This social learning can help young marmosets understand what foods to eat and how to recognize predators such as snakes birds and wildcats.
Though they look similar these two subspecies are very different in size habitat diet and more.
The African lion is 4. 5 to 6. 5 feet (1. 4 to 2 meters) long from its head to its rump
And it was time we waste an awful lot of resources in this country including 40 percent of our food and more than half our energy.
and environmental benefits worth $30 billion. 2. Americans are tackling food waste My colleague Dana Gunders helped make food waste a topic of national discussion this year.
American food-waste habits in addition to the wasting of food itself use up four percent of U s. oil and 25 percent of the nation's fresh water.
On a global scale people use about 28 percent of agricultural land to grow food that never gets eaten.
I spoke at a TEDX event in New york about the vast scope of food waste in the United states
Most dates on food don't tell you whether it's safe to eat; confusing date labels lead up to 90 percent of Americans to throw away good food.
The U s. Department of agriculture and the U s. Environmental protection agency (EPA) launched the first national attempt to address food waste this year issuing a challenge to the food industry to find ways to reduce food waste.
Companies like Conagra General mills and Unilever have signed already on as well as several universities sports teams and entertainment venues. 3. Americans are ramping up recycling
and composting Waste in its most literal sense is garbage. Americans throw out about 4. 4 pounds of stuff per person per day
and one of the single biggest sources of that waste is food. New york city launched a successful pilot curbside food-waste collection program this year
and plans to require residents to separate food scraps for composting starting in 2016. The city could save $100 million each year by diverting organic waste from landfills and turning it into healthy soil for parks and gardens.
The Big Apple also revamped its recycling program accepting all rigid plastics instead of just those numbered 1 and 2
As more farms start using water-smart practices like cover crops the nation will build a more resilient food system protect farmers and save taxpayer money on crop-loss payouts.
But an innovative company is trying to change that with a little help from a common pizza topping:
Genome May Lead to Even Spicier Peppers Editor's Note: This article was updated at 3: 20 p m. ET:
Scientists have sequenced the genome of the pepper plant revealing the genes responsible for pepper's spiciness.
and incite research on related pepper agronomy traits and help breeders accelerate the research of new breeds by molecular biology techniques said study co-author Cheng Qin a researcher at Sichuan Agricultural University in China.
Pepper history Peppers were domesticated first by Native americans in the tropics of South america as far back as 8000 years ago from a wild variant known as Chiltepin annuum (variant glabriusculum.
The pepper which is part of a family that includes the tomato and the potato soon spread from the New world after Columbus arrived in The americas.
and flavors from the bland Anaheim pepper to the scorching Scotch bonnet and more than 34.6 million tons of the peppers were harvested in 2011.
Tip of the Tongue: The 7 (Other) Flavors We Can Taste In recent years hot pepper aficionados have used old-fashioned breeding to amp up the heat-producing compound called capsaicin to make ever more insanely hot peppers.
Some of the resulting peppers including the Carolina Reaper and the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion can be 100000 times as spicy as the humble pimento pepper
and researchers have calculated that 2. 7 pounds of the spice from these peppers would be enough to kill a human.
For comparison a Trinidad Moruga Scorpion contains about the same amount of capsaicin as a shot-glass of law enforcement-grade pepper spray.
Genome sequenced To learn more about the pepper Qin and his colleagues sequenced the genome of a pepper cultivated at their institution known as Zunla-1 along with its wild counterpart.
The team found that the pepper diverged from tomatoes and potatoes about 36 million years ago.
In addition about 81 percent of the plant's genome was made up of transposons or so-called jumping genes that can move to other places within the genome.
In addition the team scanned the genomes of 18 cultivated peppers to compare differences between wild and cultivated varieties.
The findings suggest two new ways to breed even spicier peppers either by identifying peppers with the right spice genes and crossbreeding them or by genetically engineering the peppers to express more copies of the heat-producing genes Qin said.
Editor's Note: This article was corrected to note that new research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Koalas get most of their water from their diet but because eucalyptus leaves are laced with a toxin the koalas can eat only a limited amount before the toxin harms the animals Kearney said.
Climate change planning Koalas'food (and hugging) trees will change their range with the hotter and drier weather brought by climate change Bill Ellis a wildlife researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia who was involved not in the study wrote in an email to Live Science.
