A COW GIVES NEARLY 200,000 GLASSES OF MILK IN A LIFETIME
Whenit comes to cows who are confined within the industrial agricultural food system, the word “gives” is a euphemism. Mothers are forcibly impregnated, then separated from their babies, sometimes only hours after birth. The baby is prevented from nursing, enabling farmers to harvest milk for humans instead. Calves frequently wind up in the veal industry, where they are killed at a very young age.
While a single cow can be made to produce 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime, the truth is that humans don’t need to drink a single glass to remain healthy.
PIGEONS CAN DO MATH
Numerical problems can inspire fear and anxiety in many of us (the author included), but some species tackle these things handily.
A study in 2011 determined pigeons’ ability to reason using abstract rules about
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math—with skill levels on a par with monkeys.
GIRAFFES CAN HUM, BUT ONLY AT NIGHT
It was long suspected that giraffes made no noise because people listening to them— both in the wild and captive environments—hadn’t heard them make any vocalizations.
Scientists previously assumed that the characteristic long necks of these ruminants contained vocal cords that were essentially useless, despite being fully developed and ap parently functional.
Recently, however, it was dis covered that giraffes do make vocalizations—they hum, and only at night. Take a listen here.
WILD CHIMPS LIKE TO DRINK
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a nice fruity cock tail every so often—even the chimps are doing it!
Fermented sap from a palm tree is the preference of one group of chimps, who were observed sopping up this nat urally occurring bevy using leaf sponges.
KANGAROOS DO, IN FACT, FART
Hopefully, they were soon released into the fresh air after
KOALAS SLEEP UP TO 22 HOURS A DAY
Because koalas’ primary source of food—the eucalyptus tree—is toxic, their digestive systems need to work overtime to break the toxins down.
This process is energy-consuming and is why they sleep for 18 to 22 hours per day.
Maybe eating toxic food isn’t the best approach to leading a lively life, but a life of sleeping doesn’t sound too bad either.
It was once believed that kan garoos didn’t produce meth ane, a greenhouse gas com monly found in the flatulence of herbivores (and a major driver of climate change).
This is how the rumor got go ing that kangaroos can’t fart. However, after locking a group into a sealed room, feeding them a variety of food types, and measuring the resulting air quality, it was found that they do, in fact, fart.
ELEPHANTS ARE THE ONLY ANIMAL THAT CAN’T JUMP
It’s true that adult elephants can’t jump, but they are far from being the only land animal lacking this ability.
The portly rhino and mostly aquatic hippo don’t jump either.
Jumping tends to be a mechanism for evading predators, and when you’re big enough, the need to run away becomes unnecessary.
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It should be noted that young elephants can jump, as they are far more susceptible to predation than adults.
OCTOPUSES CAN TASTE WITH THEIR ARMS
The suckers lining the under sides of an octopus’s arm are for more than just gripping.
These structures are simi lar to taste buds on human tongues, only these enable both taste and smell.
Each arm is filled with neurons, so these cephalopods are also thinking with their arms, too.
Red squirrels were observed adopting young particularly if they were related.
SLOTHS CAN TAKE UP TO A MONTH TO COMPLETELY DIGEST A SINGLE LEAF
Everything about sloths is slow—including their diges tion.
Because a sloth’s diet consists largely of toxic leaves which are difficult to digest—with a single leaf sometimes taking 30 days there is little energy left over for fast movement.
But who needs it when you’ve got a coat covered in algae to camouflage you from preda tors?
SQUIRRELS WILL ADOPT ORPHANS
Many species of the animal kingdom aside from humans adopt youngsters of their own kind, and sometimes even of different species.
What makes this behavior no table in squirrels is that they tend to be asocial—meaning that they live in relative isola tion from one another, as op posed to social species such as lions or elk.
BUTTERFLIES TASTE WITH THEIR FEET
Imagine being able to taste the floor. This is something most of us would find unappetizing—but if you spent your days stepping on fragrant flower petals, it might be a different story.
And in this case, you would be a butterfly, since these insects have receptors on their feet and legs similar to that of human taste buds.
SQUIRRELS PLANT THOUSANDS OF NEW TREES EACH YEAR
According to one study, squirrels fail to recover up to 74 percent of the acorns they store.
Many of these are buried in the ground, which one re-
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searcher points out is “practi cally planting” baby trees.
