News for Now Update: Week ending February 25, 2023

Coffee Drinkers’ Tips
An “umbrella review” that included over 200 meta-analyses in 2017 showed a favorable connection between moderate coffee consumption and reduced risk of numerous chronic health issues. But, what does caffeine do, how might it provide these health benefits, and how much does it take? Read on for some recommendations to consider. Read more at the Guardian.

First, Lab-Grown Meat; Now, Cultivated Fats?
Following in the footsteps of lab-grown meat production, a new effort is underway to produce cultivated fat from animal cells. Their intended use is to make plant-based “meats” more palatable. While we are glad for any effect this has to reduce stigma against animal fats for health reasons, the inefficiency of growing animal products in labs (instead of in animals) remains astounding. Read more at Food Ingredients First.

Seasonal Exemptions Threaten Farmwork Pay
Despite a historic, 2021 law establishing a 40-hour overtime threshold for farmworkers in Washington state, a new bill could prevent most laborers from benefitting. Under the exemption, growers could designate 12 weeks per year in which it would not apply (covering many crop seasons). With its disproportionate burden on Latino workers, fair labor and racial justice advocates intend to fight it. Read more at Civil Eats.

Exercise Outperforms Meds for Mental Health
An extremely thorough review including 97 studies and over a thousand trials found that exercise had a 50% greater effect than medications on mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and distress. Given what we’ve been learning about mental health disorders as metabolic disorders of the brain from @ChrisPalmerMD, it makes sense that the benefits to mitochondria from exercise would produce these effects. Read more at Medical Xpress.

Wastebasket of the Earth, by William A. Albrecht, MS, PhD
In this 1961 #TBT article, William A. Albrecht, MS, PhD flips the script from describing soil as “dirt” that contaminates the human environment to showing how man is the one who has contaminated the soil — not only by direct disposal of toxic substances, but by disrupting the balance among all other levels of organisms which each thrive by recycling the wastes of others. Read more in our Pioneer Archives Post.