But the new study suggests that food may be a smaller consideration in preserving koala habitat than previously thought he said.
as long as they also have the right fodder. Farther north in the koala's range the air is muggy
when food and water is scarce. In addition to their humps camels have other ways to adapt to their environment.
Domestic camels are often the main source of meat milk and even leather or wool products.
though so you won't find them eating meat. Filling up on water when it's available is very important for camels.
When there is little food and water the camel's hump fat releases water; 9. 3 grams of fat releases 1. 13 grams of water according to research by the University of Singapore.
Camels can survive up to six months without food or water. Offspring After a gestation of 12 to 14 months a mother camel will find a private spot to have her young.
and used for transportation meat fur leather and milk. Camels can run at 25 mph (40 kph) for long periods.
but feel like dollops of gelatin according to a new study. The ocean-dwelling creatures are so unusual that an entire new taxonomic family was created to classify them scientists report today (Sept. 3) in the journal PLOS ONE.
Inside the discs a fan of digestive tubes delivers nutrients radiating outward like bicycle tire spokes.
and is probably for both eating food and excreting waste Just said. Many primitive species have this single gut.
Just said he hopes more tiny Jell-o-like creatureswill someday surface in another deep-sea expedition so modern genetic studies can reveal their evolutionary branch.
#Could Taxing Packaged Foods Reduce Obesity? If most foods created by the food industry are unhealthy why not place a stiff tax on all of them
and use the revenue to subsidize healthier food? This bold proposal from Boston-area researchers appears as commentary in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA.
The researchers from Tufts University Harvard university and Boston Children's Hospital wrote that their plan would surely meet strong opposition from both the food
and restaurant industries but that it could help people make meaningful dietary changes and substantially reduce health care costs.
At issue is the higher cost of healthy food such as fresh fruits and vegetables and lean meats and fish
which cost on average about $1. 50 more per person per day compared to unhealthy fare the researchers said. 12 Tips for Eating Healthy on a Budget The researchers propose a 10 to 30 percent tax on foods from chain restaurants
and on all packaged foods essentially all foods except products directly from a farm. With a modest 10 to 30 percent tax on most packaged foods healthy foods such as fruits nuts
and vegetables could be subsidized to cost pennies to consumers said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian lead author on the JAMA commentary and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.
This would dramatically reshape the food supply help to reduce nutritional and health disparities amongst the poor and other disadvantaged Americans and potentially save billions of dollars a year in health care costs for diet-related diseases.
The researchers noted that the economic burden of cardiovascular disease and diabetes predominantly caused by a poor diet is approaching $700 billion annually in the United states alone.
But their plan would perhaps hurt the poor said Michael Tanner a senior fellow at the Cato Institute a libertarian think tank based in Washington D c
. I suspect this tax plan would be terribly regressive Tanner said. We know these healthier foods aren't necessarily available in low-income neighborhoods;
we know they take more time and effort to prepare. A better simpler solution Tanner said would be to stop subsidizing unhealthy foods.
He cited the U s. government's subsidizing of sugar and corn which makes unhealthy foods cheaper to produce.
Maybe instead of trying to tax Oscar Mayer salami and giv ing that money to the farmers market we should just keep government out of the whole thing Tanner said.
Tanner added that there's a prevailing paternalistic tone to food-tax solutions with academics telling the populous what to eat.
I believe in health; I believe in exercise; I believe in eating right Tanner said adding that he ran a half-marathon last weekend.
But these are things I choose to do. And if I want to go out and have a Ding dong this afternoon no one should try to stop me.
The Boston-based researchers said they hope that the flat tax could evolve into a sliding scale that's dependent on nutritional quality
which would prompt restaurants and food manufacturers to produce increasingly healthier products. As for helping the poor In principle our proposal can be tuned as needed to make sure that low-income individuals are net beneficiaries in the short run for example by raising food-stamp benefits out of processed goods'tax revenues said co-author Kenneth Rogoff a professor of economics at Harvard university.
The researchers said that other food-tax proposals have targeted one or a few food products such as a soda-pop tax.
But these proposals do not address fundamentally unhealthful eating patterns across a range of food categories.
Prevailing prices do not reflect the true societal costs of foods the researchers wrote. Follow Christopher Wanjek@wanjek for daily tweets on health and science with a humorous edge.