The question these stud ies haven’t answered so far is whether squirrels are in tentionally planting trees, rather than forgetting where they stored nuts. Since squir rels have an interest in the growth of more trees, which provide them with more food and shelter, the idea may not be that far-fetched.
COWS HAVE BEST FRIENDS
An experiment was conduct ed placing together cows who’d known one another— AKA, their best friend—and those who were strangers.
When placed with their best friends, the cow’s heart rates were significantly lower, as were cortisol levels (low er cortisol indicates lower stress). Both of these indica tors shot up when cow friends were separated.
Sadly this research was con ducted with an eye towards improving milk yields on farms. Not measured were stress levels when newborn calves are separated from their mothers.
GORILLAS CAN CATCH HUMAN COLDS AND OTHER ILLNESSES
tions. In Africa, wild gorillas are exposed to these diseases through the ecotourism industry, posing significant risks to highly endangered populations.
THE BAT IS THE ONLY MAMMAL THAT CAN FLY
Although more similar in appearance and behavior to birds, bats actually have a lot in common with human beings. Both species are mammals, since bats give birth to live young and wean them on milk, and are covered with hair rather than feathers or
Where bats are exceptional is their ability to fly under their own power, which no other mammal in the world pos-
DO YOUR PART
Diseases frequently pass between humans and animals.
Zoonotic disease transmission occurs when a disease passes from animals to humans, as with the novel coronavirus which caused the global pandemic of 2020.
Reverse zoonosis occurs when diseases pass from humans to animals. Gorillas are susceptible to reverse zoonosis, particularly respiratory infec-
Planet earth is home to so many incredible species of animals, each with their own unique perspectives on the
Now that you know more about those with whom we share this planet, hopefully, you will do your part to reduce suffering and support initiatives that aim to increase respect and protection for animals everywhere. ◙
Astroke, sometimes called a "brain attack," happens when blood flow to an area in the brain is cut off.
The brain cells, deprived of the oxygen and glucose needed to survive, die. If not caught early, permanent brain damage and death can result.
Strokes are the fifth leading cause of death in men (and the third most common cause of death in women), yet some guys can't name one stroke symptom. Here's how to rec ognize and prevent them.
WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT STROKES?
If you're like most middleaged guys, you probably don't spend much time worrying about a stroke.
After all, strokes are a risk we associate with later in life - something to think about after we retire and are fitted with our first pair of dentures.
But maybe we should be a little more concerned. They are indeed more likely in men
Strokes are the fifth leading cause of death in men (and the third most common cause of death in women), yet some guys can't name one stroke symptom.
over age 65, but they can happen at any age.
Strokes are also more likely to be fatal and strike earlier in men than in women.
The consequences of a stroke can be devastating. Not only can a stroke kill you, but nonfatal strokes can leave you severely debilitated, paralyzed, or unable to communicate.
However, the news isn't all bleak. About 80% of strokes are preventable. So it's time to improve your odds.
If you're at risk, you need to learn the signs of stroke and make some changes in your lifestyle.
Knowing the risk factors and signs of a stroke is the first step in stroke prevention.
HOW DOES A STROKE HAPPEN?
There are two types of stroke: • ISCHEMIC STROKES are similar to a heart attack, except they happen in the blood vessels of the brain.
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Clots can form either in the brain's blood vessels, in blood vessels leading to the brain, or even blood vessels elsewhere in the body that travel to the brain.
These clots block blood flow to the brain's cells, choking off oxygen to a part of the brain. Without oxygen, brain cells first go into shock and then start dying.
So the longer you go without stroke treatment, the greater the damage to your brain. Ischemic strokes can also happen when too much plaque (fatty deposits and cholesterol) clogs the brain's blood vessels.
These are the most com mon type of stroke. About 80% of strokes are isch emic.
• HEMORRHAGIC STROKES happen when a blood ves sel in the brain breaks or ruptures.
The result is blood seep ing into the brain, caus ing damage to brain cells. While less common, these strokes can be more dev astating.
Although the cause is dif ferent from an ischemic stroke, the result is the same: Brain cells can't get the blood they need. More than 60% of people who have a hemorrhagic stroke die within a year, and those who survive tend to be much more disabled.
Hemorrhagic strokes happen when a blood vessel in the brain breaks or ruptures.
or thinness in the blood vessel wall.
WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF STROKE?
