Instagram-friendly women’s vitamin startup Ritual raises $10.5M series A

Subscription vitamin startup Ritual has taken off with millennial women, thanks in part to its “super-shareable” branding and packaging. And venture capitalists have noticed—Ritual just secured investment money from Founders Fund, Forerunner, Norwest Venture Partners and Upfront Ventures. The company says the funding will help it develop new products including prenatal vitamins. Read more at Forbes…

Losing it in the anti-dieting age

A change has been taking shape over the past few decades: People no longer want to diet—they want to be healthy and strong and well. They want a holistic approach to eating that will change their bodies in a sustainable way. That’s meant the diet industry has had to pivot. Read more at The New York Times…

If everyone ate beans instead of beef

According to a team of scientists from Oregon State University, Bard College and Loma Linda University, if all Americans replaced the beef they eat with beans, the U.S. could achieve somewhere between half and three-fourths of its greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals set by President Obama in 2009. Read more at The Atlantic…

Beyond pantries: This food bank invests in the local community

Tom Ferraro, founder of Rochester, New York-based food bank Foodlink, set out to solve a problem that wasn’t even his food bank's own: Despite his county being the biggest producer of apples in New York, local school children were being served apples from Washington—most of which were ending up uneaten in the trash. Ferraro had read a study that children were more likely to eat sliced fruit and knew Foodlink had the facilities to wash and slice apples, so he began purchasing some from local farmers, processing and packaging them, and selling them back to the school. Since July 2014, the program has invest $600,000 into the local agriculture economy, and more children are eating the sliced apples. Read more at NPR… 

Monsanto emails raise issue of influencing research on Roundup weed killer

Newly released documents in a lawsuit against the agrochemical giant raise questions about its efforts to influence the press and research about the safety of glyphosate, the main ingredient in its weedkiller Roundup. They also show talks about safety concerns within the company itself. Read more at The New York Times…