LUCKY’S JOB 1 = GREAT TASTE!
Great Food Nourishes the body, the mind and the soul!
It provides life and the reason to live!
Lucky’s Foundation is Great Beef
Cows have the unique ability to capture and absorb the micronutrients from the plants of the pasture and convert it to animal protein to nourish our human lives. The Wagyu-Angus breed has the unique ability to produce more Omega fatty acids than other breeds and disperse these benefits throughout their muscle structure for our benefit and enjoyment.
Noble Ingredients such as Gulf Shrimp, and Local Fish capture rich aqua micro nutrients through their diet converting to marine based proteins as well.
The plant world provides so many wonderful nutrients to enhance our lives. Vegetable rich in Carotenoids, Flavonooids, Polyphenols and Catechins are essential to the health of our microbiome and so many of our active body functions.
Noble grains such as basmati rice and protein rich lentils are combined to achieve a complete plant based 20 amino acid protein. Culinary techniques cook the grains to make complex carbs for better nutrition and blood sugar control, while reducing those pesky lectins (see below,,link)
The Botanical plant world has a lot to contribute with tasty spices that deliver rich flavonoid polyphenols to elevate the flavor of the dish and nourish your body. Turmeric, Ginger, Chiles, Black Pepper, Cumin, Coriander and many, many more make up our Lucky Spice Blends laced through all our dishes.
Don’t forget healthy fats that also fuel our bodies. Omega rich Wagyu Golden Culinary Oils are in our great candles, pretty to look at and tasty for dipping our bread. A2 Cow Butter with micronutrients, MCT rich Coconut Oil, and of course Polyphenol rich Olive Oil round our Lucky’s Pantry.
Sip Soar Restore with Lucky’s Twisted Classic Cocktails that are enhanced with botanical enriched restorative syrups for taste and nutrient delivery in your now guilt free – good for you cocktail!
WHY FIRE……
In “Catching Fire” by Richard Wrangham, Fire is presented as kindling the evolution of the modern human by breaking down protein and other nutrients to make them more bioavailable to our digestive system. It radically decreased the time our ancestors spent on collecting, chewing and digesting food for nutrients to survive.
Yes, raw food has more nutrients than cooked food BUT most raw nutrients are less or not even nutritional available without cooking. For instance it is absolutely necessary to cook Carotenoids such as carrots, tomatoes, peppers, corn as the only way to make their nutrients BIOAVAILABLE to your body.
WHY SMOKE…
Smoke led us to the fire that transformed us as a species. Smoke is excitement and when we catch it we can transform it into delicious flavor. LIVE SMOKED Wagyu Beef Short Ribs captures being inside the smoker while enabling you to dig right in. LIVE SMOKED Twisted Cocktails takes you right inside the fire charred barrel that has tamed wild liquor spirits into delicious. Marshmallows on fire atop the Twisted Smores takes us back to out childhood campfire fun. Smoke goes hand in hand with Fire, harnessing the flavor and nourishing benefits of delicious natural foods.
Lucky’s LIVE Smoked Wagyu Short Rib
HOLY TRANSFORMATION..
In the beginning, first comes the cure, the secret blend of Lucky’s Famous Red Spices with all the fixings that takes the wonderful Wagyu Beef to the next world of flavor sensation that everyone loves. Originating in the Fertile Crescent in the beginning of history the spices complete the protein structure thus preserving flavor, texture, color, and nutrition.
Second comes the low and slow wood smoke. The Wagyu cured cuts are hung to expose all surfaces to the subtle scent of the flavorful smoke, for hours and hours, gently merging the rich flavors of the Red Spice Cure surrounded by wisps of Apple and Hickory Smoke.
Third, the Slow & Low cooking for 12 to 24 Hours achieve the rich Umami Flavor and Silky Fork Tenderness. Then and only then, it is ready for Lucky’s Classic & Innovative food creations.
This HOLY TRANSFORMATION is a journey of Tender Love. From Harvest to Aging to Red Spice Curing to Hickory Smoking to Low & Slow Cooking only takes about 60 days!
See more at http://luckysfiresmoke.com/. Also https://luckyslafayette.com/gallery/
WHY DOES LUCKY’S COOK SO LOW (TEMPERATURE) AND SLOW?
The “low and slow cooking temperatures”, lower than the temperature in a smoldering fire, melt the Omega rich amino acid marbling and natural connective tissues to delicious sweet silky texture. This “low and slow” is not hot enough to drive out the natural juiciness, thus preserving the incredible aged Wagyu flavor and texture. “Low and slow” also delivers more flavor and better texture while breaking down the proteins for more absorption and better nutritional delivery to our body.
LUCKY’S GREAT TASTE DELIVER SUPERIOR NUTRITION
More Protein & Fiber, Lower Complex Carbs
WITHTOUT – No Wheat, No Gluten, No Soy, Low Lectines
NONE OF THE BAD STUFF!!
