-The Hindu State Budget takes aim at ‘junk food’ sold in branded outlets to promote healthy eating. THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala announced a 14.5 per cent “fat tax” on pizzas, burgers, sandwiches and tacos sold through branded outlets on Friday, in sync with the World Health Organization’s advocacy of using fiscal tools to promote healthy eating. Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac might have upset some youth with his move, but doctors and several parents are...

-The Hindu Business Line Rice millers are making a killing due to policy gaps and old rates, says report The government is losing thousands of crores while rice mill owners are raking in the moolah, said the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. The report said mill owners are cashing in on lacunae in the government’s policy on the sale of paddy and rice by-products —...

-Business Standard Cabinet note soon on Rs 1,800-cr investment over 5 years to boost sector, skills To push fish production, the Centre is formulating a programme to tap water reservoirs and neglected water bodies such as wetlands for breeding through modern technologies. The programme, part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of a Blue Revolution, entails Rs 1,800 crore over the next five years, much lower than what was envisaged by a working...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India's food safety regulator has slashed the maximum allowed limit of transfats in cooking oil and fat by half to five per cent in a move that experts are calling an important step to safeguard public health. But nutrition scientists have cautioned that the government will also need to tweak oilseed crop policies to draw the food processing industry and consumers away from unhealthy but inexpensive transfats to...

-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...