-The Times of India NEW DELHI: If you were to ask any random aam aadmi anywhere in India what is the single biggest failing of the UPA, the answer would be - price rise. This is so because the most important items of family spending - food items - have relentlessly risen for the past several years despite repeated promises to bring them down by the economic mandarins and policy wonks...

-FAO   Prices of cereals and oils decrease - FAO expects bumper cereal harvest this year Rome: The FAO Food Price Index dropped for the fourth month in a row in August reaching its lowest level since June 2012. The index, which measures the monthly change in the international prices of a basket of food commodities, averaged 201.8 points in August 2013, nearly 4 points (1.9 percent) below its July value and 11 points...

The poor man’s rich grain is getting richer – a new study published in the Journal of Nutrition shows that a variety of new pearl millet (more commonly known as bajra), which was conventionally bred to be 10% richer in iron helped iron-deficient children under the age of 3 years, to absorb enough of this crucial mineral to meet their physiological requirements. (See links below for full text and a...

-The New Indian Express In 1948 when the United Nations passed the covenant ensuring the right to food, vis-à-vis the right to proper livelihood, to which India became a signatory, it did not envisage that the whole issue would be caught up in such an imbroglio - political and economic - as one witnesses today. The original covenant in article 25 ensures the "right to work and livelihood" and right to...

-Reuters Raipur/Patna: The deaths of at least 23 children who were poisoned after eating a free school meal has triggered an outcry over food safety just as the ruling Congress party is set to launch an ambitious plan to feed 800 million poor, with an eye on elections due within a year. Congress leader Sonia Gandhi‘s national subsidised food project includes free school meals and expands existing handouts to make it probably...