The Troublesome Gluten, Wheat, Soy & Lectins……
Yes, Lucky’s menu is completely composed of Gluten Free Ingredients. Our Super Buns reflect our goal to create “better for you foods “ with higher proteins, good fats and lower carbs, all without gluten. We do not have wheat, soy or pork of any type in our kitchen.
As you know gluten is only one protein in a huge family of proteins called lectins. Some lectins are severely poisonous while others are less troublesome to consume. We try to eliminate or minimize these other sources of lectins on the menu as well. It is generally believed that celiac disease could also be stimulated by other lectins not solely gluten.
http://luckysfiresmoke.com/gluten-lectins
Phytic acid is considered an antinutrient because it impairs mineral absorption. Phytic acid prevents the absorption of iron, zinc, and calcium and may promote mineral deficiencies. Phytic acid is mainly found in grains, nuts, and seeds. Foods high in phytic acid include cereals, legumes, and certain vegetables.
Sweet Protein Breads and Buns (Dough Products)
Lucky loves bread and everything made from dough but wheat flour is not so good for you. Not so long ago Congress enacted the flour enrichment legislation in War Food Order of 1943 to add essential nutrients stripped during processes and naturally absent from wheat flour, to offset deficiency cesease syndrome and insure better available nutrition to our population. (See foot note below)
The little Wheat Protein in bread only converts 25% of its protein into your system compared to Whey Protein conversion of 100% into bioavailable nutrients to you.
Lucky’s approach is start with noble seed flours (no wheat no soy no gluten) with cleaner carbohydrates and fiber combined with rich sweet digestible proteins such as wholesome natural milk protein which converts 95% to your system that we use to make our Lucky’s Sweet Protein buns and breads. With more protein and fibers,there are less carbohydrates in these delicious breads,buns,rolls and pastries.
The Bread we Love that Loves Us Back
LOTS OF THE OTHER GOOD STUFF FROM THE PLANT WORLD..
Carotenoids are a class or more than 750 naturally occurring plant pigments that the
results of observational studies suggest that diets high in carotenoid- vegetable and fruits are associated with reduced risks of cardiovascular disease and some cancers,
They are best absorbed with fat in a meal. Chopping, pureeing and cooking carotenoid containing vegetables in oil generally increase the bioavailability of the carotenoids they contain.
Flavonoids are various compounds found naturally in many fruits and vegetables. They’re also in plant products like wine, tea, and chocolate. There are six different types of flavonoids found in food, and each kind is broken down by your body in a different way. Flavonoids are rich in antioxidant activity and can help your body ward off everyday toxins. Including more flavonoids in your diet is a great way to help your body stay healthy and potentially decrease your risk of some chronic health conditions.
Catechins are a class of flavonoids – plant-based chemicals that help protect plants from environmental toxins, repair damage, and give certain foods, such as wine, tea and chocolate, their color and taste. They’ve also been found to have powerful antioxidant effects in people.
SUPERIOR COOKING TECHNIQUE TO DEVELOP NUTRITION –
EXECUTED BY LUCKY’S CULINARY ARTIST TEAM
SEE MORE HERE OF LUCKY’S FOOD HERE
Complex Carbs are created by advanced culinary techniques that convert simple blood sugar spiking carbs into slow burning microbiome friendly complex carbs. Complex carbs are the best fuel for our life as a journey not simple carbs that give us a short sprint to the end.
Pressure Cooking is very effective to break down those pesky lectins. Lectins are those plant based human pesticides that can kill us directly, but in our common diet kill us slowly by destroying our gut body friends that make up our microbiome.
Lucky’s Chicken – Poultry Curing and Butter Poaching Technique
** oil vs water based thermal capacity and energy transfer
The thermal energy to cook food travels with less thermal capacity through fats than through liquids. This culinary technique works very efficiently at lower temperature to cook food for our nutritent benefit. This lower energy-lower temperature range drive out less moisture from the foods maintaining better textures, juiciness and or course nutrients.
A broad range of progressive culinary techniques, expand the taste and nutritional benefits of the vegetable world. Lucky’s chases fresh and deep rich flavors from our friends in the plant world so you can love your vegetables as much as you love proteins.
At Lucky’s we love bread, so our approach is to start with the best noble seed flours that have more flavor, more protein and cleaner carbohydrates to make our Lucky’s Sweet Protein rolls and buns. Yes they have bigger flavor and a rich texture because they are packed with better for you nutrients.
Lucky’s doesn’t use wheat flour because unless it is enriched, it really has very little nutritional value, too many carbs and not so good for you gluten.
(Without enrichment the flour is unsuitable for human consumption)
NOTES:
In the 1930s and 1940s specific deficiency disease syndromes were first identified and documented in the United States (Foltz et al., 1944; McLester, 1939; Williams et al., 1943). Based on this new science, in 1940 the Committee on Food and Nutrition (now the Food and Nutrition Board [FNB]) recommended the addition of thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, and iron to flour (NRC, 1974). About that time FDA first established a standard of identity for enriched flour that identified specific nutrients and amounts required for addition to any flour labeled as “enriched” in order to improve the nutritional status of the population (FDA, 1941). The approach of using a standard of identity, which establishes the specific type and level of fortification required for particular staple food to be labeled as enriched, has remained a key aspect of fortification regulations and policy in the United States. These standards have been amended over the years, but they continue as the basis for the addition of thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, folic acid, and iron to enriched flour, with the addition of calcium as optional.
