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Archive for the ‘food’ category: Page 269

Mar 2, 2018

Daily Pill Shows Promise For Alleviating Life-Threatening Peanut Allergies

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, health

Imagine constantly worrying that something you eat is going to cause your throat to swell shut or your heart to stop beating. That’s the reality people with severe peanut allergies must live with every day, because their bodies launch out-of-control immune responses against even a trace of peanut protein.

But now, relief may be on the horizon. A phase 3 clinical trial by pharmaceutical company Aimmune Therapeutics shows that gradual and methodical exposure to purified peanut protein can train the body to drastically tone down the reaction. After one year of daily treatment with the company’s peanut protein-filled capsules, currently called AR101, study participants could safely tolerate 30 times more allergen than they could before the trial began.

The trial included 496 children aged 4 to 17 with allergies so severe that they could not ingest more than 30 milligrams of peanut protein without experiencing moderate to highly dangerous effects. For reference, one peanut contains 250 to 350 milligrams of peanut protein.

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Feb 28, 2018

Scientists are breeding super-nutritious crops to help solve global hunger

Posted by in category: food

Biofortification uses conventional plant breeding techniques to enhance the micro-nutrient concentration of staple crops.

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Feb 27, 2018

Norway’s Global Seed Vault set for multimillion-dollar fortification

Posted by in categories: business, existential risks, food, security

It has proposed spending a total of US$12.7 million on technical upgrades to the vault to better protect the more than 930,000 seed varieties inside. It has completed a feasibility study and plans to move ahead with the construction of a new concrete access tunnel and a new service building for the emergency power, refrigeration units and electrical equipment.


Global food security is serious business, and when you have water seeping into a doomsday facility built to shore up food supplies for the future, well, that’s hardly ideal. But such breaches should be a thing of the past, with Norwegian authorities overseeing the Svalbard Global Seed Vault planning a multi-million dollar overhaul of the structure.

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Feb 26, 2018

Caloric Restriction Improves Regeneration in Intestinal Tissue

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food

Caloric restriction has long been known to increase the lifespan and healthspan of most studied animals. Research also shows that animals given a calorie-restricted diet are also generally more able to regenerate tissue damage following injury.

Caloric restriction improves tissue regeneration

A new study by the Lengner lab at the University of Pennsylvania has identified the actual cells responsible for this increased regenerative capacity in intestinal tissue[1]. The researchers found that when a mouse given a calorie-restricted diet is exposed to radiation, a specialized type of stem cell known as a reserve stem cell is able to survive and rapidly repair intestinal tissues.

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Feb 22, 2018

You Don’t Need a Personal Genetics Test to Take Charge of Your Health

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, genetics, health

That in-home DNA test won’t tell you much about how to eat or exercise. Fortunately, you don’t need it to.

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Feb 17, 2018

Lab-Grown Meat Is Coming, Whether You Like It or Not

Posted by in categories: engineering, food

Scientists have been culturing meat in labs for years, but Just and other startups like Finless Foods, which is growing fish meat, have been feverishly pursuing this so-called “clean meat” of late. Just is chasing a cultured chorizo and a cultured nugget in addition to the foie gras. And Tetrick claims his startup has finally made the process cost-effective enough to take to market: At the end of this year, he says, Just will officially introduce an as yet undisclosed lab-grown meat, the first time the stuff will hit shelves.

The challenges of engineering meat in the lab is one thing, but convincing consumers to turn away from the storied kill-it-and-grill-it method of eating is another. And while it’s easy to imagine how lab-grown meat would be better for the planet, there’s actually little data to back that up.

Whether or not Just makes it to market this year, and whether or not their meat tastes and smells and feels like meat, the era of clean meat is approaching. (Just declined to let us taste their food, saying it wasn’t ready for public consumption.) Soon enough, burgers will grow not just in fields, but in vats. Farther down the line, your T-bones may not come from a cow, at least not in the traditional sense. If the sound of that bothers you, know that you’re not alone.

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Feb 14, 2018

Want to Lose Weight? Here’s How To Get 10 Servings Of Fruit And Vegetables Daily

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, life extension

Summary: Practical tips on how to consume 10 servings of fruits and vegetables daily to lose weight and improve health. [This article first appeared on the LongevityFacts website. Author: Brady Hartman.]

Fruits and vegetables are rich in phytonutrients and are an integral part of the healthiest diet plans. Here are practical tips on how to incorporate more plant foods into your meals.

Due to a poor diet, about half of all American adults have one or more preventable chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, overweight, obesity or cardiovascular disease. A large body of evidence, including newly published research on the health benefits of fruit and vegetables, shows that increased consumption of whole plant foods is linked to reduced risk of death and chronic diseases.

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Feb 14, 2018

Heart Healthy Chocolate What You Need to Know

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, health

Take Home Message

  • The EPIC Systematic Review showed that chocolate lowered the risk of coronary heart disease by 25% and cardiovascular deaths by 45%.
  • Raw cocoa powder is lower in calories when compared to chocolate.
  • Cocoa has many antioxidants called flavonols, shown to be heart healthy.
  • Research suggests that cocoa reduces atrial fibrillation, improves cholesterol, benefits vascular health and reduces blood pressure.
  • Cocoa is the key ingredient in heart healthy chocolate.
  • Dark chocolate is also heart healthy and is higher in flavonols than cocoa powder. Dark chocolate has more fat.
  • Dark chocolate and cocoa powder both have their advantages.
  • To get the heart health benefits of chocolate without the extra calories, add a pure cocoa powder to foods you normally consume.

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Feb 14, 2018

This Vending Machine Gives Free Food To The Homeless

Posted by in category: food

This free vending machine offers food and supplies to the homeless.

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Feb 13, 2018

Decentralized Digital Identities and Blockchain – The Future as We See It

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, food, neuroscience, security

Howdy folks.

I hope you’ll find today’s post as interesting as I do. It’s a bit of brain candy and outlines an exciting vision for the future of digital identities.

Over the last 12 months we’ve invested in incubating a set of ideas for using Blockchain (and other distributed ledger technologies) to create new types of digital identities, identities designed from the ground up to enhance personal privacy, security and control. We’re pretty excited by what we’ve learned and by the new partnerships we’ve formed in the process. Today we’re taking the opportunity to share our thinking and direction with you. This blog is part of a series and follows on Peggy Johnson’s blog post announcing that Microsoft has joined the ID2020 initiative. If you haven’t already Peggy’s post, I would recommend reading it first.

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