Food

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A new computer model incorporates how microscopic pores on leaves may open in response to light—an advance that could help scientists create virtual plants to predict how higher temperatures and rising levels of carbon dioxide will affect food crops, according to a study published in a special issue of the journal Photosynthesis Research today.

Read more at the RIPE website.

URBANA, Ill. – When international aid organizations respond to hunger crises around the world, they rely on food security early warning and monitoring systems. However, assessments from those systems can lag months behind the actual situation on the ground.

More accurate and timely warnings could greatly improve the global response to food crisis and help alleviate acute problems, according to a team of agricultural economists at the University of Illinois, working in collaboration with the University of Texas, Austin.

URBANA, Ill. – Are pork chops on the menu this grilling season? According to new research from University of Illinois meat scientists, pork enthusiasts can improve taste, juiciness, and tenderness by cooking chops to the new USDA standard: 145 degrees Fahrenheit. 

The Chicago Council of Global Affairs hosted the annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C. on March 20-21. The symposium provides a platform for discussion on the U.S. and the international agriculture community’s progress towards food security.  

Food security practitioners from around the world gathered at the University of Illinois in early April for the Fifth Annual International Food Security Symposium sponsored and coordinated by the Office of International Programs in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES).

URBANA, Ill. – Millions of Americans struggle with food insecurity.

URBANA, Ill. – A new report issued today showed how U.S. farmers—facing a surge of weather events and disease outbreaks—can increase production and revenues with innovations produced by federally funded agricultural research.

The U.S. needs to increase its investment in agricultural research or it risks falling further behind China, according to a new report issued by the Supporters of Agricultural Research (SoAR) Foundation and 20 FedByScienceresearch institutions.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study in mice suggests that consuming the chemical compounds found in thermally abused cooking oil may trigger genetic changes that promote the progression of late-stage breast cancer.

Thermally abused frying oil – cooking oil that has been repeatedly reheated to high temperatures – may act as a toxicological trigger that promotes tumor cell proliferation,  metastases and changes in lipid metabolism, scientists at the University of Illinois found. They reported their findings in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.

URBANA, Ill. – Adding soy flour to school lunches in Ghana provides a cost-efficient way of increasing the protein level, according to a new study co-authored by a University of Illinois researcher.

Soy is known to be a low-cost protein source, says Peter Goldsmith, professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the U of I. “But the thesis that soy is a good ingredient in a national school lunch program had yet to be proven, though everyone assumed it.”

URBANA, Ill. – Consumers today insist on all-natural everything, and food dyes are no exception. Even if food manufacturers are willing to make the change, current sources of natural dyes are expensive and hard to come by. Now, a large University of Illinois project is filling the gap with colored corn.