Europe is now the biggest market for organic food in the world, having grown by 25  percent a year over the past 10 years. Denmark's agriculture minister is herself an organic farmer. The UK market for organic food grew by 55 percent in 2000, while the food market as a whole grew by only one percent. Yet only seven percent of British shoppers account for nearly 90 percent of organic sales. However popular the idea of organic farming may be, it is still an interest for only a few people.

    So what makes the idea of organic farming popular? Organic farming means farming with natural materials, rather than with man-made fertilizers or pesticides. Organic farmers rely on many  methods — such as crop rotation (农作物的轮作) and the use of resistant varieties, because they are necessary for organic farmers to compensate for the shortage of man-made chemicals.

    Organic farming is often supposed to be safer than traditional farming for the environment. Yet after a long research on organic farming worldwide for a number of years, science continues to be against this opinion. The House of Commons committee on agriculture publicized that, even with complete research work, it would fail to find any scientific evidence to prove “that any of claims （宣称） made for organic farming is always true”.

    However, the talk about the benefits of organic farming is going on. This is partly because many people depend on their individual farm, the soil, the weather, and so on.

    People who often eat nuts appear to live longer, according to the latest study of its kind. The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggested the greatest benefit was in those eating them on their daily diet.

    Eating nuts was linked to a healthier lifestyle including being less likely to smoke or be overweight and more likely to exercise. The British Heart Foundation said more research was needed to prove the link, “While this is an interesting link, we need further research to make sure if it's the nuts that protect heart health, or other sides of people's lifestyle .”

    The study followed nearly 120,000 people for 30 years. The more regularly people ate nuts, the less likely they were to die during the study. People eating nuts once a week were 11% less likely to have died during the study than those who never ate nuts. Lead researcher Dr. Charles Fuchs, from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital, said, “The most obvious benefit was a decrease of 29%in deaths from heart disease, but we also saw a significant reduction-11%- in the danger of dying from cancer.”

    They suggest nuts are lowering cholesterol(胆固醇). and insulin resistance(胰岛素抗性). Nuts contain unsaturated fat(不饱和脂肪), protein(蛋白质) and several kinds of vitamins and minerals and they can take the place of snacks like chocolate bars, cakes and biscuits.

    Victoria Taylor, senior expert at the British Heart Foundation, said, “This study shows close connection between regularly eating a small handful of nuts and a lower risk of death from heart disease.” Choosing plain, unsalted foods rather than sweet, salted, or chocolate-covered will keep your salt and sugar intake down.

    The Great War Exhibition

    When: Sun 10 Jan, 9:00 am- 6:00 pm

    Mon 11 Jan, 9:00 am- 6:00 pm

    Where: Dominion Museum Building, 15 Buckle Street, Wellington

    Restrictions: All Ages

    Ticket Information: Admission Free

    The journey is rich in personal stories which tell of the great experience of the battlefields and the hardships at home during war-time New Zealand. The visitors will experience the desperate horrors and the victories of the human spirit that were part of the Great War.

    Kaipara Coast Plants & Sculpture Gardens

    When: Sun 10 Jan, 9:00 am- 5:00 pm

    Mon 11 Jan, 9:00 am- 5:00 pm

    Where: 1481 Kaipara Coast Highway (SH16), Auckland

    Restrictions: All Ages

    Ticket Information:

    Adults: $10.00

    Children 5-13 (under 5, free):$ 5.00

    Groups 10: $ 8.00

    Over 60 & Students (with ID): $ 9.00

    Come and enjoy a relaxing art and garden experience. Sculptures are for sale and the display changes completely every 12 months with the new exhibition opening in December each year to give you a fresh experience each time you come.

    Dream Works Animation

    When: Sun 10 Jan, 10:00 am- 6:00 pm

    Mon 11 Jan, 10:00 am- 6:00 pm

    Where: Te Papa, 55 Cable St, Wellington

    Restrictions: All Ages

    Ticket Information:

    Adults: $ 15.00

    Children & Students 3-15 (with Student ID): $ 6.00

    Children under 3: $0.00

    The exhibition features over 400 items, including rare concept drawing, models, interviews, and original artworks. Adults and kids can get creative with real animation tools, and soar above the clouds in the Dragon Flight experience from How to Train Your Dragon.

    Balls, Bullets and Boots

    When: Sun 10 Jan, 9:00 am- 4:30 pm

    Mon 11Jan, 9:00 am- 4:30 pm

    Where: National Army Museum, 1 Hassett Dr, SH1, Waiouru

    Restrictions: All Ages

    Ticket Information: Door Sales Only

    The exhibition explores the impact the cruel reality of war had on colonial sportsmen and their loved ones as they were transplanted from the rugby fields of home to fight.

