Image copyright Manuel Harlan/RSC

Paapa Essiedu, the first black actor to play Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company, has won a top theatre award.

Essiedu scooped best performance in a play at the UK Theatre Awards, which reward shows produced outside London.

The 26-year-old played Shakespeare’s prince in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Two musicals from Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre – Flowers For Mrs Harris and Show Boat – led the other winners, while Vanessa Redgrave and Sir Ian McKellen received honorary awards.

Essiedu said his award was “a huge honour” and that the fact he was the RSC’s first black Hamlet was “significant and insignificant at the same time”.

He said: “It’s significant in that the RSC is a national organisation that should represent everyone in our country regardless of your creed, colour, religion, sexuality, whatever.

“As such you would expect something like this to have happened before. But I think it was really important that it was happening now and we were really proud of the work that we did.”

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Sir Ian McKellen was given an award for his outstanding contribution to British theatre and told the ceremony about the importance of his visits to the three theatres in his home town of Bolton in his youth.

“If it hadn’t been for those local theatres, where I did my first theatregoing, I wouldn’t be an actor, of course not,” the 77-year-old said.

The number of theatres around the country has declined since then, he said – but he added that the standards in those that now exist, like Bolton’s Octagon, were often higher than in the past.

Vanessa Redgrave was presented with the Gielgud Award for excellence in the dramatic arts and told the audience she believed theatre “helps keep society sane”.

“And boy do we need to be kept sane at the moment. And if I’ve helped along the way,” she added with a laugh, “I’m glad.”

Image copyright Johan Persson

Among the other winners, Flowers For Mrs Harris and Show Boat, both directed by Sheffield Theatres’ former artistic director Daniel Evans, shared the award for best musical production.

Clare Burt won best performance in a musical for Flowers for Mrs Harris, a new musical that was adapted from a 1958 novel by Paul Gallico.

Rebecca Trehearn picked up best supporting performance for playing Julie La Verne in Sheffield’s production of classic musical Show Boat, which later transferred to the West End.

The prize for best new play went to Cuttin’ It by Charlene James, a drama about female genital mutilation among teenage girls in the UK.

An operatic adaptation of Sarah Kane’s innovative and intense play 4:48 Psychosis by the Royal Opera and Guildhall School Of Music and Drama earned the prize for achievement in opera.

Choreographer Gary Clarke, who picked up the achievement in dance accolade for Coal, his show about the 1980s mining industry, dedicated it to his home town of Grimethorpe, South Yorkshire, and other mining communities.

And a theatre in a restored 18th Century flour mill on the outskirts of Reading, The Mill at Sonning, was voted the UK’s most welcoming theatre.

The full list of winners:

• Best new play – Cuttin’ It by Charlene James, a Young Vic/Royal Court Theatre co-production with Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Sheffield Theatre and The Yard Theatre
• Best musical production – Flowers for Mrs Harris, directed by Daniel Evans, a Sheffield Theatres Production; and Show Boat, directed by Daniel Evans, a Sheffield Theatres production.
• Best touring production – The Herbal Bed directed by James Dacre, an English Touring Theatre, Royal & Derngate Northampton and Rose Theatre Kingston production.
• Best show for children and young people – The Hobbit, a The Dukes production.
• Best director – Raz Shaw for Wit, a Royal Exchange Theatre production.
• Best performance in a play – Papa Essiedu for Hamlet, a Royal Shakespeare Company production.
• Best performance in a musical – Clare Burt for Flowers for Mrs Harris, a Sheffield Theatres Production.
• Best supporting performance – Rebecca Trehearn for Show Boat, a Sheffield Theatres production.
• Best design – Lez Brotherston for Flowers for Mrs Harris and Show Boat, both Sheffield Theatres productions.
• Achievement in opera – The Royal Opera and Guildhall School of Music and Drama for 4.48 Psychosis in association with the Lyric Hammersmith
• Achievement in dance – Gary Clarke for his vital, heartfelt and socially relevant dance-theatre production Coal
• Promotion of diversity – Belgrade Theatre
• Theatre employee or manager of the year – Diane Belding, Liverpool Empire Theatre
• Achievement in marketing – Northern Ballet
• Best presentation of touring theatre – Northern Stage
• UK’s most welcoming theatre – The Mill at Sonning
• Clothworkers’ award – Northern Stage
• Outstanding contribution to British theatre – Ian McKellen
• Gielgud award for excellence in the dramatic arts – Vanessa Redgrave

The UK Theatre Awards do not cover National Theatre productions or West End shows unless they have transferred from a theatre outside the capital.

The awards were handed out at a ceremony at London’s Guildhall on Sunday.

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Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37584742

USDA orders AEB staff to undergo etiquette and ethics training over threats against Hampton Creeks CEO and plans to disrupt the brands distribution

The American Egg Board, the US Department of Agricultures egg-marketing arm, acted wrongly in its attempt to crush a plant-based mayonnaise startup, the USDAsaid in a report.

The Guardian revealed last year that the American Egg Board (AEB) lobbied for a concerted attack on Hampton Creek, a food company that has created a low-cost plant-based egg replacement and the maker of Just Mayo, a mayonnaise alternative.

According to documents acquired by Freedom of Information Act experts Jeffrey Light and Ryan Shapiro and passed to the Guardian, the AEB advised agriculture giant Unilever how best to pursue action against Hampton Creek, joked about having Hampton Creek founder Josh Tetrick killed, and paid PR firm Edelman to buy coverage praising industrial farming on food blogs in response. The board also discussed ways to have Hampton Creeks products pulled from the Whole Foods supermarket chain.

While the AEB is overseen by the USDA and funded by a federal levy on eggs, it is composed of current and former egg-industry executives.