Concurrent with these activities, the nutritional status of Americans was being questioned as a result of the poor nutritional status of young men enlisting for service during World War II. These concerns led to the National Nutrition Conference for Defense in May 1941, convened by President Roosevelt. An outcome of this conference was the recommendation for flour and bread enrichment using the existing standards developed by FDA (Quick and Murphy, 1982).
Although the original FDA standard was not amended to include bread for several years, the enrichment of bread began in 1941 as a result of discussions among FNB, AMA, FDA, and the American Bakers Association. The voluntary cooperation of bakery-associated industries led to 75 percent of the white bread in the United States being fortified by the middle of 1942 (Quick and Murphy 1982). The first War Food Order, enacted in 1943, stated that all flour sold for interstate commerce would be enriched according to FDA standards.
Read more at https://www.healthline.com/health/what-are-flavonoids-everything-you-need-to-know
ALLERGENS WE AVOID OR IDENTIFY
]]>By Akito Tanaka, Dylan Loh, Jada Nagumo and Pak Yiu
JULY 22, 2022
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Feeding-Asia/Asia-s-new-food-frontier-The-rise-of-edible-tech
Every Thursday night, at an invitation-only event in an upscale Singapore hotel, a small group enjoys a four-course dinner while watching videos about an unfolding environmental crisis.
Menus in the dimly lit room at the JW Marriott are designed to highlight the environmentally destructive impact of industrial cropping and livestock breeding.
Corn is served three ways to evoke deforestation, while a dashi broth is poured over colorful vegetables and seaweed to represent rising sea levels.
Then comes the main dish: chicken nuggets, served with maple waffles and a Chinese-style bao bun. Guests put down their wine glasses, slice the meat carefully into bite-sized pieces and linger on the taste.
The ceremony is a sign that the nuggets are far more than standard fast-food fare: No chicken died to make them. They were created from stem cells, made by a U.S. startup and, so far, available only in Singapore.
Silicon Valley foodtech unicorn Eat Just is selling its meat in the world’s only nation to have approved the commercialization of lab-cultivated chicken.
The Marriott meal is an early taste of a food technology revolution whose advocates say could feed Asia’s fast-growing population, curb damage to the planet and eventually cost less than traditional meat.
“We could theoretically grow anything that might come from plants or animals, from cells instead,” Isha Datar, executive director of cellular agriculture research institute New Harvest, said in a talk.
“Vanilla doesn’t have to be rainforest-farmed, egg whites don’t have to come with the yolk, foie gras can be completely cruelty-free, and leather and silk don’t have to come from the back of an animal or the home of a silkworm.”Isha Datar
Food inflation in Asia, where more than 1.1 billion people lacked access to adequate food last year, is hovering near its all-time high and not expected to ease any time soon.
The region’s population is projected to increase by 700 million in the next three decades. Widening income gaps, supply chain disruptions and extreme climate conditions are causing price surges and accelerating a food security crisis long in the making.
Asia is home to ideas still in early stages of research but potentially transformative in feeding more people, with fewer resources, in the decades to come. Innovations such as lab-grown meat and 3D-printed food are at the forefront of efforts to rethink how, and what, we can feed the region’s next billion.
By 2030 alone, Asia is expected to add 250 million people to its current population of 4.6 billion.
By then, meat consumption will increase by 18%, but agricultural production will grow only 2% or less, according to a joint report by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Around 65% of the world’s middle class will be living in the region by 2030, according to a report by PwC, Temasek and Rabobank. Total spending on food in Asia is expected to double to $8 trillion, the report said, adding that “Asia is unable to feed itself.”
The numbers are opportune for investors with deep pockets and big ambitions. Temasek, a Singapore state-owned investor, has said traditional food solutions can “no longer meet the world’s demands.” It has committed more than $8 billion to foodtech since 2013.
Some of that has been poured into Eat Just, which has also received funding from Mitsui & Co. and Khosla Ventures, as well as private investors such as Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff.
Valued north of a billion dollars, the company has raised more than $800 million so far. And as food prices have soared, it has received more attention from investors. “In the last three months, I got more phone calls, more emails, more direct messages, more introductions, more interest than I ever had at any time,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder of Eat Just, told Nikkei Asia last month.
On a sunny Singapore afternoon last fall, in the trendy heritage neighborhood of Tiong Bahru known for its famed hawker center, Loo Kia Chee received a phone call. It was someone from Eat Just offering a limited-time collaboration with its cultivated meat division GOOD Meat, to serve up their nuggets with his curry.
“I was surprised,” Loo recalls. “I was the first one to get picked for doing this in Asia or the whole world,” and “before that, I didn’t know about the cultivated meat.”