The most common symptoms of a stroke are:
• Weakness or numbness of the face, arm, or leg on one side of the body
• Loss of vision or dimming (like a curtain falling) in one or both eyes
• Loss of speech, difficulty talking, or understanding what others are saying
• Sudden, severe headache with no known cause
• Loss of balance or unstable walking, usually combined with another symptom
WHAT SHOULD I DO IF I HAVE SYMPTOMS OF A STROKE?
Immediately call 911 if you or someone you know has symptoms of a stroke. Stroke is a medical emergency. Immediate treatment can save your life or increase your chances for a full recovery.
The American Heart Association uses the memory tool known as F.A.S.T. to recognize signs of stroke:
The most common causes of hemorrhagic stroke are high blood pressure and brain aneurysms. An aneurysm is a weakness
The consequences of a stroke can be devastating. Not only can a stroke kill you, but nonfatal strokes can leave you severely debilitated, paralyzed, or unable to communicate.
• Facial drooping
• Arm weakness
• Slurring of speech
• Time to call 911 ARE
STROKES PREVENTABLE?
About 80% of strokes are preventable. Many risk factors can be controlled before they
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cause problems.
Controllable risk factors Include:
• High blood pressure
• Atrial fibrillation
• Uncontrolled diabetes
• High cholesterol
• Smoking
• Heavy drinking
• Being overweight
• Carotid or coronary artery disease
Uncontrollable risk factors include:
• Age (People over age 65)
• Gender (Men have more strokes; women have deadlier strokes)
• Race (African-American people have a higher risk)
• Family history of stroke
Your doctor can evaluate your risk for stroke and help you control your risk factors.
Hemorrhagic strokes are best prevented by controlling high blood pressure.
The less pressure there is on the walls of your blood vessels, the less likely they are to burst.
The more common ischemic strokes are caused by blood clots - the same villains responsible for heart attacks.
To decrease the risks, you need to keep your arteries clear of plaque - the gunk that builds up in them and leads to clotting.
Ways to do this include:
• Exercising for at least
Hemorrhagic strokes are best prevented by controlling high blood pressure.
Regular checkups are important in catching problems before they become serious.
half an hour on most days of the week
• Eating right, preferably a diet low in saturated fat (such as that in processed meats) and high in fruits and vegetables
Maintaining a healthy
Not smoking. Smokers are twice as likely to have a stroke.
Low-dose aspirin can reduce stroke risk, although it may not help younger men already at low risk for stroke. Talk to doctor before starting aspirin therapy.
Sometimes, people experience warning signs before a stroke occurs.
These are called transient ischemic attacks (also called TIA or "mini-stroke"), brief episodes of the stroke symptoms listed above. A TIA is when a blockage, caused by a clot, is temporary.
These leave no permanent brain damage but do put you at higher risk for a subsequent stroke.
Some people have no warning signs before a stroke, or symptoms are so mild that they are not noticeable.
Regular checkups are important in catching problems before they become serious. Report any symptoms or risk factors to your doctor. ◙
SOURCE: WEBMD.COM
As most of us know all too well, when you’re reeling from the finale of a romantic relationship that you didn’t want to end, your emotional and bodily reactions are a tangle:
You’re still in love and want to reconcile, but you’re also angry and confused; simultaneously, you’re jonesing for a “fix” of the person who has abruptly left your life, and you might go to dramatic, even embarrassing, lengths to get it, even though part of you knows better.
What does our brain look like when we’re in the throes of such agonizing heartbreak?
This isn’t just an academic question. The answer can help us better understand not only what’s going on inside our lovelorn bodies, but why humans may have evolved to feel such visceral pain in the wake of a break-up. In that light, the neuroscience of heartbreak can offer some practical—and provocative— ideas for how we can recover
What does our brain look like when we’re in the throes of such agonizing heartbreak?
from love gone wrong.
ADDICTED TO LOVE
The earliest pairings of brain research and love research, from around 2005, established the baseline that would inform research going forward: what a brain in love looks like.
In a study led by psychologist Art Aron, neurologist Lucy Brown, and anthropologist Helen Fisher, individuals who were deeply in love viewed images of their beloved and simultaneously had their brains scanned in an fMRI machine, which maps neural activity by measuring changes in blood flow in the brain.
The fMRI’s vivid casts of yellows, greens, and blues—fireworks across gray matter— clearly showed that romantic love activates in the caudate nucleus, via a flood of dopamine.
