Global food systems driving twin crises of obesity and global warming, says review
Unsustainable, profit-driven food systems promote high-calorie, low-fiber diets, contributing to rising obesity and significant greenhouse gas emissions. Animal-based and ultra-processed foods are key drivers of both health and environmental harms. System-level reforms—such as taxes, subsidies, and marketing restrictions—are recommended to improve diets and reduce climate impact.

A major review in Frontiers in Science highlights how tackling unsustainable food systems—reflected by our changing food environment—is urgent for both health and climate.

The paper reviews evidence that both obesity and environmental harms result from a profit-led food system that encourages high intake and poor health. The authors say that our food environment promotes high-calorie, low-fiber products such as some ultra-processed foods (UPFs)—the most caloric of which encourage weight gain.

Those same production systems, especially involving animals, release large amounts of greenhouse gases and put pressure on land and water.

The comprehensive review says that addressing the food environment can therefore deliver double benefits for health and climate.

The authors recommend using subsidies for healthy foods, taxes and warning labels for particularly unhealthy foods, and restrictions on aggressive marketing of high-calorie, low-fiber products, particularly in low-income communities and to children.

They also counter the perception that weight-loss drugs are a panacea for obesity, as they do not address the systemic drivers which also harm the climate.

Obesity and climate change: co-crises with common solutions, Frontiers in Science (2025). DOI: 10.3389/fsci.2025.1613595

Antifungal vaccine heads for clinical trials
A vaccine designed to protect against infections with certain fungal pathogens is set to move into phase I clinical trials, backed by US$40 million in funding from the US National Institutes of Health. The vaccine, called VXV-01, uses two antigens to elicit an immune response to fungal pathogens such as Candida auris and Candida albicans, which can cause drug-resistant infections in hospitals.

https://www.genengnews.com/topics/infectious-diseases/fungal-vaccin...

The Roots of Dementia in Childhood

Dementia is often associated with older people, but it doesn't just appear out of nowhere.

Some risk factors could start before we're even born, while others emerge as we progress through childhood into young adulthood.

According to research, that could be the best time to start intervention.

Even before we are born, some risk factors for dementia may already be present.

Increasingly, evidence suggests that the roots of age-related cognitive decline could begin in early childhood.

One of the most important factors explaining cognitive ability at age 70, researchers say, is cognitive ability at age 11.

Later, in early adulthood, additional potential risk factors include:

Education

Head injuries

Physical activity

Social isolation

Growing up healthy could be key to growing old healthy.

https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/78/12/2131/728...