This spring, Loo made history by becoming the world’s first hawker stall to serve lab-made chicken. Customers flocked to Loo’s Hainanese Curry Rice, his popular lunchtime haunt, for the novel treat.
Loo said he thought it tasted “like normal chicken … (and the similarity to conventional chicken is) I think 98%.”
Asked if he might make the cultivated meat his signature dish some day, Loo seemed receptive to the idea. “If the price challenges [that of conventional meat],” he said, “I will use it.”
Animal agriculture in the Asia-Pacific region is responsible for 14.5% of global warming according to the FAO – more than the transportation sector. It also consumes a significant portion of the region’s land and water.
Globally, more than 70 billion land animals and one trillion fish are killed each year for food.
Advocates for food technology argue it could play a crucial role in easing these problems.
“Foodtech has the potential to … reduce the pressure on land usage from crop and animal agriculture, reduce water consumption, increase yields to meet demands without resource limitation and improve the nutritional profile of products,” said Gautam Godhwani, managing partner of Good Startup, which invests in alternative protein companies.
Eat Just is among the pioneers of these technologies.
Lab-grown chicken is born of cells from a biopsy, an egg or even a feather.
The meat grows as the cells multiply in a stainless steel tank called a bioreactor. They feed on a broth that contains nutrients like carbohydrates, amino acids, minerals, fats and vitamins. “Instead of growing the entire animal, we only grow what is eaten,” Eat Just said in a statement.
“This means we use fewer resources … completing growth in weeks rather than months or years. Then, the harvested product can be used by chefs in multiple final formats, from less structured crispy chicken nugget bites, savory chorizo and sausages, to more textured products such as shredded chicken or grilled chicken breast.”
Eat Just has offered to consumers iterations aside from the nugget, including satay, or grilled chicken skewers.
Still, these remain early days for the industry. Even foodies in Singapore, the world’s only country to approve the sale of lab-grown meat, will have to wait a few years until Eat Just’s meat is readily available at the city-state’s famed street-food hawker stalls.
Eat Just’s samples are available through invitation-only events, pop-up tastings, and limited offers of food delivery.
A Nikkei Asia reporter invited to the Marriott tasting in Singapore said the nuggets differed only slightly from traditional meat in that they were “unnaturally smooth” while also being softer and less chewy. He said the satay, served up for the first time this May, looked and tasted even closer to traditional chicken than the nuggets.
“A very concrete goal of our company is to, in our lifetime, have a system where the majority of meat doesn’t require slaughter and deforestation,” said Tetrick, best known in the U.S. for commercializing a liquid “egg” product made from protein-rich mung beans.
His company is also working on beef. The red meat is the top driver of deforestation, according to conservation organization WWF, causing more than double the forest conversion generated by the next more damaging crops such as soy, palm oil and wood.
“If cattle were a country, it would rank third after the U.S. and China with regards to greenhouse gas emissions.”
Currently producing less than 1,000 kg of cultivated chicken a year, Eat Just is planning a new facility in Singapore that will help scale to tens of thousands of kilograms annually, Tetrick said.
The company expects to achieve cost parity with conventional meat, or become even cheaper, this decade.
Any research funded and developed in Singapore could be scaled to help feed the rest of Asia, where a fast-growing population is coping with rising rates of hunger and malnourishment in the face of surging food prices.
More than 489 million people in Asia were severely food insecure last year, meaning that they had run out of provisions. That is an increase of 112.3 million people in two years in this region alone.
Food prices are expected to keep rising not only in Singapore, but across the region, making self-reliance the latest buzzword.
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After years of discussion on how genetically-modified foods should be labeled, in 2018, the USDA announced the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard. Then, after additional years of planning and implementation, on January 1 of this year, the mandatory compliance date has finally passed — meaning shoppers will likely see these labels more often at the grocery store.
Setting aside the merits of the new system (which, as one would expect, have been debated), here is what consumers should know:
The USDA offers two official labels for products that are identical by circular green images with two different sets of text: either “bioengineered” or “derived from bioengineering.” As the USDA itself points out, though other terms such as “genetically modified organism,” “GMO,” and “genetic engineering” may be more common “for marketing purposes,” their new standard strictly sticks to the term “bioengineered.”
Other acceptable labeling options include a statement that a food “Contains a bioengineered food ingredient,” a digital link such as a QR code, or a phone number that consumers can text.
The USDA defines a bioengineered food as one “that contains genetic material that has been modified through certain laboratory techniques and for which the modification could not be obtained through conventional breeding or found in nature.” However, for the purposes of the standard, the foods that require labeling are determined by the USDA’s official List of Bioengineered Foods. Currently, the list contains 13 items:
- Alfalfa
- Apples (Artic
varites) - Canola
- Corn
- Cotton
- Eggplants (BARI Bt Begun varietes)
- Papayas (ringspot virus-resistant varieties)
- Pineapples (pink flesh varieties)
- Potatoes
- Salmon (AquAdvantage®)
- Soybeans
- Squash (summer)
- Sugarbeets
However, even then, some loopholes exist. First, as the USDA explains, “highly refined ingredients (like some sugars and oils)” do not require labels if the level of genetic material is below the USDA’s detectability threshold, which The Washington Post states is five percent. In this case, brands can opt to use the “derived from bioengineering” symbol, but this label is voluntary.