The caudate nucleus is associated with what psychologists call “motivation and goaloriented behavior,” or “the rewards system.” To many of
these experts, the fact that love fires there suggests that love isn’t so much an emotion in its own right—although aspects of it are obviously highly emotional—as it is a “goaloriented motivational state.” (If that term seems confusing, it might help to think about it in terms of facial expressions: Emotions are characterized by particular, passing facial expressions—a frown with anger, a smile with happiness, an open mouth with shock—while if you had to identify the face of someone “in love,” it would be harder to do.) So as far as brain wiring is concerned, romantic love is the motivation to obtain and retain the object of your affections.
But romance isn’t the only thing that stimulates increases in dopamine and its rocketlike path through your reward system. Nicotine and cocaine follow exactly the same pattern: Try it, dopamine is released, it feels good, and you want more—you are in a “goal-oriented motivational state.” Take this to its
In a study led by psychologist Art Aron, neurologist Lucy Brown, and anthropologist Helen Fisher, individuals who were deeply in love viewed images of their beloved and simultaneously had their brains scanned in an fMRI machine, which maps neural activity by measuring changes in blood flow in the brain.
logical conclusion and, as far as brain wiring is concerned, when you’re in love, it’s not as if you’re an addict. You are an addict.
Just as love at its best is explained by fMRI scans, so, too, is love at its worst. In 2010 the team who first used fMRI scanning to connect love and the caudate nucleus set out to observe the brain when anger and hurt feelings enter the mix.
They gathered a group of individuals who were in the first stages of a breakup, all of whom reported that they thought about their rejecter approximately 85 percent of their waking hours and yearned to reunite with them.
Moreover, all of these lovelorn reported “signs of lack of emotion control on a regular basis since the initial breakup, occurring regularly for weeks or months.
This included inappropriate phoning, writing or e-mailing, pleading for reconciliation, sobbing for hours, drinking
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too much and/or making dramatic entrances and exits into the rejecter’s home, place of work or social space to express anger, despair or passionate love.” In other words, each of these bereft souls had it bad.
Then, with appropriate controls, the researchers passed their subjects through fMRI machines, where they could look at photographs of their beloved (called the “rejecter stimulus”), and simultaneously prompted them to share their feelings and experience, which elicited statements such as “It hurt so much,” and “I hate what [they] did to me.”
A few particularly interesting patterns in brain activity emerged:
As far as the midbrain reward system is concerned, they were still “in love.” Just because the “reward” is delayed
They gathered a group of individuals who were in the first stages of a breakup, all of whom reported that they thought about their rejecter approximately 85 percent of their waking hours and yearned to reunite with them.
in coming (or, more to the point, not coming at all), that doesn’t mean the neurons that are expecting “reward” shut down.
They keep going and going, waiting and waiting for a “fix.” Not surprisingly, among the experiment’s subjects, the caudate was still very much in love and reacted in an almost Pavlovian way to the image of the loved one. Even though cognitively they knew that their relationships were over, part of each participant’s brain was still in motivation mode.
Parts of the brain were trying to override others. The orbital frontal cortex, which is involved in learning from emotions and controlling behavior, activated. As we all know, when you’re in the throes of heartbreak, you want to do things you’ll probably regret later, but at the same time another part of
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you is trying to keep a lid on it.
They were still addicted. As they viewed images of their rejecters, regions of the brain were activated that typically fire in individuals craving and addicted to drugs. Again, no different from someone addicted to—and attempting a withdrawal from—nicotine or cocaine.
While these conclusions explain in broad strokes what happens in our brains when we’re dumped, one scientist I interviewed describes what happens in our breakup brains in a slightly different way. “In the case of a lost love,” he told me, “if the relationship went on for a long time, the grieving person has thousands of neural circuits devoted to the lost person, and each of these has to be brought up and reconstructed to take into account the person’s absence.”
LOVE HURTS
When you’re deep in the mire of heartbreak, chances are that you feel pain somewhere in your body—probably in your chest or stomach. Some people describe it as a dull ache, others as piercing, while still others experience it as a crushing sensation.
The pain can last for a few seconds and then subside, or it can be chronic, hanging over your days and depleting you like just like the pain, say, of a back injury or a migraine.
But how can we reconcile the sensation of our hearts breaking—when in fact they don’t, at least not literally— with biophysical reality?
What actually happens in our bodies to create that sensation?
