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16/11/2021

Eating Red Meat Is Wreaking Havoc on Earth. So, Stop It!
There's a new diet in town, and it offers a two-for-one special: People can help the planet and even live longer … so long as they stop devouring so many burgers, a new report by an international commission finds.

The diet, known as the planetary health diet, is essentially a strategy to help people, especially Westerners, eat healthier meals, with fewer unhealthy foods (red meat, for instance) that are linked to climate change, freshwater pollution and the devastation of wildlife, the commission said.

The new diet could make a real difference, too. If practiced by people the world over, as many as 11.6 million fewer people would die every year from illnesses such as coronary heart disease and stroke, the commission said in the report, published online yesterday (Jan. 16) in the journal The Lancet.
"Because food systems are a major driver of poor health and environmental degradation, global efforts are urgently needed to collectively transform diets and food production," the commission wrote in the report. The publication was convened by The Lancet and Eat Forum, a nongovernmental organization (NGO).
Making the diet a reality, however, would require a global effort. Red meat and sugar consumption needs to be chopped in half, while the production of vegetables, fruits, legumes and nuts has to double, The Guardian reported. In particular, North Americans will have to eat 84 percent less red meat and chow down on six times more beans and lentils. Europeans are instructed to eat 77 percent less red meat and 15 times more nuts and seeds.

In a nutshell, people are asked to eat more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and unsaturated oils; a low to moderate amount of seafood and poultry; and little to no red meat, processed meat, added sugar, refined grains or starchy vegetables, such as potatoes, the report said.

Such a diet could help the world support the 10 billion people that are projected to be alive by 2050, the commission said. Out of the approximately 7 billion people alive today, about 820 million don't get enough food, 2 billion are malnourished, and another 2 billion are overweight or obese, the commission said.

Moreover, as the population skyrockets, people will have to eat more vegetables and less meat simply because the world won't have the space and resources to feed everyone on diets that include a lot of meat. In other words, sustainable food production for 10 billion people "should use no additional land, safeguard existing biodiversity, reduce consumptive water use and manage water responsibly," while preventing runaway pollution, the report stated.

It's not news that burgers are bad for the environment. Producing a steak simply takes too much water, Live Science previously reported. A 2014 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal found that one steak takes 28 times more land, 11 times more irrigation water and six times more fertilizer compared with other sources of commonly eaten protein, such as pork and poultry. In addition, steak is linked to the release of five times more greenhouse-gas emissions than the other proteins, the study found.

That said, people can still eat meat if they want — just not as much of it. The planetary health diet allots 2,500 calories a day per person and allows one hamburger and two servings of fish every week, The Guardian reported. People can also drink a glass of milk, as well as eat some cheese or butter every day, and they can have up to two eggs a week. But half of each person's plate should be filled with vegetables and fruit, and a third should brim with whole-grain cereals. [Americans Eat Nearly a Ton of Food Per Year (Infographic)]

"We are not talking about a deprivation diet here; we are talking about a way of eating that can be healthy, flavorful and enjoyable," Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health, one of the leaders on the commission, told The Guardian.

In addition to reducing beef intake, humans need to cut food waste in half, according to the report. To help put these ideas into practice, the report is now being shared with policymakers in 40 cities worldwide, The Guardian reported.

16/11/2021

Don't Waste Your Emotions on Plants, They Have No Feelings, Grumpy Scientists Say
A tree falls in the woods; but whether or not anyone hears it, the tree has no regrets. Nor does it experience fear, anger, relief or sadness as it topples to the ground. Trees — and all plants, for that matter — feel nothing at all, because consciousness, emotions and cognition are hallmarks of animals alone, scientists recently reported in an opinion article.

The idea that plants have some degree of consciousness first took root in the early 2000s; the term "plant neurobiology" was coined around the notion that some aspects of plant behavior could be compared to intelligence in animals. Though plants lack brains, the firing of electrical signals in their stems and leaves nonetheless triggered responses that hinted at consciousness, researchers previously reported.

But such an idea is bunk, according to the authors of the new article. Plant biology is complex and fascinating, but it differs so greatly from that of animals that so-called evidence of plants' intelligence is intriguing but inconclusive, the scientists wrote.
In animals, neurobiology refers to the biological mechanisms through which a nervous system regulates behavior, according to Harvard University's Mind Brain Behavior Interfaculty Initiative. Over millions of years, brains in diverse animal species have evolved to produce behaviors that experts identify as intelligent: Among them are reasoning and problem-solving, tool use and self-recognition.

Beginning in 2006, some scientists have argued that plants possess neuron-like cells that interact with hormones and neurotransmitters, forming "a plant nervous system, analogous to that in animals," said lead study author Lincoln Taiz, a professor emeritus of molecular, cell and developmental biology at the University of California Santa Cruz.

