Previous research suggests detrimental health effects associated with consuming processed foods, including processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and trans fatty acids (TFAs). However, systematic characterization of the dose–response relationships between these foods and health outcomes is limited. Here, using Burden of Proof meta-regression methods, we evaluated the associations between processed meat, SSBs and TFAs and three chronic diseases: type 2 diabetes, ischemic heart disease (IHD) and colorectal cancer. We conservatively estimated that—relative to zero consumption—consuming processed meat (at 0.6–57 g d−1) was associated with at least an 11% average increase in type 2 diabetes risk and a 7% (at 0.78–55 g d−1) increase in colorectal cancer risk. SSB intake (at 1.5–390 g d−1) was associated with at least an 8% average increase in type 2 diabetes risk and a 2% (at 0–365 g d−1) increase in IHD risk. TFA consumption (at 0.25–2.56% of daily energy intake) was associated with at least a 3% average increase in IHD risk. These associations each received two-star ratings reflecting weak relationships or inconsistent input evidence, highlighting both the need for further research and—given the high burden of these chronic diseases—the merit of continuing to recommend limiting consumption of these foods.

Mediocre article: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/02/health/processed-meats-sweet-drinks-disease-wellness

While sustainable diets have predominantly been examined through the lens of individual decision-making, growing evidence underscores the critical role of relational dynamics in the adoption and maintenance of such practices. This study examined the role of relational climate (i.e. cohesion and flexibility) in governing how family units navigate dietary change. Eighty-four individuals who were pursuing a plant-forward diet participated in a 14-day smartphone-based experience sampling study, where they provided qualitative diary entries and quantitative ratings of food consumption, family support, coordination, and tension. Baseline, out-take, and 2-week follow-up surveys investigated the moderating effects of relational climate, as well as change in food consumption, dietary “stage of change,” goal achievement and commitment. Participants from balanced cohesive family systems reported receiving more support in their dietary goal, which in turn, was related to lower animal-product consumption and greater goal achievement and commitment. This work highlights the importance of family-based social support for bolstering more sustainable eating practices and offers novel insights for engaging household systems in the transition toward a greener food system.

Article about this: https://herbivore.club/blog/when-veganism--threatens--family-dinner

Highlights

• •

  Honeybee temporal removal on a small island increased nectar and pollen availability

• •

  Without honeybees, wild bees increased activity and changed hourly patterns

• •

  Without honeybees, wild bees increased nectar intake and optimized search time

• •

  Wild bee abundance declined ∼80% in 4 years, supporting trophic competition

Summary

High densities of managed honeybees (Apis mellifera) can threaten wild bees through exploitative competition, thus leading to population declines of the latter. Although reviews have outlined key steps to demonstrate these impacts—measuring resource overlap, changes in wild bee behavior, and population trends—studies that comprehensively address these aspects are virtually absent. We were granted access to the entire protected island of Giannutri (2.6 km2) and to the apiary (18 hives) located there during the early phase of coexistence between honeybees and wild bees. Using the island as an open-air laboratory, we experimentally manipulated honeybee pressure by closing the hives on selected days during the peak of the wild bee foraging period. In the plants most visited by pollinators, even short-term honeybee removals (11 h per day) increased nectar volume (∼60%) and pollen availability (∼30%). In the absence of honeybees, target wild bees (Anthophora dispar and Bombus terrestris) became dominant in the insect-plant visitation network, and the potential apparent competition significantly decreased. Accordingly, both species intensified their foraging activity and increased nectar suction time, a recognized proxy for the quantity of probed nectar, and Bombus terrestris also shortened the time of pollen searching. Transect monitoring revealed an alarming ∼80% decline in both species over 4 years, consistent with honeybee monopolization of floral resources, thus reducing availability for wild pollinators and altering their foraging budget. These findings underscore the risks of introducing high densities of honeybees into protected areas and emphasize the need for rigorous preventive ecological assessments.

News article version: https://phys.org/news/2025-03-bees-wild-honeybee-competition.html

What if the biggest threat to plant-based health isn’t meat — but misinformation?