Additionally, the USDA states that “foods that are primarily meat, poultry, or egg products, do not require a bioengineered food disclosure” — though they also can voluntarily add one.
Other groups that don’t need to use bioengineered labels (but can choose to if they want) include very small food manufacturers (with sales below $2.5 million per year) and food service entities such as “restaurants, food trucks, trains, airplanes, delicatessens and similar retail food establishments.”
Finally, if a consumer wants to file a complaint about a lack of disclosure, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) says they’re the ones to talk to. They’ve set up a complaint page on the AMS website.
Climate change has been holding back food production for decades, with a new study showing that about 21% of growth for agricultural output was lost since the 1960s.
That’s equal to losing the last seven years of productivity growth, according to research led by Cornell University and published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The study was funded by a unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The revelation comes as the United Nations’ World Food Programme warns of a “looming catastrophe” with about 34 million people globally on the brink of famine. The group has cited climate change as a major factor contributing to the sharp increase in hunger around the world. Food inflation is also on the rise as farmers deal with the impact of extreme weather at a time of robust demand.
This is the first study to look at how climate change has historically affected agricultural production on a global scale, using econometrics and climate models to figure out how much of the sector’s total productivity has been affected, across crops and livestock.
The loss of productivity comes even as billions has been poured into improving agricultural production through the development of new seeds, sophisticated farm machinery and other technological advances.
“Even though globally agriculture is more productive, that greater productivity on average doesn’t translate into more climate resilience,” said Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, an author of the paper and associate
professor at Cornell’s Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.
The damages to productivity growth aren’t evenly spread across regions. Warmer areas — especially those in the tropics — are more detrimentally affected. Ortiz-Bobea said that coincides with many countries where agriculture makes up a bigger share of the economy.
He was also warned that current research into improving production may not enough consider the pace of climate change.
“I worry that we’re breeding or preparing ourselves for the climate we’re in now, not what is coming up in the next couple of decades.”
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BY Adele Peters
Around half of the habitable land onthe planet is now used for agriculture. A millennium ago—or more recently, in the case of many countries—it was mostly wilderness. Soon, technology could reshape that balance again, bringing back acres of trees as tools to fight climate change.
Jonathan Riggall, the director of energy and natural resources at Stantec, researched how technology might enable rewilding in the U.K. and Europe. Riggall had begun thinking about the historical landscape when he studied environmental archaeology as a university student. “My first introduction to the concept that Europe had a wildwood was through the archaeological record,” he says. Over the years, as he worked in the climate change sector, he noticed a disparity in how that past was discussed—developing countries would be criticized for cutting down forests to farm, but few people talked about the fact that the same thing had happened earlier in Europe at a massive scale, and again when Europeans arrived in America.
Now, he argues, the fourth industrial revolution—from genetic engineering to robotics and artificial intelligence—could make it possible to change land use at a large scale. Vertical farms, including systems that plant, grow, and harvest food autonomously, can use as little as 1% of the land that a conventional farm would use to grow the same amount of food. The systems are still at a relatively early stage and expensive, but beginning to prove that they can be profitable. Right now, vertical farm companies focus on leafy greens, which make the most sense financially, but berries and vine crops will soon follow. Other indoor agriculture facilities, like a large, state-of-the-art greenhouse now growing tomatoes in Appalachia, use one-thirtieth of the land used in traditional farming. A new vertical wheat farm grows as much in 850 square feet as could normally grow on 30 to 50 acres.
Areas that were once forested and no longer needed for farming could be restored to wilderness. The idea of rewilding is already on some government agendas. In the U.K., where Riggall works, the government recently pledged to restore woodlands on 30,000 hectares of land per year as part of a larger plan to fight climate change. “What I find interesting is that they didn’t really necessarily align to new agricultural practices,” he says. “And those two things are so interlinked, because you can’t have land-use change without figuring out where you’re going to feed people.”
The United Nations has projected that as the global population grows, world food production will need to nearly double by 2050—so some gains in using land efficiently will likely be offset by demand. Still, there’s opportunity to rethink current farmland. Riggall hopes that by visualizing how land can be used differently, the Stantec project can help designers begin to make new choices when planning multi-year developments that will be in place for decades. The project “helps people look forward,” he says, “because we’re designing things now.”
Maryland farmer Trey Hill pulled in a healthy haul of corn last fall and then immediately planted rye, turnips, clover and other species, which are now spreading a lush green carpet over the soil. While his grandfather, who started the family farm along the Chesapeake Bay, always planted in the spring in a clean field, in Hill’s approach to farming, “you never want to see the ground.”
As the winter cover crops grow, they will feed microbes and improve the soil’s health, which Hill believes will eventually translate into higher yields of the crops that provide his income: corn, soybean and wheat.
But just as importantly, they will pull down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the ground. Hill is at the cutting edge of what many hope will provide not just a more nature-friendly way of farming, but a powerful new climate solution.