Wanjek is the author of Food At work and Bad Medicine. His column Bad Medicine appears regularly on Live Science c
#How Blueberry pie Caused Girl's Strange Allergic reaction A girl in Canada experienced an unusual allergic reaction to blueberry pie she was not allergic to any of the pie's ingredients
but instead reacted to antibiotic residue in the food a new study suggests. Shortly after eating a slice of blueberry pie the girl experienced facial flushing hives and abnormal breathing.
She was taken to an emergency room and treated with drugs used for allergic reactions including epinephrine and recovered.
A team of doctors then investigated what might have caused the girl's reaction. Although the patient was allergic to milk an analysis showed the pie did not contain milk.
Doctors also performed tests to see if the girl was allergic to other ingredients in the pie such as blueberries eggs
or nuts but the tests all came back negative. 8 Strange Signs You're Having an Allergic reaction Further analysis showed that the pie contained residue from an antibiotic.
The doctors tested the girl for an allergy to streptomycin an antibiotic used as a pesticide on fruit.
And indeed she reacted to streptomycin in much the same way as she had responded to the blueberry pie.
Although the researchers did not have access to enough of the pie to confirm that it contained streptomycin specifically the study results suggests that the girl's allergic reaction was caused by streptomycin-contaminated blueberries the researchers said.
Allergic reactions to antibiotics in food such as beef and milk are rare but have been reported. The new study is the first to link an allergic reaction to antibiotics in fruit the researchers said.
The findings serve as a reminder to doctors in cases of unexplained allergic reaction. Don't forget to think about antibiotics said study researcher Dr. Anne Des Roches an allergist at CHU Sainte-Justine a health center affiliated with the University of Montreal in Quebec.
Allergic reaction to antibiotics in food are underdiagnosed because doctors cannot simply check a product label for antibiotics;
Some countries have banned the use of antibiotics for growing food but the practice is allowed in the United states and Canada.
Recently the U s. Food and Drug Administration took steps to help phase out the use of certain antibiotics in livestock;
Stricter policies to reduce antibiotic contaminants in foods will not only help to fight antibiotic resistance
Most of a tiger's diet consists of large prey such as pigs deer rhinos or elephant calves.
they like to spend most of their time alone roaming their massive territories looking for food.
To find out some of the potential benefits of aggregation I downloaded Myfitnesspal to track my food intake.
This app does not show you a graph of the data on individual nutrients over time
Graphing information for a single nutrient like sodium may be a useful way to keep track of
First my nutrition data did not show up on the Health dashboard until I restarted my phone
and entered my nutrition information again. And second only one nutrition data point showed up at a time the app didn't show me a graph of my intake over time.
Ledger said there are other challenges to aggregating information. For example if you have one app that tracks your workouts
Another challenge for aggregation is that to get nutrition insights users typically have to manually enter
and your activities you'd have to remember to enter your food information likely for several weeks Ledger said.
Hemp Cannabis sativa originates from western Asia and India and from there spread around the globe. For centuries fibres were used to make ropes sails cloth
and paper while the seeds were used for protein-rich food and feed. Interest in hemp declined
Recycling plant nutrients to the field such as in biogas residue can contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions from crop production.
#Bees'Salt-Sensing Feet Explain Swimming pool Mystery The first-ever investigation of the honeybee ability to taste with their front feet may explain a persistent bee mystery:
Our guess is they may not need to land on the water surface to taste the salt said study researcher Martin Giurfa the director of the Research center on Animal Cognition at the University of Toulouse in France.
Salt-seeking bees Unsurprisingly given bees'need for nectar the insects'feet are incredibly sensitive to sugar.
The bees need salt for their own metabolic processes and to carry back to their hives to help larvae develop Giurfa said.
#Mom's Diet Linked to Risk of Preterm Birth Pregnant women who eat a diet rich in vegetables fruits
and whole grains and drink plenty of water may have a lower risk of giving birth before their pregnancy reaches full term a large new study from Norway suggests.
Pregnant women in the new study who ate either a diet of fruits veggies and whole grains or a diet of boiled potatoes and fish were less likely to have a preterm birth compared with women
whose diets included salty and sweet snacks and processed meat researchers reported today (March 4) in the journal BMJ.
But the findings don't establish a causal link between diet and preterm birth the researchers said.
We don't completely understand preterm labor and nutrition is only one factor said Christine Metz an obstetrics researcher at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset N y. who was involved not in the study.