Dr. Dean Sherzai is calling for a revolution in how we advocate for vegan nutrition. Instead of relying on viral anecdotes or purity-based ideology, Sherzai makes a compelling case for data literacy, scientific integrity, and humility. He explains why dogma—even in the plant-based world—is hurting the movement and pushing people away.

Learn what it takes to rebuild trust and grow a movement that lasts. Whether you're plant-curious, evidence-minded, or just tired of online nutrition wars, this episode of The Exam Room podcast is a refreshing take on what it takes to push whole foods plant based nutrition forward.

Chapters:

00:00 – Intro: Live from the Lotus Health Foundation Symposium

01:50 – Our crisis of data: why misinformation is the biggest threat

03:15 – Plant-based vs keto: the war of anecdotes

06:00 – Why scientific humility matters more than ideology

08:30 – How to interpret research (and why most people don’t)

12:40 – Olive oil, fish, and plant-based nuance

15:45 – Can one study change everything? No—and here’s why

17:20 – Plant based nutrition and the Mediterranean diet

20:00 – The truth about reversing Alzheimer’s

25:00 – Why reason is sticky, and memes can change minds

29:00 – Why the plant-based movement is stuck—and how to fix it

31:40 – Community health vs elitist purity culture

33:30 – Final thoughts: let’s build trust through better science

"Understanding and safeguarding the social lives of elephants is no longer optional. It's a necessity for ensuring these magnificent animals thrive in an increasingly human-dominated world."

Paper: Knowledge transmission, culture and the consequences of social disruption in wild elephants | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Cultural knowledge is widely presumed to be important for elephants. In all three elephant species, individuals tend to congregate around older conspecifics, creating opportunities for social transmission. However, direct evidence of social learning and cultural traditions in elephants is scarce. Here, we briefly outline that evidence then provide a systematic review of how elephant societies respond to the loss of potentially knowledgeable individuals or opportunities for knowledge transfer, which we characterize as social disruption. We consider observations from 95 peer-reviewed, primary research papers that describe disruption to elephant societies or networks via the removal or death of individuals. Natural deaths were mentioned in 14 papers, while 70 detailed human-caused deaths or disruption. Grouping descriptions according to consequences for behaviour and sociality, and demography and fitness, we show that severely disrupted populations are less cohesive, may exhibit reduced fitness or calf survival and respond inappropriately to threats and predators. We suggest that severe social disruption can inhibit or break potential pathways of information transmission, providing indirect evidence for the role of social transmission in elephants. This has implications for elephant conservation amid increasing anthropogenic change across their habitats.

Purpose of Review

Dairy milk products are dominant in the market; however, plant-based milks are gaining prominence among USA consumers. Many questions remain about how plant-based milk products compare to dairy milk from a nutrition, public health, and planetary health perspective. Here, we compare the retail sales, nutrient profiles, and known health and environmental impacts of the production and consumption of dairy and plant-based milks and identify knowledge gaps for future studies. For our plant-based milk comparisons, we reviewed almond, soy, oat, coconut, rice, pea, cashew, and other plant-based milks as data were available.

Recent Findings

The retail unit price of plant-based milks was generally higher than that of cow’s milk, making it less accessible to lower-income groups. Many plant-based milks are fortified to match the micronutrient profile of dairy milk more closely. Notable differences remained, especially in protein, zinc, and potassium, depending on the base ingredient and individual product. Some plant-based milks contain added sugar to improve flavor. Plant-based milks were generally associated with lower environmental impacts (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, water use) than cow’s milk, with the notable exception of the higher water footprint of almond milk.

Summary

This review of recent studies and consumer purchases confirmed that retail sales of plant-based milks are increasing and shifting among products. Further research is needed to better characterize the environmental impacts of newer plant-based milks, such as cashew, hemp, and pea milks; consumer attitudes and behavior towards plant-based milks; and the safety and potential health effects related to their long-term and more frequent consumption.

News article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2025/04/18/pea-milk-plant-based-nutrition-climate/

Highlights

• Global feed supply displaces environmental impacts of livestock rearing from feed consuming to feed producing countries. • Impacts vary across countries and livestock products, with global feed trade shaping impact profiles. • The origin and type of feed consumed influence the magnitude and distribution of the impacts. • The study identifies livestock production systems qualifying as priority sustainability targets.

