【推荐2】Although it’ll take weeks to harvest all of their cabbage, farmers in a town in Pingdu, Shandong province, have started preparing to sell the vegetables to overseas markets.

Li Wenbin, who runs a vegetable trading business in the town of Renzhao, said his fresh vegetable sales to overseas markets mainly in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia doubled to 20,000 metric tons last year due to high demand for kimchi, a dietary staple in South Korea.

South Korea suffered from an abnormally long rainy season and three typhoons last year that damaged large amounts of Chinese cabbage, the major ingredient(原料) for kimchi, creating high demand for the vegetable.

“Based on the current performance of vegetable exports in parts of southern China, such as in Fujian province, we predict this year’s business won’t be sad,” said Li, adding that he is confident because vegetables from Renzhao are competitive in terms of quality and price.

Around 120 kilometers west of Pingdu, vegetable traders in Shouguang, Weifang, one of the country’s major vegetable production bases, have started exporting this year’s carrots. Pei Shengji, manager of Zhonglong Food, headquartered in Shouguang, said the harvesting of the company’s 65-hectare carrot growing base in Fujian is in full swing. All of the carrots will be processed and shipped to overseas markets.

What’s more, Shandong province is developing seeds to meet diverse needs for quality crops, which helps to support the agricultural sector. “The seed developed domestically brings rich harvests. The Chinese cabbage tastes good and is good for being preserved,” he said. Besides, it’s much cheaper than foreign seeds.

Unlike Li, who can choose quality Chinese cabbage seeds developed in China, Pei has to spend more buying foreign seeds because there are no domestically developed carrot seeds available. According to Weifang’s five-year plan, the seeds of medium-and high-end vegetables such as bell peppers, broccoli and carrots will be researched and developed.

【推荐1】Recently, environmentalists have encouraged us to buy local food. This reduces “food miles”, that is, the distance food travels to get from the producer to the seller. They reason that the higher the food miles, the more carbon emissions (碳排放). Buying local food, therefore, has a lower carbon footprint and is more environmentally friendly.

However, the real story is not as simple as that. If our aim is to reduce carbon emissions, we must look at the whole farming process, not just transportation. According to a 2008 study, only 11% of carbon emissions in the food production process result from transportation, and only 4% came from the final delivery of the product from the producer to the seller.

In fact, imported food often has a lower carbon footprint than locally grown food. Take apples, for example. In autumn, when apples are harvested, the best option for British people is to buy British apples. However, the apples we buy in winter or spring have been kept refrigerated for months, and this uses up a lot of energy. In spring, therefore, it is more energy-saving to import them from New Zealand, where they are in season. Heating also uses a lot of energy, which is why growing tomatoes in heated greenhouses in the UK is less environmentally friendly than importing them from Spain, where the tomatoes grow well in the local climate.

We must also take into account the type of transport. Transporting food by air creates about 50 times more emissions than shipping it. However, only a small number of goods are flown to foreign countries, and these are usually high value, perishable (易腐烂的) goods which we cannot produce locally, such as seafood and out-of-season berries. Even then, these foods may not have a higher carbon footprint than locally grown food. For example, beans flown in from Kenya are grown in sunny fields using human labour and natural fertilisers (肥料), unlikein Britain, where we use oil-based fertilisers and machinery. Therefore, the total carbon footprint is still lower.

It’s also worth remembering that a product’s journey does not end at the supermarket. The distance customers travel to buy their food, and the kind of transport they use will also add to its carbon footprint. So driving a long way to shop for food will wipe out any environmental benefits of buying locally grown produce.

Recently, some supermarkets have been trying to raise awareness of food miles by labelling (标记) foods with stickers that show it has been imported by air. But the message this gives is too simple. Lots of different factors contribute to a food’s carbon footprint besides the distance it has travelled.

【推荐3】Unless you’ve been faithfully bringing reusable shopping bags to the store, you probably grab the plastic bags waiting for customers at the checkout. You’re not alone.

About 100 billion plastic bags are used in the U. S. each year. Unfortunately, single-use plastic bags have serious consequences once our trip to the store is over. Less than 10% of plastic bags used in the U. S. are recycled, leaving the rest to end up in landfills (垃圾填埋场), and polluting soil, oceans and other natural habitats.

