Building

International Youth Day: Building capacity of change agents in transforming food systems

BY LUCKY IHANZA

International Youth Day is commemorated every year on August 12 to raise awareness about the challenges and problems faced by the youth, and to endorse ways of engaging the youth to more actively participate in affirmative contributions to development. This year, the theme is, “Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health,” and the aim is to highlight the indisputable fact that the success of such a global effort is not achievable without the significant contributions of the youth.

As world’s population (currently at 7.7 billion people) has been estimated to increase by 2 billion people in 2050; as young people have continued to play a key role in the management of, and recovery from, the pandemic; as the world suffers other crucial challenges like biodiversity conservation and mitigation of climate change; and with over half of the world’s population under age 30; experts and stakeholders are of the opinion that to ensure ‘human and planetary wellbeing’, there is an urgent need to move away from simply producing a larger volume of healthier food more sustainably, to exploring other options of transforming foods systems for the benefit of humans and the planet.

According to the World Economic Forum, a third of all food produced and the natural resources involved in its production are wasted. “We produce enough food but nearly 1 in 10 people still don’t have sufficient to eat and 3 billion cannot afford a healthy diet. At the same time, we

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Traditional Japanese Food May Hold Building Blocks of COVID-19 Treatments

Newswise — Natto, a fermented soybean dish often served for breakfast in Japan, originated at the turn of the last millennium but may hold an answer to a modern problem: COVID-19, according to a new study based on cell cultures.

Long thought to contribute to longer, healthier lives across Japan — the country with the longest life expectancy on Earth and home to more than a quarter of the world’s population aged 65 years or older — natto was previously found to be a diet staple in those who were least likely to die from stroke or cardiac disease. Now, researchers have found that extract made from the sticky, strong smelling natto may inhibit the ability of the virus that causes COVID-19 to infect cells.

The team published its results on July 13th in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications.

“Traditionally, Japanese people have assumed that natto is beneficial for their health,” said paper author Tetsuya Mizutani, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Prevention Research at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (CEPiR-TUAT). “In recent years, research studies have revealed scientific evidence for this belief. In this study, we investigated natto’s antiviral effects on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and bovine herpesvirus 1 (BHV-1), which causes respiratory disease in cattle.”

Natto is made by fermenting soybeans with Bacillus subtilis, a bacteria found in plant and in soil. The researchers prepared two natto extracts from the food, one with heat and one without. They applied the

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