This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
Today was Food Day here at #SciAmBlogs, and although I did not participate, there are a lot of great posts around the network that are worth reading. You can read the link roundup by Bora here. Some of my favorites are:
Food waste in the land of "Man vs. Food" by David Wogan. "Food waste at consumer level in industrialized countries (222 million ton) is almost as high as the total net food production in sub- Saharan Africa (230 million ton)." Nearly half of the edible food produced in the USA is never eaten.
You become as you eat by Razib Khan. Biology influences culture, and culture influences biology. Agriculture and animal husbandry changed what and how we eat, but our digestive physiology also had to adapt to process things like wheat and dairy.
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How probiotics may save your life by Rob Dunn. Probiotics are thought to help many digestive ailments, but the actual data to support these claims are slim, and the physiological mechanism for how they might work is still unknown. However, recent research in mice shows a potential mechanism for how one probiotic strain can out-compete harmful H. pylori in the gut.
Will carrots help you see better? No, but chocolate might by Cheryl Murphy. Experimental data suggest that flavonols in dark chocolate increase vision and cognitive performance. I have a post about chocolate in the works for next week as well. :)
Organic honey is a sweet illusion by Alex Wild. "A standard jar of honey from the supermarket requires bees to make a million flower visits. A colony might produce 50 to 100 such jars per year." Because honey production requires so many flowers, bees often stray up to 5 km from their hive when foraging for nectar, and when resources are scarce they can double their radius. It is beyond the power of many organic farmers to restrict the use of pesticides within such a large radius of their hives.