Driven by a growing and more affluent population, changing diets and lifestyles, the demand for livestock products is expected to surge in the next decades. Satisfying this demand will result in additional pressures on land systems. The increasingly globalized supply chains of the livestock economy will further decouple many of these impacts from the places where livestock are reared. In this study, we determined the impact intensities of global livestock production across three environmental indicators: deforestation, biodiversity loss and marine eutrophication. To this end, we used global data on the production of crops (and grass), their trade and use as feed in livestock-production systems, as well as livestock production data. We found the highest deforestation and biodiversity impact intensities in the tropics in Central and South America, Southeast Asia and Central Western Africa. In contrast, the highest values for marine eutrophication intensities were found in countries located in Northern Europe and in South and in East Asia. Our analyses show differences caused by varying efficiencies in livestock production systems and by the sourcing patterns of feed items. In grazing systems for the production of ruminant meat, for example, the resulting impact intensities are dominated by the consumption of grass. In intensive and industrialized production systems, the bulk of the deforestation and, to a lesser extent, biodiversity impacts are linked to imported soybean feed. Our results can help identify livestock production systems and countries that would qualify as priority action targets, as well as potential entry points to make their livestock production systems more sustainable. They can also be used to assist consumers in comparing impacts across and within livestock food product types. Ultimately, understanding the environmental impacts embodied in global supply chains of livestock products can help create better regulatory policies and science-based interventions for protecting terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

(no)

Main related paper:

Beneficial effects of linoleic acid on cardiometabolic health: an update - PubMed

Episode main link (you can find other podcast platforms there): https://theproof.com/seed-oils-dangerous-or-misunderstood-bill-harris-phd-on-the-truth-about-omega-6-fats/

• Omega-6 Fats and Health Overview (00:00)
• Why the Review Was Updated (01:22)
• What Is Linoleic Acid? (06:47)
• Linoleic Intake Over Time & Health Links (12:45)
• Research Methods and Key Evidence (16:25)
• Omega-6 and Inflammation Explained (41:00)
• Common Myths About Seed Oils (44:37)
• The Oxidation Concern with Seed Oils (49:20)
• Omega-6 vs Omega-3: The Real Story (53:39)
• Blood Sugar, Insulin & Linoleic Acid (01:03:48)
• Heart Health and Linoleic Benefits (01:05:44)
• Cancer Risk and Seed Oils (01:13:49)
• Public Health and Future Research (01:16:55)
• How to Use Vegetable Oils Wisely (01:25:17)
• Wrap-Up and Takeaway Advice (01:32:22)

In this episode, we cover:

• The origins of omega-6 controversy and the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio
• Whether linoleic acid is truly “pro-inflammatory”
• What the highest quality human studies say about disease risk and mortality
• Oxidation, lipid peroxidation, and the truth about heating seed oils
• How linoleic acid compares to saturated fat in terms of your risk of disease
• Why removing seed oils from the food supply could backfire
• The real drivers of chronic disease—and what actually deserves our attention
• How Dr Harris recommends you think about choosing cooking oils at the grocery store

We also address the broader issue of cherry-picked mechanistic studies and why outcome data—like heart attacks and mortality—need to be front and centre when we assess health claims. Bill brings deep expertise and scientific humility to this conversation. If you’ve felt confused by the anti-seed oil narrative, this episode will hopefully bring clarity and reduce some of the fear.

Short video by Mic🎤

Vegan diet, processed foods, and body weight: a secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial | Nutrition & Metabolism | Full Text