In early 2020, he became the first seller in a privately run farmer-focused marketplace that paid him $115,000 for practices that, over the past few years, had sequestered just over 8,000 tons of carbon in the soil. The money came from corporations and individuals who want to offset carbon dioxide produced by their activities. Hill used the proceeds to buy equipment he hopes will allow him to squirrel away even more of the planet-warming gas.
If farmers throughout the world adopted similar “regenerative” methods, experts estimate they could sequester a sizable chunk of the world’s carbon emissions. The idea has been endorsed by soil scientists, a slew of food industry giants and, recently, President Biden.
But some doubt that farmed soils can reliably store carbon long enough to make a difference for the climate — or that changes in soil carbon can be accurately yet affordably measured. Others worry voluntary measures such as soil sequestration could make a polluting food and agriculture industry appear environmentally friendly while forestalling stronger climate action.
In early 2020, he became the first seller in a privately run farmer-focused marketplace that paid him $115,000 for practices that, over the past few years, had sequestered just over 8,000 tons of carbon in the soil. The money came from corporations and individuals who want to offset carbon dioxide produced by their activities. Hill used the proceeds to buy equipment he hopes will allow him to squirrel away even more of the planet-warming gas.
If farmers throughout the world adopted similar “regenerative” methods, experts estimate they could sequester a sizable chunk of the world’s carbon emissions. The idea has been endorsed by soil scientists, a slew of food industry giants and, recently, President Biden.
But some doubt that farmed soils can reliably store carbon long enough to make a difference for the climate — or that changes in soil carbon can be accurately yet affordably measured. Others worry voluntary measures such as soil sequestration could make a polluting food and agriculture industry appear environmentally friendly while forestalling stronger climate action.
THE MORE SCIENTISTS investigate the microbes living inside us, the more they learn about the surprising impact of these tiny organisms on how we look, act, think, and feel. Are our health and well-being really driven by the bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa that live in our intestines, in our lungs, on our skin, on our eyeballs? What a weird concept—that the bugs we lug around appear to be essential to establishing the basic nature of who we are.
The effects of the microbiome, this menagerie of microorganisms, can be profound—and can start incredibly early. In a study published last year, scientists showed that something supposedly as innate as a child’s temperament might be related to whether the bacteria in an infant’s gut are predominantly from one genus: the more Bifidobacterium bugs, the sunnier the baby.
This observation, from Anna-Katariina Aatsinki and her colleagues at the University of Turku in Finland, is based on an analysis of stool samples from 301 babies. Those with the highest proportion of Bifidobacterium organisms at two months were more likely at six months to exhibit a trait the researchers called “positive emotionality.”
Microbiome science is still relatively young. It’s been just 15 years since the research took off in earnest, which means most studies to date have been preliminary and small, involving only a dozen or so mice or humans. Scientists have found associations between the microbiome and disease, but can’t yet draw clear cause-and-effect conclusions about our vast critter inventory and what it all means for us as hosts. Still, the inventory itself is mind-boggling—it’s now thought to be around 38 trillion microbes for a typical young adult male, slightly more than the number of actual human cells. And the prospects for putting that inventory to use are tantalizing.
In the not-too-distant future, according to the most enthusiastic researchers, it might be routine to deliver a dose of healthy microbes in the form of prebiotics (compounds that act as a substrate on which beneficial microbes can grow), probiotics (the beneficial microbes themselves), or fecal transplants (microbe-rich feces from healthy donors)—helping us realize the promise of operating at top form, from the inside out.
When we talk about the microbiome, we’re talking primarily about the digestive tract, home to more than 90 percent of a body’s microorganisms. But other regions are also crawling with life. Microbes colonize wherever the inside of the body meets the outside: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, vagina, anus, urinary tract. There are also microbes on every inch of skin, with high concentrations in the armpits, the groin, between the toes, and in the belly button.
And here’s the really amazing thing: Every one of us has a particular mix of microbes that’s different from everyone else’s. Based on current observations, it’s possible for two individuals to have zero overlap in the microbial species of their microbiomes, says Rob Knight of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at the University of California, San Diego. The unique nature of microbiomes might even have forensic applications, he says. “We can track objects or surfaces people touch back to that person by matching the skin microbiome traces.” Maybe someday police investigators will go through crime scenes taking samples of skin microbes, much the way they now dust for fingerprints.
Here are some highlights of what scientists are learning about how the microbiome affects us across our life span, from infancy to old age.
INFANCY
The fetus in utero lives essentially microbe free. Then it squeezes down the birth canal, where it confronts a riot of bacteria. During a vaginal delivery, the baby is awash in microbes that live in the vagina; it’s also exposed to the mother’s gut bacteria as its face passes by her perineum and anus. These maternal gut microbes immediately start to colonize the newborn’s own gut, engaging in a kind of conversation with developing immune cells. In this way, the very early microbiome prepares the immune system for healthy functioning later in life.
