Jim

How Mars is developing new ingredients with AI Mars, Inc. is leveraging artificial intelligence to revolutionize ingredient discovery in the food and beverage industry. By collaborating with PIPA's LEAP platform, Mars is identifying new bioactive ...

I just ran across discussion of UC Davis spinoff venture PIPA AI Leap platform. Potentially positive uses? Maybe next gen of processing?
pipacorp.com

www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2026...

I have Adelle Davis’ 1947 book. She says eat salads first to fill you up. Basically reduces calorie density.

Low-Carbohydrate Diets of Varying Macronutrient Quality and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Three U.S. Prospective Cohort Studies To prospectively examine associations between five low-carbohydrate diets (LCDs), differentiated by macronutrient quality, and type 2 diabetes (T2D) risk. This cohort study included 199,006 U.S. adults from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) ...

This Harvard study on T2D risk in low carb diet context looks interesting. For high animal fat/protein, up to 44% increased risk. For plant based, up to 16% reduced risk. I wonder if it’s SFA impact on muscle insulin sensitivity, which is one of the T2D drivers.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

One potential solution in “will take more time” category is to solve the overweight/obese crisis, now ~73% of US. Excess calories drive excess weight & vice versa. It takes acres to produce calories. Solving health issue will reduce acres for energy dense crops (though increase acres for veggies).

Great review. I put in a request for my county library to get a copy.

Mechanized farming isn’t going away anytime soon. But can we reinvent it? Tractors at 10 tonnes per axle are considered “light”. Status quo is soil compaction + plant-free lanes for wheels. Why not mechanical walkers stepping on pads? Does planting milligram seeds with 40 tonne equipment make sense?

I hope I can get access to the replay.

There are claims that Solein from fermenting knallgas bacteria (found in soil) is most land efficient way to produce protein. Why not see if a food chain rooted in knallgas microbes could go up soil trophic levels, like protozoa -> micro arthropods-> arthropods to produce insect based chicken feed?

I like the scenario of producing chicken feed from black soldier fly larvae feeding on organic waste. Seems like short path rotting matter to protein.

Is there a replay link for Kate Marvel discussion?

It just occurred to me… the spent malted barley grains from brewing are rich in protein, & are fed to livestock. Those cultures used for fermenting oncom should be tried out on spent barley byproduct of brewing.

We need to keep pushing ahead with food system innovation. One “new” source of food that’s virtually free & needs no more land is traditional Indonesian “oncom”. Just add spores to spent soy pulp (waste byproduct of tofu production) and voila delicious nutritious food after 36 hour ferment.

Last I heard, perennial rice in China had reached yield parity with conventional, and was more profitable because it was getting 4 harvests per planting. About 45 thousand farmers were growing it. The Land Institute spawned this and other efforts around the world.

I gather neonics are in food. How can we fix this mess? In an age of miniaturization & AI why are we still running 20 ton tractors on vast monocrop fields? How about fine-scale, highly diverse intercropping, via robotics? Lundgren says plant diversity creates insect diversity which suppresses pests.

Ouch! So neonics are terrible for pollinators. Continuous corn mono-cropping doesn’t need pollinators, since corn propagates via wind blown cross pollination. I guess we’d be better off with diverse intercropping that values pollinators & doesn’t use neonics.

I wrote a thread on the concept of “lace of rewilded field borders” as way of returning large extent, but modest area, of land back to Nature. Does this mesh with the subject of fixing continuous corn problems? bsky.app/profile/zero...

Extremely interesting.
One comment on riparian buffers: The pawpaw tree is riparian, & is the host plant of Zebra Swallowtail butterflies, whose historic range is much of Midwest. Pawpaws could benefit this pollinator..

Thanks. Lots of good points about wellness grifters. For sound diet-health advice I trust Harvard Healthy Eating Plate guidance & other HSPH advice, all science based. Online diet-health influencers promise quick fixes & never acknowledge weight loss plateaus & regain common to all rapid loss diets.

The current rate of US overweigh/obesity is arguably a real health crisis. How do we fix it? Smart people within the food system need to focus more on solving this problem.

I’m fascinated with Kevin Hall’s discussions of how metabolism works & how it’s full of counter intuitive surprises. Online influencers pitching low carb never mention plateaus, how to break through them or counter backsliding; never post plots of daily weight over 2+ years for actual people.

When you see grams sugar per serving on label, multiply that by 0.8 to get the pounds sugar per year if you eat one serving per day. A kids flavored yogurt with 20 grams sugar eaten daily is 16 pounds per year. That’s 4 sacks of sugar. A kids gummy vitamin: one sack. Parents take note.

Sounds like iceberg model, “structures” and “mental models” layers. In some cases, disruptive emerging competition can push change In incumbents.

Finally, I speculate on whether the proposed novel meal portion model’s ability to fine-tune both weekly average meal calories and level of day-to-day calorie variance could yield insights on avoiding plateaus in a long-term weight loss program. 24/

Exploit novel sales options for convenience;
Help reduce plastics waste;
Use package QR codes to inform consumers about positive food system topics;
Help tame today’s obesity crisis through a novel portion model & an app integration that allow low-effort average calorie fine tuning… 23/x

In summary,
This thread contemplates how a reinvention of mass distribution frozen meals could
Be a convenient time saver, while still being a minimally processed, healthy meal option;
Promote nature-positive food production methods;
Promote regional crop sourcing… 22/x

Is it possible that this fluctuation level, by swamping the average loss rate, could obscure from the metabolism that a weight loss program is underway, helping to avoid plateaus? Perhaps the novel 400 : 600 portion model could provide a “control knob” to explore whether “noise” can be helpful. 21/x

For every 10-day moving window, I did a linear regression & found the standard deviation of weight data about the local trend line. On average, these day-to-day fluctuations were nearly 5 times the average loss within 10-day windows. 20/x

Based on my experience over some 850 days of weight tracking, graphical feedback, and a very gradual target loss rate, I suspect that variance may play a role in successfully staying on track with weight loss goals. 19/x

Thus, with the novel 400 : 600 portion model, one has control over both weekly meal (say, lunch) calorie total, and the amount of day-to-day ups & downs. It seems unclear whether greater or lesser day-to-day calorie consistency is better for weight loss success. 18/x

The novel portion model provides an actuator for tuning total weekly lunch calories. It may also provide a 2nd “control knob”. As it turns out, for most given calorie values, several distinct portion profiles will produce the same total weekly calories; but with differing standard deviations. 17/x