coffee and chocolate

I generally avoid writing about food, as it gets written about too much already, but if the few food types I really care about (essentially: wine, chocolate, coffee) are under threat, I have to ride to their rescue.

So here comes a feature on how climate change, financial speculation, and growth in demand may make it harder to find decent coffee and chocolate at affordable prices in the near future:

Coffee and chocolate in danger

Current Biology Volume 24, Issue 11, pR503–R506, 2 June 2014
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.05.035

OPEN access to full text and PDF file

own photo.

PS A few months after my feature appeared, the genome of Coffea canephora was published in Science magazine, accompanied by an excellent perspectives piece arguing that in light of the present dangers to coffee crops, researchers should urgently link up genome info with phenotype characterisation:

A wake-up call with coffee
Dani Zamir
Science 5 September 2014, vol 345, p 1124.
abstract and restricted access to full text

And I'm chuffed that the author cited my feature (even referred to it twice). It doesn't happen every day that my journalistic work gets cited in Science magazine.