When a baby is born by cesarean section, though, it misses out on this exposure. Its gut is seeded with different microbes—not those from the mother’s gut and vagina, but from her skin and breast milk, the nurse’s hands, even the hospital bedding. These early differences might have implications that last a lifetime.
In 2018 Paul Wilmes of the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine at the University of Luxembourg published a study of 13 babies born vaginally and 18 by C-section. He and his colleagues analyzed the microbes in the stool of the newborns and their mothers, as well as vaginal swabs from the mothers. C-section babies had significantly lower levels of bacteria that make lipopolysaccharides, which are a primary stimulus of the developing immune system. The reduction lasted for at least five days after birth—enough, Wilmes believes, to have long-term consequences for immunity.
Eventually, usually by the first birthday, the microbiomes of C-section babies and vaginally born babies are pretty much the same. But Wilmes thinks the differences he observed in the first few days of life mean C-section babies might be missing a period of “priming,” when immune cells are set up to respond appropriately to foreign agents. The scantier microbial populations of C-section babies during these initial days could explain why they are more prone to a host of immune system problems later on, including allergies, inflammatory diseases, and obesity.
Wilmes says one day it might be possible for babies born by C-section to be given probiotics derived from specific strains of bacteria found in their mothers, which would, in theory, seed their intestines with helpful microbes. Such probiotic therapy is still far in the future, though.
CHILDHOOD
Food allergies have become so widespread that many schools restrict what lunches kids can bring from home, like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, for fear of setting off a classmate’s allergic reaction. In the United States, 5.6 million children suffer from food allergies—which translates to two or three in every classroom.
Many factors are thought to account for this rise, including an increase in C-section births and an overuse of antibiotics, which can wipe out protective bacteria. Cathryn Nagler and her colleagues at the University of Chicago wondered whether the rise in childhood food allergies might be linked to the microbial mix in children’s guts. Last year they published a study of eight six-month-old babies, half of whom were allergic to cow’s milk, half of whom were not. The microbiomes of the groups were quite different, they discovered: The healthy babies had the bacteria expected in typically developing babies their age, while the babies with a cow’s milk allergy had bacteria more characteristic of adults.
In the allergic babies, the normally slow progression from an infant microbiome to an adult one took place “at warp speed,” Nagler says.
Using fecal samples, Nagler and her colleagues transplanted gut bacteria from the babies in her study into germ-free mice—mice born by C-section and raised in sterile conditions so they had no microbes at all. When the mice received transplants from healthy babies, they received protective bacteria that prevented an allergic response to cow’s milk. But when the transplants were from allergic babies, the mice didn’t get the protective bacteria and had an allergic response.
Further analysis showed that one species of bacteria in particular that’s unique to human infants—Anaerostipes caccae, from the Clostridia class—seems to have been most relevant in protecting the first group of mice. This species was from the same family within Clostridia that Nagler’s team had identified in an earlier study as protective against peanut allergy.
Nagler, who is president and co-founder of the Chicago-based drug start-up ClostraBio, hopes to test the therapeutic potential of these bacteria in lab mice—and eventually in allergic patients. The first challenge has been finding somewhere in the gut for the beneficial bacteria to land. Even in an unhealthy microbiome, Nagler says, all the niches are already filled; for Clostridia to go in, something else has to come out. So ClostraBio developed a drug that clears out a niche in the microbiome.
Nagler and her colleagues have been giving the drug to mice and then infusing them with a variety of Clostridia bugs, along with dietary fiber that encourages their growth. She hopes to begin clinical testing on a Clostridia treatment in humans within the next two years, with the eventual goal of giving it to children with food allergies.
Gut microbes also might be related to other childhood diseases, such as type 1 diabetes. In Australia scientists collected stool samples from 93 children with a family history of type 1 diabetes and found that those who went on to develop the disease had higher levels of enterovirus A in their stool than those who didn’t develop diabetes.
One of the scientists involved in the study, W. Ian Lipkin of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, cautions researchers against rushing to explain diseases—whether diabetes or any other—by differences in the microbiome alone. “This is still largely a descriptive science,” he says; all that’s known for sure is that certain microbes are associated with certain conditions.
Even with this caveat, Lipkin is excited about where microbiome science might lead. He expects that in five or 10 years, scientists will understand the mechanisms of how the microbiome affects the body and will have begun clinical trials on human subjects to demonstrate the health impact of altering it. Once microbiome science “becomes mechanistic and testable,” he says, “then it will become real.”
ADOLESCENCE
The vast majority of teenagers in developed countries are pimple-prone—and for them, there does seem to be such a thing as an “acne microbiome.” Many kids have skin that’s especially hospitable to two strains of Cutibacterium acnes (until recently called Propionibacterium acnes) that have been closely linked to acne. Most strains of this bacterium, despite the acnes in its name, are either harmless or helpful, keeping pathogenic microbes at bay; in fact, C. acnes is the predominant component of the normal microbiome of the face and neck.