Low-fat plant-based diets cause weight loss in clinical trials. However, many foods are highly processed, raising the question as to their effect on body weight. This secondary analysis assessed the associations between changes in processed food intake and weight loss in 244 overweight adults randomly assigned to a vegan (n = 122) or control group (n = 122) for 16 weeks. Three-day dietary records were analyzed using the NOVA system, which categorizes foods from 1 to 4, based on degree of processing. A repeated measure ANOVA, Pearson correlations, and a multivariate regression model were used for statistical analysis. The consumption of animal foods in categories 1–4 decreased in the vegan group, compared with the control group. Body weight decreased in the vegan group (treatment effect − 5.9 kg [95% CI -6.7 to -5.0]; Gxt, p < 0.001). Changes in consumption of animal foods in categories 1–4 were positively associated with changes in body weight: r = + 0.34; p < 0.001 for category 1; r = + 0.18; p = 0.008 for category 2; r = + 0.17; p = 0.01 for category 3; and r = + 0.22; p = 0.001 for category 4. In no NOVA category was the consumption of plant-based processed foods positively and significantly associated with weight gain. The top three independent predictors of weight loss were reduced intakes of processed, unprocessed or minimally processed, and ultra-processed animal foods. These findings suggest that replacing animal products with plant-based foods may be an effective weight-loss strategy, even when processed plant-based foods are included.

Significance

Beef is more resource intensive per gram of edible protein than most other food items. Yet, grass-fed beef is sometimes promoted as environmentally desirable based on the expectation that cattle grazing may enhance soil carbon sequestration, thus offsetting production emissions. We quantitatively examine this view by integrating empirical observations with a beef herd model that uses standard animal science equations. We find that even under optimistic rangeland sequestration, grass-fed beef is not less carbon intensive than industrial beef and 3 to 40 times as carbon intensive as most plant and animal alternatives.

Abstract

The high resource intensity of industrial beef in high-income economies has prompted growing interest in alternative, potentially lower environmental impact beef production pathways. Of those, grass feeding is promoted by some as one such alternative, but rigorous quantification of this claim is required. Motivated to bridge this knowledge gap, we integrate empirical evidence with a model based on authoritative equations governing beef cattle performance to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions of producing grass-fed beef. Because geographical specificity and dependence on agricultural intensity are key, we model widely varied herds, from extensive operations on semiarid, marginal rangelands to partially industrial, intensive ones in lusher, more accommodating settings. We find that emissions per kg protein of even the most efficient grass-fed beef are 10 to 25% higher than those of industrial US beef and 3- to over 40-fold higher than a wide range of plant and animal alternatives. Soil sequestration enhancement by rangeland grazing reduces these emissions from 280–390 to 180–290 kg CO2eq (kg protein)−1, still somewhat above industrial beef’s 180 to 220 kg CO2eq (kg protein)−1, and well above nonbeef alternatives’ 10 to 70 kg CO2eq (kg protein)−1. These differences prove robust across a broad set of combinations of grass-fed beef operation types, management practices, and ration qualities. Consequently, even with maximal credit for putative sequestration enhancement, grass-fed beef is still no less carbon intensive than industrial beef, and severalfold more intensive than nonbeef alternatives.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/03/17/grass-fed-beef-health-emissions/

Highlights

• •

  Observers see meat alternative consumers as moral, environmentally, and health-conscious.

• •

  They elicit admiration, envy, fear, contempt, and anger in observers.

• •

  Observers associate a higher level of social exclusion and aggression with them.

• •

  Observers' higher need for status contributes to greater envy and anger.

• •

  Observers' need for group affiliation is not connected to their views.

Abstract

As a part of the battle against climate change, many plant-based meat alternative products have been launched in recent years—without notable success. One explanation could be that consumers of meat alternatives are seen as socially deviant from those consuming animal-based protein products. This study adopts the BIAS Map framework, which has been underutilized in the food consumption research, in order to reveal the stereotypical beliefs, emotional responses, and behavioral tendencies that consumers of meat alternatives evoke in observers. An online experiment is conducted, participants (N = 3600) from four European countries evaluate fictitious consumers using three shopping lists that include meat products and their alternatives in varying combinations. The results reveal a conflicting picture of those who are believed to favor meat alternatives. They are seen as environmentally friendly, health-conscious people who adhere to high moral standards, and are worthy of admiration. But on the contrary, they also elicit fear, contempt, and anger in observers, who as a result socially exclude and even show aggression toward them. Second, the findings produce a novel insight regarding moderation effects related to observers' need for affiliation and status. Those high in need of affiliation demonstrate the strongest positive change in their relation to consumers who appear to favor both traditional meat products and their more modern alternatives. Additionally, those high in need of status tend to evaluate consumers favoring the modern alternatives as evoking more anger and envy, compared with consumers favoring traditional meat products. This study has several theoretical, managerial, and societal implications.