When you’re deep in the mire of heartbreak, chances are that you feel pain somewhere in your body—probably in your chest or stomach.
The short answer is that no one knows. The long answer is that the pain might be caused by the simultaneous hormonal triggering of the sympathetic activation system (most commonly referred to as fight-or-flight stress that ramps up heart and lung action) and the parasympathetic activation system (known as the rest-and-digest response, which slows the heart down and is tied to the social-engagement system). In effect, then, it could be as if the heart’s accelerator and brakes are pushed simultaneously, and those conflicting actions create the sensation of heartbreak.
While no one has yet studied what exactly goes on in the upper-body cavity during the moments of heartbreak that might account for the physical pain, the results of the aforementioned fMRI study of heartbroken individuals in-
different from a stab wound.
This neatly parallels the discoveries that love can be addictive on a par with cocaine and nicotine.
Much as we think of “heartbreak” as a verbal expression of our pain or say we “can’t quit” someone, these are not actually artificial constructs— they are rooted in physical realities. How wonderful that science, and specifically images of our brains, should reveal that metaphors aren’t poetic flights of fancy.
But it’s important to note that heartbreak falls under the rubric of what psychologists who specialize in pain call “social pain”—the activation of pain in response to the loss of or threats to social connection.
dicate that when the subjects looked at and discussed their rejecter, they trembled, cried, sighed, and got angry, and in their brains these emotions triggered activity in the same area associated with physical pain.
Another study that explored the emotional-physical pain connection compared fMRI results on subjects who touched a hot probe with those who looked at a photo of an ex-partner and mentally relived that particular experience of rejection.
The results confirmed that social rejection and physical pain are rooted in exactly the same regions of the brain. So when you say you’re “hurt” as a result of being rejected by someone close to you, you’re not just leaning on a metaphor.
As far as your brain is concerned, the pain you feel is no
From an evolutionary perspective, the “social pain” of separation likely served a purpose back on the savannas that were the hunting and gathering grounds of our ancestors.
There, safety relied on numbers; exclusion of any kind, including separation from a group or one’s mate, signaled death, just as physical pain could signal a life-threatening injury.
Psychologists reason that the neural circuitries of physical pain and emotional pain evolved to share the same pathways to alert protohumans to danger; physical and emotional pain, when sabertoothed tigers lurked in the brush, were cues to pay close attention or risk death.
On the surface, that functionality wouldn’t seem terribly relevant now—after all, few of us risk attack by a wild animal charging at us from behind the lilacs at any given moment, and living alone
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doesn’t mean a slow, lonely death.
But still, the pain is there to teach us something. It focuses our attention on significant social events and forces us to learn, correct, avoid, and move on.
When you look at social pain from this perspective, you have to acknowledge that in our society we’re often encouraged to hide it.
We bottle it up. While of course it’s possible to be private about one’s pain and still deal with it, and it may not be so healthy to share your sob story with everyone you meet on the street, if you’re totally ignoring it and the survival theory holds true, then you’re putting yourself at risk because you’re not alerting others to a potential crisis.
THE HEARTBREAK PILL?
Several studies, also using the hot probe + image + fMRI combo, have shown that looking at an image of a loved one actually reduces the experience of physical pain, in much the same way that, say, holding a loved one’s hand during a frightening or painful procedure does, or kissing a child’s boo-boo makes the tears go away.
Science shows that love is effectively a painkiller, because it activates the same sections of brain stimulated by morphine and cocaine; moreover, the effects are actually quite strong.
On one level this suggests a wonderfully simple and elegant solution, albeit a New Agey one, to physical or emotional pain: All you need is love.
And it bolsters the notion,
If you could take a pill that assured that you could fall in love, fall out of love, or stay in love on command, would you take it?
faulty though it may be for some of us, that if you’re suffering from a broken heart, moving on fast can bring relief.
There’s a point, however, where this trend in fMRI research starts to enter a prickly realm:
Because physical pain and emotional pain—like heartbreak—travel along the same pathways in the brain, as covered earlier, this means that theoretically they can be medically treated in the same way.
In fact, researchers recently showed that acetaminophen—yep, regular old Tylenol—reduces the experience of social pain.
“We have shown for the first time that acetaminophen, an over-the-counter medication commonly used to reduce
physical pain, also reduces the pain of social rejection, at both neural and behavioral levels,” they write in their paper in the journal Psychological Science.
