Does Lab-Grown Meat Deserve the Hype?

Lab-grown meat is being heralded as a viable solution – the solution we desperately need – to the ecologically destructive effects of animal agriculture. Animal agriculture is responsible for at least 16.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which is more than that caused by all transportation combined. In addition, it takes 2,500 gallons…

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Could LSD Really Be a Better Smart Drug Than Modafinil?

A 2015 article in The Guardian claimed that modafinil (marketed as Provigil) is the world’s safest smart drug while a systematic review published in European Neuropsychopharmacology found that modafinil does in fact enhance cognition, and it is safe in the short-term, with few side-effects and no addictive properties. This drug – available on the NHS as…

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Will We All Be Eating Insects in the Future?

The idea of eating insects can seem a bit unappealing if you’ve been brought up with a Western diet. We do eat them as a novelty or inadvertently as food colouring. However, insect-eating (known as entomophagy) is common in many cultures across the world. Humans have been eating insects from prehistoric times to the present…

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What Does a Sustainable Diet Look Like?

It can be hard to know exactly what a sustainable diet looks like. For instance, a study from the University of Oxford, published in Climatic Change, found that the vegan diet produces the least greenhouse gas emissions. Comparisons were made between meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians, and vegans. In this way, a plant-based diet would be considered…

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Diet and the Evolution of the Human Brain

The evolution of the human brain has always been shrouded in mystery. This is because the organ tripled in size over the course of nearly seven million years, a pace of evolution that is unheard of in the natural world. Most of this growth occurred in the past two million years, during which time the…

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