https://phys.org/news/2025-03-based-diet-frowned-europe.html

Many animal species have been shown to discriminate between individual humans in captive settings and may use a variety of cues to do so. Empirical evidence remains scarce for animals in the wild, however, particularly in aquatic contexts. For the first time, we investigated discrimination of individual humans by fish in the wild. We first trained two species of fish, saddled sea bream Oblada melanura and black sea bream Spondyliosoma cantharus, to follow a human diver to obtain a food reward. We then investigated whether they could discriminate between two human divers and follow the correct one in an operant-conditioning paradigm. We show that both species were able to quickly learn to discriminate between the two divers when they wore different diving gear. However, they showed no preference when both divers wore identical gear, suggesting that discrimination is based predominantly on visual cues from the dive gear. We discuss the implications of these results for ethical considerations and research practices.

News article: Experiments show wild fish can recognize individual divers

Between 3000 BCE and 1800 CE there were more than sixty ‘mega-empires’ that, at the peak, controlled an area of at least one million square kilometres. What were the forces that kept together such huge pre-industrial states? I propose a model for one route to mega-empire, motivated by imperial dynamics in eastern Asia, the world region with the highest concentration of mega-empires. This ‘mirror-empires’ model proposes that antagonistic interactions between nomadic pastoralists and settled agriculturalists result in an autocatalytic process, which pressures both nomadic and farming polities to scale up polity size, and thus military power. The model suggests that location near a steppe frontier should correlate with the frequency of imperiogenesis. A worldwide survey supports this prediction: over 90% of mega-empires arose within or next to the Old World’s arid belt, running from the Sahara desert to the Gobi desert. Specific case studies are also plausibly explained by this model. There are, however, other possible mechanisms for generating empires, of which a few are discussed at the end of the article.

No article to link, so let me explain:

Turchin, who studies history in a more data-science way, found that empires in the past 4000 years seem to pop up in pairs, likely as a result of the escalating arms race between agriculturalists and pastoralists. Pastoralists are used to mobility and trade (using animals for transport); agriculturalists use less land, but still have the tendency to expand for land and to secure trade routes. Obviously, expanding trade means more capital accumulation, and that applies to both. Pastoralists tend to rely on trade as they don't live off a "carnivore diet", but raise the "living stocks" as capital to grow wealth via trade.

The conflict is ancient and ongoing in many parts of the world, usually found as "farmer-herder conflict" in the literature.

Unrelated to the article, this is how I'm interpreting the ongoing war in Sudan, for example.

No news article for this, so I'll just mention some points:

• PROTEIN THO
• because of increases in GHGs, plants may grow more ("greening"), but the growth is rich in carbohydrates, leaving behind relatively a lot of other nutrients, especially Nitrogen based ones (amino acids)
• while ruminants can digest low-nutrient plant matter better than others, it doesn't make proteins appear out of nowhere. Large herbivores are already at the far end of "low nutrient use"
• this will lead to lower growth rates
• the low growth rates will mean huge losses for animal farmers, the rancher/herder types especially, the ones who rely on pastures and hay instead of concentrated feed
• they'll want to fertilize grasslands with nitrogen fertilizers (like planted grasslands... like lawns, which are perennial feed crops)
• they'll want to use more feed like soybeans

Summary

The horizontal transmission of cultural knowledge is a powerful mechanism of evolutionary change1. Across taxa, group-specific cultural traditions are expressed in diverse contexts, such as foraging, tool use, self-care and socialization2. These traditions arise when group members converge on specific behavioral phenotypes. When these behavioral phenotypes involve communicative signals, such as gestures, they are termed dialects3. However, gestural dialects are rare in non-humans3. Behavioral phenotypes and traditions can also be lost, a well-documented phenomenon in humans4, but rarely documented in non-human animals5. Here, we find that chimpanzee gestures produced in copulation solicitations show culturally established phenotypes and undergo cultural loss due to human-induced population decline.

