Eco-friendly eats: the potential of new foods to save the planet

Back in 2015 I wrote a post about the potential for insect-based protein to become a much more common environmentally-friendly food in the near future. Although it may be rather better for the environment than traditional ingredients, Western cultures have a cultural bias against eating anything with more than four limbs. So what are the alternatives to conventional farming and fishing that can be eco-friendly but don't rely on insects as their source material?

As someone who hasn't eaten meat in over three decades, I was interested to read that Helsinki-based Solar Foods have found how to create a protein flour from almost nothing. Hydrogen-eating soil bacteria are being used to generate a taste-free product called Solein, intended as an additive in place of other protein sources and also serving as a medium for growing lab-cultured meat. There's even the potential for it to become a livestock feed; could it replace the environmentally appalling Palm Kernel Expeller?

It might sound fantastic, but the issue of course comes down to economics. Current estimates suggest it will be five to ten years before Solein can compete with soya on a commercial scale. It has even been predicted that this sort of precision fermentation may cost as little as ten percent of conventional animal-derived protein by the mid-2030s, indicating a potentially key role in food technology over the next few decades.

This is in marked contrast to growing real meat via laboratory cultures, such as from stem cells. Synthetic meat may be far more ecologically sound than livestock farming (did you know that it takes 15,400 litres of water to produce a kilogram of beef?) but cultured animal flesh is still some years from viability; after all, it's only seven years since the first bio-reactor burger, produced for an eye-watering $300,000!

The United Nations is promoting a reduction in meat consumption to fight climate change, so what are the current options for those wanting to change their diet to reduce agricultural land usage, greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption/pollution? The oldest alternatives to animal protein such as soy or gluten are known allergens, so although these are increasingly widespread - think of the vast number of tofu-based products that have become available over the past twenty years - they are not a completely satisfactory solution. In addition, soya agriculture in developing nations has been linked to critical deforestation, some of which has been committed illegally.

Mycoprotein-based foods (i.e. those derived from fungi) are one possibility. Since the early 1990s, Quorn products have become available in nineteen countries. It has a very small environmental footprint, can be fermented rapidly and is a high-quality form of nutrition. There is some evidence for it being mildly allergenic, but the main sticking point to it spreading to international markets appears to have been due to failure to comply with food standards authorities. My main issue with the product is that for something consisting primarily of fungal filaments grown on glucose syrup, it is very expensive!

Algae is another potential source of meat replacement. Fake shrimp made primarily from red algae (itself a food for real shrimp) are said to be close to the texture and flavour of the real thing. Considering the carbon mileage of commercial shrimp fishing, this product alone could be of tremendous benefit to the environment - including of course to the sustainability and preservation of shrimp species themselves.

An unlikely substitute for meat, at least in terms of texture if not nutrition or taste, is the unripe jack fruit. In the last two years here in New Zealand it has risen from zero to hero and can now be found in supermarkets as a basic canned product as well as being served in vegetarian fast food options; before 2018 I had never seen jackfruit, despite it having been cultivated in Asia for at least six thousand years.

All this isn't to say it will be easy to make a global transition to non-meat diets. Quite apart from the powerful cattle and fishing lobbies, some alternative products use genetically-modified ingredients, which is still a key political issue in many nations. However, with even fast food companies falling over themselves to offer lacto-vegetarian and vegan dishes, the public is slowly but steadily increasing its green eating credentials. Whereas there used to be a clearly defined boundary - at least in more affluent nations - between most people and the vegetarian minority, the likes of the Impossible Sausage and Beyond Burger are now appealing to both groups, the intention obviously being to minimise disruption to the meat-lovers' diet.

With the global human population forecast to peak at over nine billion later this century, responsible eating cannot come a moment too soon. It's slowly beginning to dawn on both Westerners and elsewhere that the rights of the individual to consume a high fat, highly processed, red meat-heavy diet has led to a situation that is bad both for them and for the quality of life of future generations.

Over-exploitation of seafood stocks is already having a profound effect on local ecosystems such as the Sea of Cortez, so a reduction in both types of protein is essential to the long-term health of the oceans as well as the land. Luckily, new start-ups and established companies are beginning to find alternatives that can appeal to even the most ardent of meat eaters. The trick is to find a satisfying diet (that's just what you eat, not something to slim by) that can aid your personal health as well as reducing your carbon footprint, water usage, and other environmental factors. The good news is that the number of options is only going to increase. Why not check one out today?

Grey matter blues: why has the human brain been shrinking?

There is a disturbing fact about our species that the public don't appear to know, and few specialists seem to want to discuss: over recent millennia, the human brain has been shrinking. There have been plenty of non-scientific warnings about the alleged deleterious effects on IQ of first television and more recently smartphones and tablets, but palaeontological evidences proves that over some tens of thousands of years, the Homo sapiens brain has shrunk somewhere between ten and seventeen percent.

There are usually two key indicators said to provide an accurate measure of smartness: encephalisation quotient and absolute brain size. Encephalisation quotient or EQ is simply the ratio of the mass of the brain to the mass of the body. Overall size is seen as critical due to the number of neural connections required for complex thought processes; you can only squeeze so many neurons into any given volume. Having said that, there is some considerably flexibility around this, thanks to variation in neuron density. The reason that some birds, especially the crow and parrot families are highly intelligent despite the small absolute size of their brains is due to their higher neural density compared to mammals.

