HEALTH & WELLBEING

The people of Taree and District are the latest to benefit from Federal Government's ongoing investment in regional Australia with the official opening of the $6 million Manning Education Centre, a multi-purpose medical education facility in Taree today.

Earth has to brace for the Sun's new activity after a long and deep sleep, scientists at the Institute of Science Education and Research said today.

A national study by the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) and National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre (NBOCC) will provide the first national data about the treatment received by women diagnosed with ovarian cancer in Australia.

He has won four Olympic gold medals and with five world championships to his credit at the peak of his diving career. Olympic medalist and great diver, Greg Louganis returns in the media spotlight after accepting a coaching job for a divers group four months ago.

People who are able to commit crimes called as white-collar ones because they involve credit card fraud and software hacking have different brain structures that are almost quite capable of superior business executive skills.

Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of sanofi-aventis Group (EURONEXT: SAN and NYSE: SNY), is working with the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) to support the recently launched Dengue Vaccine Initiative (DVI).

The face of the Earth would be undistinguishable in the year 2050 as the population boom of no less than 10 billion will leave people battling for scarce resources all over the world, researchers at a US science conference have warned.

Oral sex is no longer the safest way in getting or giving pleasure, it is also now one of the leading causes of oral cancer, according to a study done by American scientists.

A team of physicist based on Yale University has announced the creation of a device that would be able to dissipate the energy carried by a laser beam.

Sour cherries could help athletes reduce muscle damage to recover faster from a tough workout, according to new research published in the American College of Sports Medicine's journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.Researchers at the Sports and Exercise Science Research Center at London South Bank University, in the UK, gave 10 trained athletes 1 ounce of a proprietary cherry juice concentrate, CherryActive (made from sour Montmorency cherries) twice daily for seven days prior to and...

A diet, high in fats, sugars, and processed foods in early childhood may lower IQ, while a diet packed full of vitamins and nutrients may do the opposite, suggests new research, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Scientists from the University of New South Wales has provided the first conclusive evidence that cannabis use significantly hastens the onset of psychotic illnesses during the critical years of brain development - with possible life-long consequences.

Chinese infant food manufacturer Synutra International has said that it continues to feel the financial impact of unsubstantiated claims that its products caused premature breast growth in three infant girls.The company's third-quarter sales, for the three months to the end of December, more than halved, while net losses more than doubled.Synutra attributed the falls to unsubstantiated claims that its products caused premature breast growth in three infant girls.The company's CFO Donghao Y...

Woolworths is extending an extra helping hand to Queensland dairy farmers via a special 5 cent per litre donation on milk. Commencing yesterday, the donation will apply for the next two weeks and is likely to raise at least half a million dollars for struggling dairy farmers.Woolworths Director of Supermarkets Greg Foran said: "Woolworths has a strong track record in helping the agricultural community deal with the aftermath of devastating events. The floods and cyclones have had a far reaching impact on many industries but dairy farmers have been particularly hard hit in recent weeks and need the support of retailers and consumers to recover."Queensland Dairyfarmers' Organisation President, Brian Tessmann said this announcement from Woolworths was very welcome at a time when dairy farming families and the industry was in desperate need of good news."The scale of the destruction is unprecedented and has cost the industry tens of millions of dollars. Hardly a farming family in Queensland was untouched by these disasters, with many cases of severe damage and financial loss.""It will take some farmers years to recover and it is a sad reality that some farmers will be assessing how they can get through this crisis.""Importantly, this donation from Woolworths will help with the recovery - but just as importantly it will boost farmers' confidence in the future of the dairy industry.""We encourage all Australians to support our dairy farmers in their hour of need by purchasing milk through Woolworths stores. We also encourage consumers to buy branded milk products as the extra few cents per litre for that milk makes a real difference for us on the farm."We are also pleased that Woolworths is standing by farmers against cutthroat and unsustainable price discounting in recent weeks. If left unchecked, relentless discounting would have a very negative impact on our farmers and their communities."The donation applies to every brand and variety of fresh white milk bought at any Woolworths store nationally. All monies will go to the Queensland Dairy Farmers Relief Fund and all dairy farmers in the State are eligible to apply for grants. The fund is being run by the Queensland Dairyfarmers' Organisation. For further information go to www.dairypage.com.au

