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Category: food – Page 191

It has previously been discovered that tanycytes—cells found in part of the brain that controls —detect nutrients in and tell the brain directly about the food we have eaten.

Tanycytes do this by responding to found in foods, via the same receptors that sense the flavor of amino acids (“umami” taste), which are found in the taste buds of the tongue.

In the paper ‘Hypothalamic tanycytes generate acute hyperphagia through activation of the arcuate neuronal network.’ published today, the 8th June, in the journal PNAS, researchers from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, explain how tanycytes can increase appetite.

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Mentions aging!

Obesity affects more than 40 percent of adults in the United States and 13 percent of the global population. With obesity comes a variety of other interconnected diseases including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and fatty liver disease, which makes the disease one of the most difficult—and most crucial—to treat.

“Obesity is the biggest health problem in the United States. But, it is hard for people to lose weight and keep it off; being on a diet can be so difficult. So, a pharmacological approach, or a drug, could help out and would be beneficial for all of society,” said Webster Santos, professor of chemistry and the Cliff and Agnes Lilly Faculty Fellow of Drug Discovery in the College of Science at Virginia Tech.

Santos and his colleagues have recently identified a small mitochondrial uncoupler, named BAM15, that decreases the body fat mass of mice without affecting food intake and muscle mass or increasing body temperature. Additionally, the molecule decreases insulin resistance and has on oxidative stress and inflammation.

Continue reading “Drug researcher develops ‘fat burning’ molecule that has implications for treatment of obesity” | >

From robots that flip burgers in California to ones that serve up bratwursts in Berlin, we are starting to see how machines can play sous-chef in kitchens around the world. But scientists at the University of Cambridge have been exploring how these culinary robots might not only do some of the heavy lifting but actually elevate the dining experience for the humans they serve, demonstrating some early success in a robot trained to cook omelettes.

The research project is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge researchers and domestic appliance company Beko, with the scientists setting out to take robotic cooking into new territory. Where robot chefs have been developed to prepare pizzas, pancakes and other items, the team was interested in how it might be possible to optimize the robot’s approach and produce a tastier meal based on human feedback.

“Cooking is a really interesting problem for roboticists, as humans can never be totally objective when it comes to food, so how do we as scientists assess whether the robot has done a good job?” says Dr Fumiya Iida from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who led the research.

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The number of startup companies and the amount of investment dollars going into the field of cultivated meat has exceeded—and will likely continue to exceed—annual exponential growth.

As we race to find sustainable ways to feed the world’s insatiable appetite for meat, the field of cultivated meat has exceeded annual exponential growth— more than doubling every year in terms of the number of startup companies and investment dollars. In late 2015, one startup raised a few hundred thousand dollars. In 2020, there are dozens of cultivated meat companies around the world pursuing everything from shrimp and bluefin tuna to steak and kangaroo.

This year, the sector took another significant step forward when cultivated meat first-mover Memphis Meats closed a $161 million Series B funding round from lead investors Softbank, Norwest, and Temasek. This amount is greater than all other publicly disclosed investments in cultivated meat companies combined and brings total investment in the startup to $181 million.

What does an investment like this mean for cultivated meat companies and the field as a whole? Having tracked the sector since its inception, I think there are three key takeaways.

Continue reading “Huge 1 Million Investment Means Meat Without the Animal Is Here” | >

Singapore has only 1% of its land available for agriculture, so it imports 90% of its food requirements. The government is looking to curb this dependence on outside food sources under a programme titled ‘30 by 30,’ which aims to allow Singapore to grow 30% of its produce by the year 2030. Local vertical farms like Sustenir are at the forefront of bringing about this change. VICE visits the sustainable start-up to understand the future of food.

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Continue reading “Can Vertical Farms Fix the Future of Food?” | >

Imperial College London has partnered with British startup Arborea to install the world’s first “Biosolar Leaf” technology on its roof. It is first of the kind system to use the microscopic plant to purify the air while producing plant-based food.

Julian Melchiorri CEO of Arborea who pioneered “Biosolar Leaf” technology said – “There has to be a way to feed all the world with healthy and sustainable food by making it the primary choice, not the alternative!”

The system works by growing microscopic plants like blue-green algae, phytoplankton on a solar grid-like layout. In fact, just one acre of “Biosolar Leaf” can remove carbon dioxide and produce breathable oxygen, then, one hundred acres of trees.

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Nearly 4 in 10 American adults reported engaging in dangerous cleaning practices to prevent COVID-19, such as washing food with bleach, using household disinfecting products on their skin or intentionally inhaling vapors from cleaning products, according to a recent survey.

A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) follows an earlier study describing an increase in calls to poison control centers regarding exposure to household cleaners, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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