Analysis of data from the examination of thousands of human fossil remains suggests that our species reached a peak in EQ around 70,000 years ago, followed by a gradual decline. The reduction in brain size appears to be due to a loss of the archetypal grey matter itself, rather than the white matter that provides support to the neural architecture. However, one key issue is lack of agreement as to a definitive start date for this decline, with 20,000 to 40,000 years ago being the most commonly cited origin. With such basic points remaining unsettled, it's perhaps not surprising that there is a plethora of opinions as to the cause. Here are some of the more popular hypotheses for the decline in human brain size:

1. Change to body size

The first and perhaps most obvious - but easily refuted idea - is that human body size has been steadily declining and so cranial capacity has kept in step with this. While it is true that archaic sapiens may have had a higher mass and even stature than modern humans, the reduction in brain size is greater than would be expected when compared to the overall shrinkage. The assumption is that the development of material culture, from clothing to weapons, has given humans a less calorie-demanding lifestyle.

This would allow - although not dictate - natural selection to trend towards a smaller body size. This doesn't appear to offer any help for the comparatively greater reduction in brain mass, although we should remember that an overall reduction in body size means a smaller birth canal. This in turn requires a smaller skull at birth; as is well known, the human gestation period is three months' less than for similar-size mammals, but our seemingly premature delivery is necessary for the pelvis to maintain efficient bipedalism.

2. Self-domestication

Another idea is that humanity has become domesticated via the impact of culture upon natural selection. Following the population bottleneck of 70,000 years ago - the cause of which is not yet confirmed, despite attempts to correlate it with the Toba super-volcano - there has been continual growth of the human population.

Just as all our domesticated animal species have brain sizes some 10-15% smaller than their wild cousins and ancestors, so the move to larger groups sizes may have led to a more docile humanity, with associated traits such as a smaller cranial capacity being carried along with it.

There are several issues with this hypothesis, ranging from a lack of data on the size of gatherer-hunter bands to the biological mechanisms involved. As regards the latter, there has been some speculation concerning neoteny, in which a species no longer grows to the final stage of maturity. The idea is that if adults are more aggressive than juveniles but peaceful collaboration can lead to larger groups, mutual aid and longer lifespans, then unintentional selective breeding for the retention of juvenile characteristics, including smaller brains, may cause a shift away from the fully mature but more aggressive individuals.

Research in recent years has suggested our brains may continuing to grow into our early thirties rather than cease growing in our teens, so it's possible there could be some truth to this; it would interesting to seek evidence as to whether the brains of archaic sapiens continued growing longer than ours do.

3. The impact of culture

Taking this a step further, increased population density allows a more rapid development and transmission of new ideas, including those that lead to better health, longer lifespans and so to an increased birth rate. Culture and sophisticated language may have reduced the need for most people to gain a wide range of skills - courtesy of a higher intellectual capability - as tasks could be shared and specialisation take hold. In effect, larger societies provide a safety net for those who would be less able to cope in smaller groups.

If ideas could be handed down, then individuals wouldn't have to continually 'reinvent the wheel' in each generation, allowing survival despite a smaller brain size and decreased level of intelligence. The problem with this scenario is that we have no proof the 10-17% reduction has led to an associated drop in intellect; it may well be that the size of certain lobes, used in specialist thought processes such as formulating complex speech, far outweigh any decline in less critical areas.

4. The expensive big brain

One possibility that has a clear cause-and-effect concerns the energy demands of having larger brains. Although they consume a quarter of our daily calories, the human brain is less than five per cent of our body weight. Therefore, there could be a case for arguing the existence of an evolutionary competition between smaller-brained individuals who can survive on less food with those who use their larger brains to improve food collecting strategies. Unfortunately, there are so many variables that it's difficult to judge whether the former would continually trend against the latter and - considering it clearly occurred - why the larger brain managed to evolve in the first place?

5. The more efficient brain

Although a smaller brain might have fewer neurons than a larger version with similar architecture, it has been suggested that its shorter pathways would lead to more rapid thought processing than in a larger counterpart. In addition, there might be fewer neural pathways, again increasing the efficiency. This 'nimble thinking' approach certainly seems logical, although again it doesn't explain the evolution of larger EQ in archaic sapiens.

This is certainly a subject ripe for much more research. I've often concluded with a statement along the lines that it wouldn't be surprising if some or all these factors were involved, since nature rarely conforms to the nice, neat patterns we would like to lay upon it. There is an even possibility that brain size - like so many other aspects of all animal species - fluctuates around a mean value, so that what goes up may come down again, only to later go up again.

At least one anthropological study on both Afro-Americans and US citizens of European descent proposes that over the past few hundred years there may have been an upward drift towards larger brains. Assuming the research is accurate, one possibility is that the superior nutrition available since the Industrial Revolution is allowing such development, thanks to the comparative ease with which its energy demands can be fulfilled.

It would certainly be interesting to investigate this hypothesis on a global scale, considering the wide differences between the clinically obese nations and those still subject to frequent famine. Whatever the results, they are unlikely to be the simple 'just-so' stories often passed-off as to the public in lieu of accurate but understandable science communication. The answers may be out there somewhere...I'd certainly love to know what's been happening to the most sophisticated object in the known universe!