    Sam, I say to myself as I start across the bridge, you must stop these thoughts and start thinking about what to do now that you have lost your falcon（猎鹰）, Frightful.

    Life, my friend Bando once said, is meeting problems and solving them whether you are an amoeba or a space traveler. I have a problem. I have to provide my younger sister Alice and myself with meat. Fish, nuts, and vegetables, are good and necessary, but they don't provide enough fuel for the hard physical work we do. Although we have venison（鹿肉） now, I can't always count on getting it. So far this year, our venison has been only road kill from in front of Mrs. Strawberry's farm.

    I decide to take the longest way home, down the flood plain of the West Branch of Delaware to Spilkill, my own name for a fast stream, that cascades down the south face of the mountain range I'm on. I need time to think. Perhaps Alice and I should be like the early Eskimos. We should walk, camp and hunt, and when the seasons change, walk on to new food sources. But I love my tree and my mountaintop.

    Another solution would be to become farmers, like the people of the Iroquois Confederacy who once lived here. They settled in villages and planted corn and squash（南瓜）, bush beans and berries. We already grow groundnuts in the damp soil and squash in the poor land. But the Iroquois also hunted game. I can't do that anymore

    I'm back where I started from.

    Slowly climb the Spillkill. As I hop from rock to rock beneath shady basswoods and hemlocks, I hear the cry of the red﹣tailed hawk who nests on the mountain crest. I am reminded of Frightful and my heart aches. I can almost hear her call my name, Cree, cree, car-ree.

    Maybe l can get her back if l beg the man who is in charge of the peregrines（游隼） university. "But it's the law," he would say. L could write to the president of the United states and ask him to make an exception of Alice and me. That won't work. The president swore to upload the constitution（宪法） and laws of the United States when he took office.

    I climbed on. I must stop thinking about the impossible and solve the problem of what to do now. I must find a new way to provide for us. Frightful is going to be in good hands at the university and she will have young.

    I smile at the thought of little Frightfuls and lift my reluctant feet.

    When I am fat above the river,1take of my clothes and moccasins（鹿皮鞋） and bathe in a deep, clear pool until I am refreshed and thinking more clearly. Climbing up the bank, I dress and sit down. I breath deeply of the mountain air and try to solve my problem more realistically.

    Boomerang children who return to live with their parents after university can be good for families, leading to closer, more supportive relationships and increased contact between the generations, a study has found.

    The findings disagree with the research published earlier this year showing that returning adult children trigger a significant worsening in their parents' quality of life and wellbeing.

    The young adults taking part in the study were "more positive than might have been expected" about moving back home – the shame is reduced as so many of their friends are in the same position, and they acknowledged the benefits of their parents' financial and emotional support. Daughters were happier than sons, often getting back easily to teenage patterns of behavior, the study found.

    Parents on the whole were more uncertain, expressing concern about how they can arrange and manage it if their children continue to live with them. But they acknowledged that things were different for graduates today, who leave university with huge debts and fewer job opportunities.

    The families participated in the study were middle-class and were more likely to view the achievement of adult independence for their children as a "family project". Parents accepted that their children needed support as university students and then as graduates returning home, as they tried to find jobs paying enough to enable them to move out or even afford their own house.

    "However," the study says, "many parents and a little over half the graduates report day-to-day tensions (矛盾) about the prospects of achieving adult independence, which in a few extreme situations came close to conflict".

    Areas of disagreement included housework, money and social life. While parents were willing to help, they also wanted different relationships from those they had with their own parents, and continuing to support their adult children allowed them to remain close.

    When Joanne Morton and Lydia Shaw came across the Boston Public Market, which features only New England businesspersons, they knew they had to stop in. The women, visiting from southeastern Connecticut, always try to buy local. "We always try to support our local farmers and businessmen," says Ms. Shaw. "We're not into big companies," adds Ms. Morton.

    They aren't alone. A great number of Americans continue to be attracted by "local" food and to buy it, according to recent surveys from the International Food Information Council Foundation, the Pew Research Center, and British polling firm Ipsos. But what does it mean to shop local? For some, local is still a matter of geography. For others, it is about supporting their local economy (经济). And for still others, it is about knowing where their food comes from and how it is made, even if it is coffee shipped from a Costa Rican company. In 2008, Congress passed a bill that gave money to support local food. According to the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act, a product that can be considered local has to travel less than 400 miles.

    But Lydia Zepeda, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has found the largest agreement about what is local is any product that comes from within an hour's drive. "But is that with or without traffic?" She asks. "What if it crosses state lines?" adds John Hayes, a food science professor at Pennsylvania State University. "A customer might like to buy local to help an old town," he says. "Or maybe it's just because local food tastes better." It is for Kaitlin Bohon. "I taste a difference," she says at the Boston Public Market. For Ms. Bohon, buying local is both about supporting New England business and knowing who grew and handled her food.