Supermarket retailer Coles is using its market dominance to destabilise the whole of Australia's food and grocery supply chain by cutting prices on essential daily items, the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) said today.AFGC highlighted that Coles' "Down, Down" campaign to heavily discount staple foods like bread and dairy products was designed to increase traffic in Coles supermarkets without considering the long-term, flow-on effects to farmers, industry and consumers.AFGC Chief Executive Kate Carnell said Coles' claim that their price cutting won't affect farmers or food and grocery manufacturers was misleading."At the end of the day, this price blitz produces a new floor price on staple products - Coles is using its market dominance to destabilise the marketplace, triggering other major retailers to match prices to maintain their market share," Ms Carnell said."This approach could seriously undermine jobs in Australia."Australia's $102 billion food and grocery manufacturing sector employs more than 288,000 people - including about half in rural and regional areas - representing about three per cent of all employed people in Australia paying around $13 billion a year in salaries and wages, according to AFGC's State of the Industry 2010 report."Coles' short-sighted move is not a good outcome for ensuring future sustainability and security of Australia's food manufacturing industry which is already under pressure from increasing costs for labour, energy and water - as well as from rising imports and the latest natural disasters," Ms Carnell said."It's vital for Australia's largest manufacturing industry to have a long-term, strategic focus to ensure Australia has a safe, nutritious, affordable and sustainable food supply into the future."Industry fully supports the Federal Government's move to develop a National Food Plan in partnership approach with relevant stakeholders, retailers and leading food manufacturers to achieve a broad-base ‘whole-of-supply chain' strategy."Industry is also actively engaged in the National Food Policy working group to provide high-level policy perspectives and advice on issues across the whole food chain - from paddock to plate.

Combining the powers of Acai Berry, Red Grape, Blueberry and Mango, Trampoline Gelato's new Superfruit Sorbet is 99% fat free and full of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and good-for-you Omegas. Plus, of course, no artificial colours or flavours.Acai (Ah-sigh-ee) berries, hailed as one of the top Superfoods and grown in the Brazilian Amazon, have one of the highest ORACmeasures (antioxidant levels) around - in fact, they've 4-6 times that of blueberries. Low in GI for sustained energy release, high in dietary fibre, loaded with essential Omegas 3, 6 and 9 and a great source of calcium, iron, magnesium and other vitamins and minerals.The new flavour is now available at all Trampoline stores, and also comes in a Smoothie or Skinny Shake.Made on site fresh daily, all Trampoline gelato contains only the freshest Gippsland milk and the finest all natural real ingredients.  Trampoline gelato contains around 6% fat (by Australian law, ice cream must contain minimum 10% fat, with most premium brands sitting as high as 18% fat), and the Superfruit Sorbet is 99% fat free, thanks only to all those good-for-you fatty Omega acids!

PepsiCo has completed the acquisition of a 66% stake in Wimm-Bill-Dann, it said last night (3 February).The snacks and soft drinks giant announced in December that it had struck a deal to buy a stake in the Russian firm for US$3.8bn. PepsiCo said the deal would make it the "largest food-and-beverage business" in the country.The acquisition has increased PepsiCo's total ownership of Wimm-Bill-Dann to around 77%. The firm has accumulated the additional 11% share since 2 December.PepsiCo said it will make an offer on or before 11 March to acquire the remaining Wimm-Bill-Dann shares, at $132 per share, which is the highest price PepsiCo paid to the selling shareholders.The transfer of all shares to PepsiCo is expected to be completed over the next few days.The firm expects that it will now generate annual global revenues of $13bn from nutritious and functional foods, from about $10bn currently.just-food is the world’s leading portal for the global pre-packaged food and retail industries. Its daily mix of breakingnews,views, analysis and research serves over 100,000 food executiveseachmonth. http://www.just-food.com/