The biggest risk factor for preterm labor is having a previous preterm birth though factors such as smoking alcohol or drug use inadequate prenatal care
or having twins or triplets also play a role Metz told Live Science. Blossoming Body:
8 Odd Changes That Happen During Pregnancy The new study was based on data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study
The researchers classified the women's diets as prudent traditional or Western. A prudent diet consisted of raw and cooked vegetables salad fruit and berries nuts vegetable oils whole grain cereals poultry and water to drink.
OB/GYNS are always going to recommend a prudent diet Metz said. A traditional diet by contrast was composed mainly of boiled potatoes fish gravy margarine rice pudding low-fat milk and cooked vegetables.
Lastly a Western diet contained a lot of salty snacks chocolate and sweets cakes French fries white bread ketchup sugar sweetened drinks processed meat products and pasta.
Preterm births occurred in 3505 women or 5. 3 percent of those in the study.
Eating the prudent diet was linked to a lower risk of preterm birth especially for women who were having their first baby the analysis showed.
Eating the traditional diet was linked also to a lower risk of preterm delivery compared with the Western diet but to a lesser extent than the prudent diet.
It may be more important for pregnant women to consume more healthy foods than it is to cut out junk food
or processed food the researchers said. The findings reinforce existing nutrition guidelines for pregnant women
but they don't establish a causal relationship between diet and preterm delivery said Dr. Shilpi Mehta-Lee an OB/GYN at NYU Langone Medical center who was not part of the research.
However the study opens the question of whether there should be trials testing diet changes in pregnant women Mehta-Lee told Live Science.
It's not clear whether the findings apply to other populations the researchers noted. The preterm birth rate in the United states is compared 12 percent with 6 percent of pregnancies in Nordic countries.
Diet can increase the risk of conditions such as gestational diabetes obesity preeclampsia high blood pressure during pregnancy)
Eating a healthy diet could also benefit the mother long before or after pregnancy too.
-and nutrient-carrying tissue of the tree has a strategy for over-wintering. It will stay under the bark
Asian Carp Spread to Upper Mississippi In my home state of Ohio people who love natural areas are about to get such a cold wet slap in the face in the form of the hemlock woolly adelgid#a tiny aphid-like insect
because there are steps each of us can take to help prevent their spread: In the meantime large stands of dead hemlock stand in mute testament to the rule of unintended consequences.
Chupacabra means goat sucker in Spanish named so because it is said to drain the blood from animals such as goats chickens and other livestock.
The news and video footage of the small hairless caged animal went viral and left countless people scratching their heads wondering
Furthermore in a video of the animal the Ratcliffe chupacabra picks up food with its paws to eat.
The mysterious critter is currently being fed a diet of corn and cat food but if the creature truly is a chupacabra that theory can be tested easily:
Put it in a pen with a goat or chicken and see if it attacks them
and sucks out its blood. The reason that the Ratcliffe chupacabra has been called a chupacabra is not that the mysterious animal's characteristics match those of the legendary vampire
#Shepherds Spread Grain Along Silk road 5, 000 Years Ago Nearly 5000 years ago nomadic shepherds opened some of the first links between eastern and western Asia.
The Hunt for Lost Cities One of the grains found in Kazahkstan bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) was cultivated in the middle East by 6000 years ago
#Artificial Sweetener Could Be used As a Safer Insecticide A natural nontoxic insecticide might be in your kitchen a new study says.
In what started out as a middle school science project scientists discovered that erythritol the main ingredient in the artificial sweetener Truvia is toxic to fruit flies.
or tea is in danger. Erythritol is a natural compound that is present in several types of fruit.
It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a food additive in 2001 and many studies have shown humans have a high tolerance for the compound.
So unlike synthetic insecticides an erythritol-based insecticide would be nontoxic to humans and would not act as a pollutant the researchers said. 10 of the Most Polluted Places On earth Not only does the sweetener kill the flies
but they actually prefer it to other food choices. The researchers who conducted the study are now seeking to patent an erythritol-based insecticide.
We are not going to see the planet sprayed with erythritol and the chances for widespread crop application are slim Sean O'Donnell a professor of biology at Drexel University in Philadelphia who worked on the experiment said in a statement.
and fed them food mixed with the artificial sweeteners Truvia Splenda Equal Sweet'N Low or Pure Via.
