Vegan cheese that tastes like cheese and other news and views

• Hold The Mammal: Daring To Make Dairy-Free Cheese From Nuts - By culturing the milk or puree from tree nuts with the same bacteria used by dairy cheese makers, and letting it mature, companies like Kite Hill, Treeline Cheese and Punk Rawk Labs have turned the scramble for a decent-tasting vegan cheese replacement into something crafty. And pretty tasty.
• More scientists doubt salt is as bad for you as the government says - “There is no longer any valid basis for the current salt guidelines,” said Andrew Mente, a professor at McMaster University in Ontario and one of the researchers involved in a major study published last year by the New England Journal of Medicine. “So why are we still scaring people about salt?” But the debate over dietary salt is among the most contentious in the field of nutrition, and other scientists, including the leadership of the American Heart Association, continue to support the decades-old warning. The result is that as the federal government prepares its influential Dietary Guidelines for 2015, bureaucrats confront a quandary: They must either retract one of their oldest dietary commandments - or overlook these prominent new doubts.
• Farmers, Trade Association Debate Merits Of Organic Marketing Fund - Pesticide-free? Nurtured with organic fertilizer? No antibiotics? Ask any shopper, and you're bound to find mixed answers for what an organic label means. Now, an association is trying to draw funding from something called a "checkoff" to pay for consumer advertising and research. For a checkoff to work, each farmer pays a small amount.

• Critical Role of Animal Science Research in Food Security and Sustainability
  by The National Academies Press - By 2050 the world's population is projected to grow by one-third, reaching between 9 and 10 billion. With globalization and expected growth in global affluence, a substantial increase in per capita meat, dairy, and fish consumption is also anticipated. The demand for calories from animal products will nearly double, highlighting the critical importance of the world's animal agriculture system. Meeting the nutritional needs of this population and its demand for animal products will require a significant investment of resources as well as policy changes that are supportive of agricultural production. Ensuring sustainable agricultural growth will be essential to addressing this global challenge to food security. Critical Role of Animal Science Research in Food Security and Sustainability identifies areas of research and development, technology, and resource needs for research in the field of animal agriculture, both nationally and internationally. This report assesses the global demand for products of animal origin in 2050 within the framework of ensuring global food security; evaluates how climate change and natural resource constraints may impact the ability to meet future global demand for animal products in sustainable production systems; and identifies factors that may impact the ability of the United States to meet demand for animal products, including the need for trained human capital, product safety and quality, and effective communication and adoption of new knowledge, information, and technologies.
• How Tea + Sugar Reshaped The British Empire - Coffee and tea both landed in the British isles in the 1600s. In fact, java even got a head start of about a decade. And yet, a century later, tea was well on its way to becoming a daily habit for millions of Britons — which it remains to this day. So how did tea emerge as Britain's hot beverage of choice? The short answer: Tea met sugar, forming a power couple that altered the course of history. It was a marriage shaped by fashion, health fads and global economics. And the growing taste for sweetened tea also helped fuel one of the worst blights on human history: the slave trade.