Unilever will increase its prices at a more "rapid rate" in 2011 as it continues to look to offset rising commodity costs, concerns over which hit the company's share price yesterday (3 February).The UK group's stock closed down 1.1% in London this afternoon despite a 26% increase in annual profits and accelerating underlying sales growth in the fourth quarter of 2010.However, rising commodity costs hit Unilever's margins in the last three months of the year, which led some analysts to express concern about the company's ability to protect margins this year.Investec analyst Martin Deboo said Unilever was "struggling" for margin in what he described as the "foothills" of input cost inflation. "With input cost inflation only just getting into its stride in the fourth quarter, we view this margin result as a troubling portent of what is to come in 2011," Deboo wrote in a note to clients.Speaking to just-food, Michael Polk, president of Unilever's food, home and personal care operations, pointed to the progress the company had made on pricing in the fourth quarter of 2010."We had 5% underlying sales growth in the fourth quarter - all of it was volume driven but, in-quarter, we did have positive pricing and that will pick up as more and more price increases are landed in the market place - and they will increase at a rapid rate into 2011," Polk said. "The fact that we don't have negative pricing is a step in the right direction."Unilever has estimated that its input costs will increase by around 400 basis points in 2011. Polk described the "headwind" as "sizeable" but pointed to 2008, a year when food manufacturers faced the last spike in commodity prices, and said the company's input costs rose by around 650 basis points."While we don't exactly love the profile of our growth in 2008 - we were able to cover that inflation and not have volumes decline," Polk said. "We had flat volumes the last time we had to deal with this. Now, a lot has changed since 2008. We've added EUR700m (US$954.8m) more to our advertising and promotions budget since 2008. We've got a stronger innovation funnel. We've also got the experience of having priced up and down effectively," Polk said. "So we've built a real capability in handling commodity volatility and landing pricing."The Unilever executive noted that the company would also look to cost savings and the mix of its portfolio to "deal with commodity inflation".Unilever, which generates over half its sales from what its characterises as "developing and emerging markets", is also facing stronger markets in the non-developed world compared to 2008, Polk argued."The economic conditions in the developing and emerging markets are actually more robust today than they were in 2008," Polk said. "The volatility, the uncertainty that happened in concert with that commodity spike was far broader and radical than what we are dealing with at this point. You see robust economies with a capacity probably to land that pricing in a better way than we were able to in 2008. Even in the developed markets, you begin to see economies starting to pick up despite the the challenges of unemployment and the other issues that are out there."However, he added: "We are not going to price anything unless we can maintain our principle of building our volume share. The key variable that will influence will be what the competition does. We will not compromise on our core belief that we have to deliver competitive levels of price versus the right reference point for each brand in each market."just-food is the world’s leading portal for the global pre-packaged food and retail industries. Its daily mix of breakingnews,views, analysis and research serves over 100,000 food executiveseachmonth. http://www.just-food.com/

New research released 4 February 2011 to coincide with World Cancer Day has strengthened the link between lifestyle factors and cancer with findings that up to 70 per cent of certain cancers could be prevented by diet, exercise and maintaining a healthy weight.

Besse Cooper from Walton County is recorded, Monday, January 31 as the world’s oldest person alive at 114 years and 158 days old. She is now staying at the Park Place Nursing Facility in Monroe.

Food industry players and sustainability experts will come together in April this year at Melbourne's Etihad Stadium for the National Sustainable Food Summit, a two-day independent forum focusing on food policy developments for Australia.Examining food security and resilience, and how these relate to the National Food Plan, the summit will be held in conjunction with Meat & Livestock Australia, The Australian Food & Grocery Council, WWF, Sustainability Victoria, The Global Foresight Network, the National Farmers Federation, Net Balance, The Biogenesys Project and EPA Victoria.The summit will be addressed by a wide variety of scientists, sustainability and food chain experts, including Tim Flannery, Julian Cribb, Penny Sackett, John Williams, Kirsten Larsen, Michael Raupach, Richard Hames, Amanda Lee, Robert Pekin and Michael Velders."The time has come to think about food security in Australia, to think about how we need to look at it from an integrated approach," said Professor Penny Sackett, Chief Scientist for Australia."We intend this summit to be pivotal in the future of food discussions in Australia."The summit will explore both the existing state of Australia's food security and ways to ensure its continued robustness.In particular, the summit will explore the challenges Australia's food system can expect, business models and capabilities to deal with these challenges, knowledge and skills and the role of government, industry, farmers and community, with a view to making policy recommendations for the National Food Plan and beginning to change the lay of Australia's food landscape.The National Sustainable Food Summit will run from Tues 5 – Wed 6 April 2011 at Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, and is organised by the 3 Pillars Network. Those interested in further information can contact Zaf on 02 9555 4302 or email zaf@3pillarsnetwork.com.au.

The 19th Melbourne Food and Wine Festival (4 -14 March) invites fun-loving foodies to prime their tastebuds and clear their diaries as the countdown begins to Australia's preeminent celebration of food and wine.In five weeks the Festival will bring food and wine to the streets across 11 delicious days, from Chinatown to Footscray to Dandenong,

Health authorities in Australia are advising parents of children with asthma to prepare back to school asthma action plans in anticipation of a spike in asthma cases at the start of the school term.

Australia's health department on Monday unveils its most hard-hitting campaign against tobacco use with a new advertising campaign graphically links smoking with lung cancer hit the airwaves and TV screens as the Gillard Government continues its world-leading action to combat tobacco use.