But some experts argue that the moment you put a toe on the slippery slope of popping pills to make you feel better emotionally, you have to wonder if doing so circumvents nature’s plan.
You’re supposed to feel bad, to sit with it, to review what went wrong, even to the point of obsession, so that you learn your lesson and don’t make the same mistake again.
While they might not admit it, for biologists and psychologists, understanding love on a chemical level is tantamount to finding the holy grail.
After all, the more we un-
derstand about love in terms of science . . . well then, the closer we are to understanding what makes humans human, an advance that might be on a par with physicists cracking the mystery of the space-time continuum.
Ultimately, all this progress points to one thing: treatment, with both painkillers and antiaddiction drugs.
Perhaps recovering from heartbreak could be as simple as wearing a patch (Lovaderm!) or chewing a special gum (Lovorette!) or popping a pill (Alove!) that just makes the pain go away.
If you could take a pill that assured that you could fall in love, fall out of love, or stay in love on command, would you take it? ◙
Deepfake, synthetic media, including images, videos, and audio, generated by artificial intelligence (AI) technology that portray something that does not exist in reality or events that have never occurred.
The term deepfake combines deep, taken from AI deeplearning technology (a type of machine learning that involves multiple levels of processing), and fake, addressing that the content is not real.
The term came to be used for synthetic media in 2017 when a Reddit moderator created a subreddit called “deepfakes” and began posting videos that used face-swapping technology to insert celebrities’ likenesses into existing pornographic videos.
In addition to pornography, examples of deepfakes that have been widely circulated include an image of Pope Francis in a puffer jacket, an image of former U.S. president Donald Trump in a scuffle with police, a video of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg giving a speech about
Examples of deepfakes that have been widely circulated include an image of Pope Francis in a puffer jacket.
his company’s nefarious power, and a video of Queen Elizabeth dancing and giving a speech about the power of technology. None of these events occurred in real life.
Deepfakes are produced using two different AI deep-learning algorithms: one that creates the best possible replica of a real image or video and another that detects whether the replica is fake and, if it is, reports on the differences between it and the original.
The first algorithm produces a synthetic image and receives feedback on it from the second algorithm and then adjusts it to make it appear more real; the process is repeated as many times as it takes until the second algorithm does not detect any false imagery.
In deepfake videos, a specific person’s voice may be replicated by feeding an AI model real audio data from the person, thereby training it to mimic them.
Oftentimes, deepfake videos are produced by overdubbing existing footage of a person
speaking with new AI-generated audio mimicking the voice of that person.
Deepfakes are, more often than not, associated with nefarious motives, including creating misinformation and generating confusion about politically important matters.
They have been used to demean, intimidate, and harass and have targeted not only celebrities, politicians, and CEOs, but ordinary citizens as well.
Some positive uses for deepfakes have also emerged, however. One is spreading awareness about social issues.
For example, soccer player David Beckham participated in a campaign to increase awareness about malaria in which videos were produced that appeared to show him speaking in nine different languages, broadening the reach of the message.
Deepfakes are, more often than not, associated with nefarious motives, including creating misinformation and generating confusion about politically important matters.
The art world has also found positive uses for deepfake technology.
An exhibition called “Dalí Lives” at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, featured a life-sized video display of the artist Salvador Dalí delivering quotes from his interviews and written correspondence in a voice that mimicked his.
Several humorous deepfakes have emerged as well. One TikTok account is entirely dedicated to deepfakes of
Keanu Reeves, with videos ranging from humorous takes on romantic relationships to TikTok dances.
Education and medicine are two additional fields that may benefit from deepfake technology. In the classroom, educators may use deepfakes of historical speeches to offer immersive and engaging lessons.
Using deepfake technology in health care can improve the accuracy with which tumours are spotted on magnetic res-
onance imaging (MRI) scans, making them easier to treat.
For example, because tumours or abnormalities are relatively rare in the general population, it is difficult to have enough images of them to feed to an AI program. Deepfake images allow such
AI programs to be trained to recognize a greater number of abnormalities, hence improving their long-term accuracy. Their use also permits research to be conducted using synthesized data instead of data from real patients, enabling researchers to avoid privacy concerns. ◙
SOURCE:
Processed foods refer to any food that’s changed from its natural state. This can include food that was simply cut, washed, heated, pasteurized, canned, cooked, frozen, dried, dehydrated, mixed, or packaged. It also can include food that has added preservatives, nutrients, flavors, salts, sugars, or fats.