The flies that were raised on food containing Truvia had much shorter life spans than flies raised on the other sweeteners.
Flies that ate food without Truvia lived between 38 and 51 days. But the average life span of flies raised on food with Truvia was only 5. 8 days.
Marenda realized it was time to move the experiment out of the house and into the lab and he brought in O'Donnell for help.
The next step was to determine what part of the sweetener was causing the toxic effect. Erythritol is the main ingredient in Truvia
The researchers gave flies food with Truvia Pure Via pure erythritol or sucrose (table sugar.
Flies that consumed food with either Truvia or erythritol were dead within a week. The other flies lived for two weeks before the researchers discontinued their observation.
Flies that were given food with low levels of erythritol (about 0. 1 grams in 10 milliliters of water) showed no difference in life span than flies raised on food without any erythritol.
But flies that were given food with high levels of erythritol (2. 4 grams in 10 milliliters of water) were dead within two days.
but other studies have shown that it can inhibit an insect's ability to absorb nutrients
and a flat bill and webbed feet like a duck. In fact the first time a platypus was brought from Australia to Britain people couldn't believe that it was a real animal.
A typical platypus is 15 inches (38 centimeters from its head to the end of its rump.
and detect movement of potential food such as shrimp. Platypuses live in only one small area of the world.
Platypuses usually spend their time hunting for food and a hunt can last 10 to 12 hours.
which means they eat meat but not plants. They hunt for their food in the water where they live.
As they swim they try to detect food along the muddy bottom of the river stream pond
or lake using their sensitive bills. When platypuses find something interesting like shellfish insects larvae
Since they only have grinding plates and no teeth platypuses use any gravel or dirt they scooped up
while on the bottom of the waterbed to mash their food into digestible pieces. Most mammals give birth to live young.
Platypuses however lay eggs. They are a species of primitive mammals called monotremes. Echidnas or spiny anteaters are the only other mammals that lay eggs.
When the female platypus is ready to have her young she will burrow down inside the ground on the riverbank and seal herself into one of her tunnel rooms.
or two eggs and place them between her rump and her tail to keep them warm.
After about 10 days the eggs hatch and the little bean-sized babies will nurse for three to four months.
#Certain Starch May Reduce Colon-cancer Risk of Meat-Heavy Diet Eating your steak with a side of potatoes
and beans may be one way to reduce the colon cancer risk that comes with eating red meat findings from a new study suggests the resistant starch found in root vegetables grains
and legumes may reverse some of the damaging effects of red meat on cells. Researchers looked at23 healthy study participants who were assigned randomly to eat either about 0. 6 lbs.
300 grams) of red meat per day for four weeks or the same diet with the addition of 0. 1 lbs.
After a break the participants switched diets so everyone spent four weeks on each diet during the study.
The researchers found that eating the diet high in red meat changed levels of a type of genetic material called microrna in rectal tissue.
Specifically the scientists found an increase in certain micrornas linked to colon cancer. Cancer-Fighting Diet:
6 Tips to Reduce Your Risk However adding resistance starch to the diet mitigated some of this increase according to a study published today (Aug 4) in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
Red meat and resistant starch have opposite effects on the colorectal cancer-promoting micrornas study author Karen Humphreys a researcher at Flinders University in Adelaide Australia said in a statement.
This finding supports consumption of resistant starch as a means of reducing the risk associated with a high red-meat diet.
Colon cancer develops in the cells lining the inside of the colon and rectum often beginning as a polyp but then growing into a cancerous tumor.
Consuming too much alcohol smoking and not exercising are among risk factors for colon cancer. Studies have found that people who eat a lot of red meat are more likely to develop colon cancer
whereas those who eat a lot of fiber appear to have reduced a risk of the cancer. Further research is needed to determine whether a diet high in resistant starch results in a lower risk of actually developing cancer.
But there is reason to think that eating resistant starch does bring such a benefit. When it is broken down starch transforms into compounds called butyrates
The researchers noted that the amount of red meat people ate during the study may exceed levels consumed by many people in the general population
but resistant starch can be found in many natural foods. Good examples of natural sources of resistant starch include bananas that are still slightly green cooked and cooled potatoes such as those in potato salad whole grains beans chickpeas and lentils.
Scientists have also been working to modify grains such as maize so they contain higher levels of resistant starch Humphreys said.
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