Recommendations to improve food labelling law and policy in Australia and New Zealand are contained in a report presented to Federal, State and Territory Governments today.Dr Neal Blewett, chair of the independent Review of Food Labelling Law and Policy, presented the report, ‘Labelling Logic', to the Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing, Catherine King.Some of the key recommendations include:That information on food labels be presented in a clear and comprehensible manner to enhance understanding across all levels of the population.That the food safety elements on the food label be reviewed with the aim to maximise the effectiveness of food safety communication.That there be more effective monitoring and enforcement of the existing requirements in the Food Standards Code to provide mandatory warning and advisory statements and allergen declarations on packages of food not for retail sale, foods for sale at restaurants and other food outlets, foods from mobile food vendors and vending machines, and foods for catering purposes. That the Voluntary Incidental Trace Allergen Labelling system be explored as a possible supplementary model to manage food label declarations relating to the adventitious presence of allergens in foods. That where sugars, fats or vegetable oils are added as separate ingredients in a food, the terms ‘added sugars' and ‘added fats' and/or ‘added vegetable oils' be used in the ingredient list as the generic term, followed by a bracketed list (e.g., added sugars (fructose, glucose syrup, honey), added fats (palm oil, milk fat) or added vegetable oils (sunflower oil, palm oil)). That mandatory declaration of all trans fatty acids above an agreed threshold be introduced in the Nutrition Information Panel if manufactured trans fatty acids have not been phased out of the food supply by January 2013. That declaration of total and naturally occurring fibre content be considered as a mandatory requirement in the Nutrition Information Panel. That declaration of energy content of standardised food items on the menu/menu boards or in close proximity to the food display or menu be mandatory in chain food service outlets and on vending machines. Further, information equivalent to that provided by the Nutrition Information Panel should be available in a readily accessible form in chain food service outlets.

In a reversal of fortune to the previous quarter (September 2010), Aussie confidence ended 2010 with a slight fall as consumers looked to curb expenditure in the wake of rising utility and food costs.Fourth quarter (December 2010) results from Nielsen's Global Online Consumer Survey show that the Australian consumer has slightly lost their confidence, as a conservative drop of three points takes the Consumer Confidence Index score to 112 points. But the latest score is still a good five points higher than the one recorded this time last year, and is still a positive result for Australia.Of those consumers who had changed their spending to save on household expenses over the past year, a staggering 70 percent said they had actively taken action to reduce utility expenditure in this quarter. This was closely followed by consumers switching to cheaper grocery brands which recorded the greatest percentage point increase for this quarter (up 10% to 61%) as the second most popular action for reducing expenditure during the past year.Cutting down or buying cheaper brands of alcohol also featured as a form of expenditure reduction, with 28 percent of consumers claiming to have taken this step in the past 12 months. And when economic conditions eventually improve, 62 percent said that they would continue to save on utility costs, with a further 41 percent maintainingtheir brand switching momentum by choosing the cheaper grocery option."Consumers' increasing propensity to switch to cheaper grocery and alcohol brands is reflected in the growing popularity of private label. Consumers now see this phenomenon as a credible and value for money alternative to the more traditional, well known name brands. Nielsen's 2010 State of the Nation Report published in December stated that during the economic downturn, half of all Australian consumers said that they had purchased more private label products, and that 92 percent of them would continue to do so in an improving economy," commented Chris Percy, Managing Director - Pacific, Nielsen Consumer Group.The subsequent impact of private label brands on the total value of the grocery category has caused a noticeable decline in the category's value growth.  Heavy retailerdiscounting through price reductions and deep promotions is also a leading contributor to thedecline in value growth."The flooding across the eastern seaboard of Australia will also have far reaching impacts. For some areas it will be about a disruption to consumer confidence, for others a retail dislocation, and for many parts of Australia, it will be about the reallocation of national infrastructure and resources -with all the resulting changes for employment, wages and inflation," Percy added.

As Queensland residents try to rebuild their lives after the devastating effects of flood waters, children are part of one of the most vulnerable groups affected.

Australian health officials on Thursday warned the public against Legionnaires' disease (Legionella pneumophila) among a small number of travelers returning from the Kuta region of Bali, Indonesia since August 2010.

Australian Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing Catherine King on Tuesday praised organs and tissue transplant donors which saved and extended the lives of others who are in need. King disclosed that data showed that a record number of 309 deceased Australians donated their organs and tissue for transplant during 2010.