Junk food addiction: How Big Food hooks you just as cigarettes and cocaine trigger cravings
Along with speed, “addiction is also deeply enmeshed with memory and the memories we create for food are typically stronger and longer lasting than any other substance. Childhood memories of food can wield an uncanny power over our eating habits for the rest of our lives.”
Biden ‘continues to be fit for duty,’ his doctor says after president undergoes annual physical
After he returned to the White House on Wednesday, Biden attended an event on combating crime and suggested that when it came to his health “everything is squared away” and “there is nothing different than last year.” He also joked about his age and people thinking “I look too young.”
Environmentalists push Nigeria to delay Shell’s $2.4 billion sale of assets in sorely polluted Niger Delta
Activists say Shell has a history of poor divestment in the region. They point to a wellhead blowout in the Santa Barbara River, which flows through the Niger Delta, in 2021. The wellhead wasn’t producing but wasn’t decommissioned by Shell or its new owners, Aiteo Eastern E & P. The facility spewed crude oil and associated gas for 38 days and caused planet-warming methane to be released into the atmosphere, killed fish and devastated riverside farms.
Nairobi, Kenya: Report warns harmful waste is going to cost the world $640 billion annually
Waste prevention measures and improved waste management could reduce those costs, but there are significant barriers to change, such as weak enforcement mechanisms, the report said. A treaty to address plastics pollution, which does not biodegrade and can cause serious health impacts, is being negotiated, with a fourth round of talks scheduled for April.
With world’s lowest fertility rate already South Korean women prefer career growth to having babies
Since 2018, South Korea has been the only Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) member with a rate below 1, defying the billions of dollars spent by the country to try to reverse the trend that led the population to decline for a fourth straight year in 2023.
Lid off: Experts accuse US of imposing Covid vaccines use to protect bioweapons industry
David Gortler, a doctor of pharmacy and a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington, DC, focusing on FDA oversight and drug safety, said the lipid nanoparticles used in Covid-19 vaccines are “quite new” and as such, lack evidence of their safety.
US censorship: First Amendment must keep pace with ‘the rise of behemoth social media platforms’
An amicus brief is filed by non-parties to a lawsuit to provide information that has a bearing on the issues and to assist the court in reaching the correct decision.
South African animal rights activists up in arms after ship with 19,000 cattle causes a big stink in Cape Town
The National Council of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals sent a veterinary consultant onboard the ship to assess the welfare of the animals, it said. The SPCA’s council said it was strongly opposed to the export of live animals by sea.
With wheat-based diets blamed for rising lifestyle diseases in Africa, scientists are resorting to indigenous crops to solve food insecurity
The benefits of fonio are so marked that academics and policymakers are now calling for the grain – alongside other indigenous foods, such as Ethiopia’s teff, as well as cassava and various millets and legumes – to be embraced more widely across Africa to improve food security.
Researchers at Washington University create ‘meat-rice’ they say is fleshier, has more protein
According to the study, it’s essentially the same as eating 100 grams of rice with one gram of beef brisket – less than half a teaspoon. That’s because the beef-cell content is low and the cells probably form just a film over the rice, says John Yuen, a tissue engineer and molecular biologist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. He says the nutritional content could be boosted by increasing the number of bovine cells on the rice grains.