Usually, people think processed foods are “bad.” While there are a lot of processed options that are less nutritious, some processed foods are healthy.
WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF PROCESSED FOODS?
The United Nations has a food grouping scale called the NOVA food classification. It puts food into four groups:
Group one: Unprocessed or minimally processed foods.
This group includes foods like fresh blueberries, roasted nuts, chopped vegetables, or other foods that have slight changes. These foods are prepared like this to make them easier to access.
Some slightly processed foods can be a part of a healthy diet. But other, highly processed options can lead to health risks.
This group might also include things that have been dried, frozen, refrigerated, filtered, fermented, or put in vacuum-sealed packages. This is meant to preserve the natural foods and allow you to safely eat them later.
Group two: Processed culinary ingredients.
This group contains options like butter, oils, sugar, or salts. They’re ingredients that come from nature but are slightly changed.
They may have been pressed, refined, milled, or dried.
They’ve gone through this process to make it easier for you to use them in your kitchen. These options aren’t supposed to be eaten alone. They’re meant to be added to foods during meal preparation.
Group three: Processed foods.
These include canned fish, fruits in syrup, bottled vegetables, cheese, fresh bread, or other options that were made with added salt, oil, sugar, or other things from groups one or two.
HOW DO PROCESSED FOODS AFFECT YOUR HEALTH?
Some slightly processed foods can be a part of a healthy diet. But other, highly processed options can lead to health risks.
You might consume more than you’re aware of. Some processed foods contain a lot of salt, fat, and sugar. This can make the foods seem more appealing, taste better, or lengthen their shelf life.
But you might not know just how much fat, salt, or sugar is in the foods you eat. This can cause you to eat more than you’d expect since it can be difficult to spot these additives.
Because of the high amount of ingredients, some of these foods also have a lot more calories than you’d think. For example, one small cookie might have 50 calories. This is about the same number of calories as an entire cup of green beans.
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You’ll tend to eat more calo ries with highly processed foods.
Highly processed food may put you at a higher cancer risk. One study found that your risk of cancer goes up with the amount of ultra-pro cessed food you eat. Some experts wonder if this is be cause of all of the food ad ditives that are in these op tions.
Some processed options don’t give your body what it needs. Foods that are highly processed are stripped of their basic nutrients. This is why many processed foods have added fiber, vitamins, and minerals. But once you take out the natural nutrients from a food, it’s difficult to add back all of its healthful value.
HEAVILY PROCESSED FOODS ARE QUICKER TO DIGEST
Processed foods are easier for your body to digest than foods in their natural state. This means your body burns fewer calories when you digest processed foods. Experts think you burn around half as many calories with processed options compared to natural foods. If you eat high-calorie processed foods that require less calories to digest, it may be harder to stay at a healthy weight.
HOW CAN YOU CHOOSE BETTER OPTIONS?
The fewer ingredients, the better. If you can’t pronounce most of the ingredients in a food, it’s most likely highly processed and probably not very good for you.
To get the most out of your meals, you’ll want to stick to foods that aren’t changed as much from their natural state.
Typically, the less processed it is, the better.
• Milks or juices with added vitamin D and calcium
• Canned fruits stored in water or natural fruit juice
• Breakfast cereals with added fiber
While it’s impossible to completely avoid unhealthy foods at times, it’s smart to stick to mainly minimally processed foods.
There are a few ways to ensure you consume nutritional food options:
READ YOUR LABELS
The fewer ingredients, the better. If you can’t pronounce most of the ingredients in a food, it’s most likely highly processed and probably not very good for you. Look for whole food options, like raw vegetables and fruit, or options with less ingredients.
CHOOSE FOOD FROM THE FRESH SECTIONS
One way to avoid processed foods is to look in the fresh section at the grocery store. You’ll find more wholesome choices here.
Look for less processed meats. Meats that are less processed, like seafood or chicken breasts, are better for you than processed meats. Avoid heavily processed options like sausage or bacon.
COOK MORE AT HOME
Some examples of processed foods that can add benefits to your meals include:
• Whole-grain or whole
• Precut vegetables
• Low-fat milk
When you go out to eat, it’s hard to tell what’s actually in your food. If you cook at home, you’re in control of the ingredients you put in your meals. ◙
SOURCE: BRAINLIFE.COM