At the recommendation of the USDA, AEB members will be required to complete additional training regarding proper email etiquette and ethics related to the joking threats, will have to complete yet more ethics training related to the plan to end Just Mayos distribution at Whole Foods, and will have to be trained further still regarding the pop-up ads it had bought against Tetricks name to advertise egg product. The AEB will no longer work with Edelman.

The USDA found the AEB acted correctly when it advised Unilever on the most efficient way to carry out action against Hampton Creek.

Additionally, the inquiry discovered that Joanne Ivy had ordered staff to purge emails that referred to Hampton Creek or its old brand name, Beyond Eggs. Staff did not obey the instructions, and the emails were retrieved, though Ivy herself deleted the Beyond Eggs emails. More training will be required to ensure staff carry out record retention policies.

Ivy, honored as 2015s Egg Person of the Year at the Urner Barry marketing conference, resigned a year ago this month.

Hampton Creek, based in San Francisco, gained media attention because of its feel-good message of wanting to improve the food system with healthier, more environmentally friendly products. But more recently, Bloomberg reported that the startup used contractors to buy its products from supermarket shelves, thus inflating the sales figures given to investors. Hampton Creek did not immediately respond when asked by the Associated Press about the Bloomberg stories.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/07/american-egg-board-usda-hampton-creek

Obesity, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure at unprecedented levels due to spread of fast food and sugary drinks

Junk food and sugary drinks are taking an enormous toll on children around the world, with soaring numbers who are obese and millions developing conditions such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure previously seen only in adults, data has revealed.

Children were facing crippling illnesses and shortened lives because of the spread of the heavily marketed fast-food culture, experts said, and health services around the world would struggle to cope. They predicted that the UN target to stop the rise of childhood obesity by 2025 would be missed.

The three countries with the highest child obesity rates were the South Pacific island nations of Kiribati, Samoa and Micronesia. Among the more populous countries facing the worst scenarios were Egypt where more than a third (35.5%) of children aged five to 17 were overweight or obese in 2013 Greece (31.4%), Saudi Arabia (30.5%), the United States (29.3%), Mexico (28.9%) and the UK (27.7%).

More than 3.5 million children now had type 2 diabetes, which was once unknown in this age group and can lead to horrible complications in later life, such as amputations and blindness. The World Obesity Federation, which compiled the data, predicted that number would rise to 4.1 million by 2025.

About 13.5 million children have impaired glucose tolerance, which is a precursor to diabetes. Around 24 million have high blood pressure and more than 33 million have fatty liver disease as a result of obesity, which is more often associated with alcoholism and can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer.

If anything, the experts said, the figures were an under-estimate because they were based on the numbers of obese children, and some who were classified as overweight would also have the diseases.

The figures are alarming for rich and poor countries alike, signalling soaring medical bills to treat the coming epidemic of disease. But the WOF experts who compiled the data said that, while rich countries were struggling, poorer countries were ill-equipped to cope.

These forecasts should sound an alarm bell for health service managers and health professionals, said Tim Lobstein, the policy director of the WOF. They will have to deal with this rising tide of ill health following the obesity epidemic.

In a sense, we hope these forecasts are wrong: they assume current trends continue, but we are urging governments to take strong measures to reduce childhood obesity, and meet their agreed target of getting the levels of childhood obesity down to 2010 levels before we get to 2025.

The experts, whose findings were published in the Pediatric Obesity journal, said that by 2025, 49 million more children would be obese or overweight than in 2010 a total of 268 million, of which 91 million alone would be obese.

Lobstein, one of the authors of the paper published ahead of World Obesity Day next Tuesday, said the food children were eating was at the heart of the problem and that in poor countries, obesity and stunting went hand in hand.

We find that the large majority of children suffering excess bodyweight are in low- and middle-income countries. Following the recent evidence from the World Bank on the continuing high levels of stunting in children in underdeveloped regions of the world, it is obvious that something is severely wrong with the way our food supplies are developing, he said.

You cannot replace contaminated water with Coca-Cola or Chocolate Nesquik, or a lack of good meals with a pack of fortified noodles, and still expect children to grow healthily. Breastfeeding is rapidly giving way to infant formula in large areas of Asia where markets have tripled in value in a decade an area where we have seen some of the most rapid increases in overweight and obesity.

Stunting and obesity are part of a continuum of poor nutrition, and can be found together in the same communities, the same families, and even the same individual children. Health is a key factor in sustainable development, and healthy food supplies are essential for economic development. Healthy food supplies are also a basic human right for this and the next generation.

The WOF president, Prof Ian Caterson, called for governments to take tough regulatory action to stop junk food companies targeting children.

The obesity epidemic has reached virtually every country in the world, and overweight and obesity levels are continuing to rise in most places, he said. Common risk factors, such as soft drink consumption and sedentary environments, have increased. Fast food advertising continues to really influence food choices and what is eaten, and increasing numbers of families live in urban environments without access to space to exercise or time to exercise.

In the last 10 years, consumption of sugary drinks worldwide increased by a third. More than half of the worlds population live in urban areas, and 80% of young people aged 11-17 fail to get sufficient physical activity.

If governments hope to achieve the WHO target of keeping child obesity at 2010 levels, then the time to act is now. Governments can take a number of actions to help prevent obesity, including introducing tough regulations to protect children from the marketing of unhealthy food, ensuring schools promote healthy eating and physical activity, strengthening planning and building rules to provide safe neighbourhoods, and monitoring the impact of these policies.

Additional reporting by Pamela Duncan

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/07/junk-food-shortening-lives-children-obesity-diabetes-data