Article about the study: Human influence has led to loss of dialects in chimpanzees, long-term study suggests

Warning: it has carnist bias recommending fish and one egg a day but points out the dangers of consuming animal products.

As plant-based diets gain traction, interest in their impacts on the gut microbiome is growing. However, little is known about diet-pattern-specific metagenomic profiles across populations. Here we considered 21,561 individuals spanning 5 independent, multinational, human cohorts to map how differences in diet pattern (omnivore, vegetarian and vegan) are reflected in gut microbiomes. Microbial profiles distinguished these common diet patterns well (mean AUC = 0.85). Red meat was a strong driver of omnivore microbiomes, with corresponding signature microbes (for example, Ruminococcus torques, Bilophila wadsworthia and Alistipes putredinis) negatively correlated with host cardiometabolic health. Conversely, vegan signature microbes were correlated with favourable cardiometabolic markers and were enriched in omnivores consuming more plant-based foods. Diet-specific gut microbes partially overlapped with food microbiomes, especially with dairy microbes, for example, Streptococcus thermophilus, and typical soil microbes in vegans. The signatures of common western diet patterns can support future nutritional interventions and epidemiology.

News version: Gut Microbiome Signatures of Different Diets Revealed - EMJ

To keep health as a unifying force, we must put resources into tackling health misinformation and disinformation - The Lancet

Health is political. This is what many practitioners of public and clinical health believe. Health and health policy are shaped by the political ideology of governments, whether that means more money to invest in health systems or less regulation on health-harming products. Health can also cut across political lines because health is a universally shared value. Everyone wants their loved ones to be healthy, so framing societal issues as health issues can draw people from across the political spectrum to advocate for change and policies. The health community has had successes using this strategy with, for example, the climate crisis and gun violence. Framing climate change in the context of its health implications has helped make it a more accessible and tangible topic to many people.1 Framing gun violence as a public health issue assisted in the topic becoming less politicised in some countries.2 But in recent years health has been the subject of unprecedented polarisation, begging the question: is health no longer a unifying force, but a dividing one?

Abstract

The terms ‘vegansexuality’ and ‘vegansexuals’ entered popular discourse following substantial media interest in a New Zealand-based academic study on ethical consumption that noted that some vegans engaged in sexual relationships and intimate partnerships only with other vegans. At this time it was suggested that a spectrum existed in relation to cruelty-free consumption and sexual relationships: at one end of this spectrum, a form of sexual preference influenced by veganism entailed an increased likelihood of sexual attraction towards those who shared similar beliefs regarding the exploitation of non-human animals; at the other end of the spectrum such a propensity might manifest as a strong sexual aversion to the bodies of those who consume meat and other animal products. The extensive media hype about (and public response to) vegansexuality was predominantly negative and derogatory towards ‘vegansexuals’ and vegans/vegetarians. A particular aggression was evident in online comments by those positioned as heterosexual meat-eating men. In this article we examine the hostile responses to vegansexuality and veganism posted by such men on internet news and journalism sites, personal blogs and chatrooms. We argue that the rhetoric associated with this backlash constructs vegansexuals — and vegans more generally — as (sexual) losers, cowards, deviants, failures and bigots. Furthermore, we suggest that the vigorous reactions of self-identified omnivorous men demonstrate how the notion of alternative sexual practices predicated on the refusal of meat culture radically challenges the powerful links between meat-eating, masculinity and virility in western societies.

An educational video about the methods in the papers we talk about, in context.

Some papers and books are linked in the YT description.

I don't like that "PlantChompers" switched to "Viva Longevity", but I appreciate these types of videos.

