres of milk, 7.5 kg of meat and 6.4 eggs per capita per annum) is among the lowest in the region hunger indices pointing to an extremely alarming situation. Household food balance (result of food inflow, household production, household consumption and outflow) is negative almost throughout the year in the region.  Governmen...

by Yadav Sharma Bajagai Summery   Millions of sheep and kangaroos share the same habitat in the sheep rangelands of southern Australia and dietary competition between these two species has been a matter of concern to pastoralists, conservation ecologists and animal scientists for long time. This issue has been tried to be addressed in this article. It is found that sheep and kangaroos both positively select grass and forb resulting considerable overlapping in their diet during flush season. But when grasses are in short supply during drought, sheep are forced to eat more of less preferred vegetation (chenopods). Sheep are more flexible than kangaroos to shift into chenopods and other shrubs decreasing the overlap in diet during dry season. Dietary competition is not significant when pasture biomass production is high (>30 g DM/m 2 ) but it requires due attention when there is low biomass production during drought. Issue has been discussed and recommendation has be...

Scaling up Climate Services in Nepal in the Context of Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change by Yadav Sharma Bajagai Being large number of farmers depending on subsistence agriculture on rain-fed land, Nepal is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of global climate change and frequent spells of weather extremes. Unique geographical terrain, insufficient capacity of public institutions and almost absence of early warning system with regard to climate services even intensify such vulnerability of small holder farmers. Although farmers have well adapted through ages of experiences to normal seasonal variation in weathers, they are not sufficiently prepared to cope with recent rapid and erratic climate and weather variability. Effective climate services offering reliable climate information and advisory services to farmers, so that they can prepare themselves for such changes and make informed decisions, are very crucial in this context.