To fight pollution and other environmental problems, major companies are taking steps to get rid of the use of plastic shopping bags. If you’re a frequent customer at Walmart, don’t be surprised if you notice the plastic bags disappearing over the next few months. Last summer, Walmart announced its goal to be a zero-waste company — meaning no more plastic bags.

But Walmart has announced its Beyond the Bag, an initiative (倡议) working to explore reusable options and “reimagine” the plastic bag. Target and CVS are also on board as founding partners of Beyond the Bag, and so far, the three brands have invested $15 million to come up with a brand-new bag design.

The initiative also started the Beyond the Bag challenge, giving innovators (创新者) a chance to share their ideas. The challenge ran throughout the summer of 2020, and nine winners from over 450 submissions were selected. From a station supplying reusable bag in-store to a new and improved paper bag, the winning designs cover a lot of bases. Each product now has the chance to be tested with funding from the initiative.

While a final replacement for plastic bags at Walmart has yet to be decided, there’s a more sustainable future on the horizon. And if you want to start reducing your use of plastic bags right now, check out our list of reusable bags to bring on your next shopping trip.

【推荐2】After numerous warnings over the years, you thought coffee probably had a negative effect on your health? Perhaps the drink is not so bad after all.

The new study, conducted by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), has been published and suggests that coffee does not have a harmful effect on your health. Researchers suggest, based on data examined, older adults who drink a lot of coffee, have a lower risk of death when compared to their non-drinking coffee peers.

The team of researchers conducting the study analyzed data on 400,000 U.S. men and women, aged 50 to 71 years; the individuals had participated in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study. This study started in 1995﹣1996 and was tracked until the day a participant passed away, or Dec. 31, 2008.

According to a press release on the report, researchers shared that coffee drinkers are “less likely to die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections, although the association was not seen for cancer.”

Results indicated participants that drank three or more cups of java a day reduced their risk of death by 10percent. Based on the findings that both caffeinated and non-caffeinated coffee found similar results, researchers are thinking caffeine is not the protective ingredient(原料), although which ingredient in coffee might be, they are not sure.

Researchers indicate that despite these observational findings，they caution it is not clear whether or not drinking coffee actually extends life expectancy.

“Coffee is one of the most widely consumed drinks in America，but the association between coffee consumption and risk of death has been unclear. We found coffee consumption to be associated with lower risk of death overall, and of death from a number of different causes,” said Neal Freedman, Ph. D. , Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI.

“Although we cannot infer a relationship between coffee drinking and lower risk of death, we believe these results do provide some comfort that coffee drinking does not adversely affect health,” Freedman said.

Dr. Cheryl Williams, a registered dietician, told ABC News, “Overall, more research needs to be done to truly understand the compounds in coffee and their biological activity and effect on health,” said Williams.

【推荐3】In the final of the 1985 world open squash(壁球） championship, Pakistan's Jahangir Khan defeated New Zealand's Ross Norman and won the championship. That decisive victory made Khan the first man ever to win the world open squashcrown five times in a row.“Jahangir Khan,” says British sports commentator Richard Eaton, “is the world champion of world champions.”

Until recently,Khan's achievements would have stirred few people, for squash was largely an elitist(精英）male preserve. No longer. During the past decade, the game has boomed worldwide, and is now a sport played by more than 20 million men and women in more than 100 countries. It is widely played in Australia,New Zealand, Europe and Southeast Asia, and is one of the fastest-growing sports in Canada. In Australia, nearly 500,000 people play squash regularly.

Squash has caught on because it's suited to busy lifestyles. It's easier for a beginner to play than tennis, and provided a good workout in just half an hour. At its higher reaches, though, squash stretches mind and body to their limits. It calls for speed, strength, a talent for delicate shot-making and, above all, a single-minded determination to keep going.

Why is Jahangir Khan so superior in this flashing, high-speed game, perhaps the subtlest and most exhausting of all the racquet(球拍） sports? For one thing, he's superbly built: 1.78 metres tall,67 kilos, with arms, chest and legs that are rock-hard and wrists like steel. His ancestry helps, too. Khan's ancestors were Pathans. Pathans have a reputation for being trigger-happy, but Khan's relatives were far deadlier with squash racquets than with guns. His father, Roshan, uncles Hashim and Azam and cousin Mohibullah dominated world squash in the 1950s and 1960s.

But Khan's most precious quality is an extraordinary desire to excel. “Squash has more naturally gifted players,” admits his coach, Rahmat Khan, “but no one who works as hard, no one else who,even when on top, never lets up.”