Isotopic evidence of high reliance on plant food among Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers at Taforalt, Morocco | Nature Ecology & Evolution

The transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture stands as one of the most important dietary revolutions in human history. Yet, due to a scarcity of well-preserved human remains from Pleistocene sites, little is known about the dietary practices of pre-agricultural human groups. Here we present the isotopic evidence of pronounced plant reliance among Late Stone Age hunter-gatherers from North Africa (15,000–13,000 cal BP), predating the advent of agriculture by several millennia. Employing a comprehensive multi-isotopic approach, we conducted zinc (δ66Zn) and strontium (87Sr/86Sr) analysis on dental enamel, bulk carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) and sulfur (δ34S) isotope analysis on dentin and bone collagen, and single amino acid analysis on human and faunal remains from Taforalt (Morocco). Our results unequivocally demonstrate a substantial plant-based component in the diets of these hunter-gatherers. This distinct dietary pattern challenges the prevailing notion of high reliance on animal proteins among pre-agricultural human groups. It also raises intriguing questions surrounding the absence of agricultural development in North Africa during the early Holocene. This study underscores the importance of investigating dietary practices during the transition to agriculture and provides insights into the complexities of human subsistence strategies across different regions.

Paper links in article.

The entire lifecycle of raising animals for beef production — from planting and harvesting feed crops to transportation, processing, and refrigeration — consumes a very substantial amount of energy, mostly coming from fossil fuels.

Paper:

Energy input and food output: The energy imbalance across regional agrifood systems | PNAS Nexus | Oxford Academic

Biomass was the principal energy source in preindustrial societies; their agriculture provided more energy than it required. Thus, the energy return on energy investment (EROEI) needed to be >1. Recent studies have indicated that this may not be the case for modern industrialized agrifood systems (AFSs). Although the green revolution radically improved agricultural yields, it came at the expense of increased energy inputs, mainly in the form of fossil fuels. AFSs relying on external energy pose a food security risk, an economic issue for agricultural producers, and an environmental issue for all. Previous EROEI studies investigated mainly certain groups of commodities, typically at the local or national level. Here, a comprehensive global analysis shows that current AFSs have a lower EROEI than previously estimated. Globally, EROEI has increased from 0.68 in 1995 to 0.91 in 2019. In low-income regions, AFSs are still energy sources, but their EROEI has declined with increasing wealth, reflecting the growing utilization of fossil fuels. AFSs of high-income regions are energy sinks, although their EROEI has improved. Food processing is responsible for 40% of the total energy use in the global AFS, notably larger than fertilizer, which accounts for 17%. More than half of the energy use in food processing is for livestock products that also require disproportionate energy input through their inefficient conversion of (human-edible) feed. Livestock products use 60% of energy inputs while delivering <20% of food calories.

The paper itself:

Integration of lipidomics with targeted, single cell, and spatial transcriptomics defines an unresolved pro-inflammatory state in colon cancer

Abstract

Background Over a century ago, Virchow proposed that cancer represents a chronically inflamed, poorly healing wound. Normal wound healing is represented by a transitory phase of inflammation, followed by a pro-resolution phase, with prostaglandin (PGE2/PGD2)-induced ‘lipid class switching’ producing inflammation-quenching lipoxins (LXA4, LXB4).

Objective We explored if lipid dysregulation in colorectal cancers (CRCs) is driven by a failure to resolve inflammation.

Design We performed liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) untargeted analysis of 40 human CRC and normal paired samples and targeted, quantitative analysis of 81 human CRC and normal paired samples. We integrated analysis of lipidomics, quantitative reverse transcription-PCR, large scale gene expression, and spatial transcriptomics with public scRNASEQ data to characterize pattern, expression and cellular localisation of genes that produce and modify lipid mediators.

Results Targeted, quantitative LC–MS/MS demonstrated a marked imbalance of pro-inflammatory mediators, with a dearth of resolving lipid mediators. In tumours, we observed prominent over-expression of arachidonic acid derivatives, the genes encoding their synthetic enzymes and receptors, but poor expression of genes producing pro-resolving synthetic enzymes and resultant lipoxins (LXA4, LXB4) and associated receptors. These results indicate that CRC is the product of defective lipid class switching likely related to inadequate or ineffective levels of PGE2/PGD2.

Conclusion We show that the lipidomic profile of CRC tumours exhibits a distinct pro-inflammatory bias with a deficiency of endogenous resolving mediators secondary to defective lipid class switching. These observations pave the way for ‘resolution medicine’, a novel therapeutic approach for inducing or providing resolvins to mitigate the chronic inflammation driving cancer growth and progression.