"They even claimed that plants have 'brain-like command centers' at their root tips," Taiz told Live Science in an email.

This perspective makes sense if you simplify the workings of a complex brain, reducing it to an array of electrical pulses; cells in plants also communicate through electrical signals, according to the article. However, the signaling in a plant is only superficially similar to the billions of synapses firing in a complex animal brain, which is more than "a mass of cells that communicate by electricity," Taiz said.

"For consciousness to evolve, a brain with a threshold level of complexity and capacity is required," he added.

Other researchers who recently investigated the neuroscience of consciousness — awareness of one's world and a sense of self — found that in animals, only vertebrates, arthropods and cephalopods had brains complex enough to enable them to be conscious.

"If the lower animals — which have nervous systems — lack consciousness, the chances that plants without nervous systems have consciousness are effectively nil," Taiz said.

And what's so great about consciousness, anyway? Plants can't run away from danger, so investing energy in a body system that recognizes a threat and can feel pain would be a very poor evolutionary strategy, according to the article.

"Being conscious may seem like harmless fun for plants being cared for in a garden, but imagine, for example, the plight of trees during a forest fire. I would not wish to inflict on trees the consciousness and pain of being burned alive," Taiz said in the email.

"Being unconscious is in all likelihood an advantage to plants and contributes to their evolutionary fitness," he added.

16/11/2021

Here's how plants became meat eaters
About 70 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, a genetic anomaly allowed some plants to turn into meat eaters. This was done in part, with a stealthy trick: repurposing genes meant for their roots and leaves and using them instead to catch prey, a new study finds.

This step is one of three that some non-carnivorous plants took over tens of millions of years to allow them to turn into hungry carnivores, the researchers said.

The meat-eating shift gave these plants a number of advantages. In effect, "carnivorous plants have turned the tables by capturing and consuming nutrient-rich animal prey, enabling them to thrive in nutrient-poor soil," the researchers wrote in the study, published online May 14 in the journal Current Biology.

To investigate how carnivorous plants evolved, an international team of botanists and biologists led by Jörg Schultz, Associate Professor, at the University of Würzburg, Germany, compared the genomes and anatomy of three modern meat-eating plants

There are hundreds of carnivorous plant species, but the researchers chose to look at three related insect-eating plants, all members of the Droseraceae family. All three of these plants use motion to capture prey, the researchers said.

One plant is the familiar Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), a native to the wetlands of the Carolinas that has influenced Pokémon characters, made appearances in various Saturday morning cartoons, and even inspired a Broadway play. The closely related aquatic waterwheel plant (Aldrovanda vesiculosa) occupies the waters of almost every continent. It has spindly underwater flaps that quickly tighten around unsuspecting marine animals. The third plant investigated, the beautiful but deadly sundew plant (Drosera spatulata), is common in Australia. Luring victims with sweetness, the sundew rolls up a sticky strip around its catch.

After analyzing these plants, the team discovered the three-step process toward carnivory. First, about 70 million years ago, an early non-carnivorous ancestor of the three modern plant carnivores underwent a whole-genome duplication, generating a second copy of its entire DNA, or genome. This duplication freed up one of the copies of leaf and root genes to diversify, allowing them to serve other functions. Some leaf genes developed into genes for traps, while carnivorous nutrition and absorption processes were guided by genes that otherwise would have served roots seeking nutrition from soil.

The second step in their journey to carnivory occurred once the plants began receiving new nutrients from prey. At that point, traditional leaves and roots were no longer as necessary. Many genes that were not involved in carnivorous nutrition began to disappear. For instance, seedlings of aquatic waterwheel plants acquire an early proto-root, but it fails to develop as they mature. This is the only remnant of what once was a root system. As a result of losing this gene and others, the three plants observed in this study are the gene-poorest plants to be sequenced to date, the researchers stated.

Two earlier studies by other groups of scientists in 2013 showed similar gene-poor findings in other carnivorous plants. They found that an aquatic bladderwort thriving on all continents but Antarctica and a corkscrew ground-covering plant native to Brazil both had very small genomes compared with non-carnivorous plants. These carnivores may also have undergone the same gene-shedding process, the researchers of the new study said.

In the third step of the transformation to carnivory, the plants underwent evolutionary changes specific to their environment. The roots and leaves evolved to be trap-specific, the researchers found. Genes for roots that were once used to seek out and absorb nutrients from soil were now commandeered to create enzymes needed to digest and absorb nutrients from prey. Genes once used in glands that secreted nectar to attract pollinating insects were summoned to traps, where they produce substances to attract prey.

Most plants with leaves and roots contain the material necessary to become carnivorous. Researchers wrote that the three-step process revealed by the new study shows how, over time, ancient "non-carnivorous plants evolved into the most skillful green hunters on the planet."

16/11/2021

16/11/2021