But having a bad-guy strain of C. acnes can be a problem. It’s one of the elements needed for acne to arise, says Amanda Nelson, a dermatologic researcher at Penn State University College of Medicine. The others are sebum (the oil produced by sebaceous glands to keep the skin moist), which C. acnes uses as a food source; plugged-up hair follicles; and an inflammatory response. These four factors work in concert, Nelson says, adding, “We actually don’t know what happens first.”
The acne microbiome was the focus of a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where researchers found that the only acne treatment leading to long-term remission—isotretinoin, sold as Accutane and other brand names—works in part by altering the skin microbiome, reducing the number of C. acnesbacteria while increasing the diversity of the skin microbiome overall. In this healthier, more diverse environment, they found, it’s harder for the bad strains of C. acnes to take hold.
Fungal toxins known as mycotoxins, including some thought lost to history, are claiming new territory as the Earth warms.
Karen Jordan, a North Carolina dairy farmer and practicing veterinarian, knew she had trouble the minute her cows’ hair began to stand up on end.
When a cow is healthy, she explains, their hair lays tight and sleek against their skin. But one by one, her cows began to poof up like agitated cats. A few days later, she found out why—the corn she had fed her cattle contained an invisible, harmful compound called T2.
Then she “got unlucky” a second season when she picked up another bad batch of feed, this time a load of cotton seed. That year, she figures, the rash of hurricanes had dumped so much water on southeastern farms that mold, and associated toxic compounds called mycotoxins, had spoiled whole swaths of cropland.
“This year we were wet early, and then it kind of straightened out. But in the Midwest, it was wet late. That was the perfect stew for a mycotoxin year.”
People involved in food production have been aware, on some level, of the presence and harms of mycotoxins for at least 2,000 years. These toxins, we now know, are harmful chemicals produced predominantly by the fungi that grow in grains. Historically, mycotoxins have triggered outbreaks of gangrene, convulsions, heart failure, paralysis, mental illness, and may have even played a role in the Salem witch trials. Today, they are largely considered a problem for animal producers, whose animals can fall ill and even die if fed contaminated grain or silage.
But the toxins are rapidly spreading, hastened by climate change and reduced global crop diversity.
This January, John Winchell loaded up his truck to pay a visit to farms throughout the northeastern U.S., where he consults with farmers about the detection and prevention of mycotoxins on behalf of Alltech, a global animal and food production supplier. The last three years, he says, mycotoxins have been particularly prevalent in the U.S. But he takes comfort in the fact that the uptick is not exactly mysterious—it’s all due to the weather.
“We’ve had two years of consistently wet weather,” he says. “This year we were wet early, and then it kind of straightened out. But in the Midwest, it was wet late. That was the perfect stew for a mycotoxin year.”
Once a farmer realizes they have a problem, they must identify the source. For larger dairies, this process can take so long that by the time you get your tests back, the guilty load of feed is probably already consumed.
While the last two to three years stand out for having produced exceptionally high levels of mycotoxin contamination—particularly in chopped up, fermented corn stalks and leaves that are fed primarily to cattle—this isn’t a recent trend. National data collected by Alltech, Winchell says, shows a steep increase in many of the toxins common to the U.S. since monitoring began in 2012.
Some of this increase can be attributed to advances in scientists’ ability to detect mycotoxins, as well as a growing library of just how many varieties actually exist. But experts around the world agree that climate change is also playing a significant role. Not only does climate change promote the weather conditions that trigger mycotoxin production, but shifting weather patterns are causing various toxins to appear in new regions of the world—places where food producers can be caught unawares, unable to respond in time to prevent widespread contamination.
For developed countries like the U.S., mandatory tests rolled out in recent decades are designed to catch these outbreaks before they impact consumers. But in developing countries, or among low-income populations that may be more inclined to consume homemade or craft food products, mycotoxins remain a growing concern.
What’s the big idea?
Current industrialized food systems were optimized for a single goal – growing the maximum amount of food for the least amount of money. But when room and supplies are limited – like during space travel – you need to optimize for a different set of goals to meet the needs of the people you are trying to feed.
NASA and the Translational Research Institute for Space Health asked my lab to figure out how to grow an edible plant for long-term space missions where fresh, nutritious food must be produced in tight quarters and with limited resources. To do this, we turned to a plant called duckweed.
Duckweed is a small floating plant that grows on the surface of ponds. It is commonly eaten in Asia but is mostly considered a pest plant in the U.S. as it can quickly take over ponds. But duckweed is a remarkable plant. It is one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth, is the most protein–dense plant on the planetand also produces an abundance of important micronutrients. Two of these micronutrients are the inflammation-fighting antioxidants zeaxanthin and lutein. Zeaxanthin is the more potent of the two, but is hard to get from most leafy greens since fast-growing plants accumulate zeaxanthin only under extremely bright lights.
I proposed to the Translational Research Institute for Space Health that in addition to maximizing nutritional, space and resource efficiency, we also try to optimize the production of these antioxidants.
With just a little bit of experimentation, our team determined that under relatively low-intensity light – less than half as intense as midday sun on a clear summer day – duckweed accumulates more zeaxanthin than other fast-growing plants do in full sunlight while still maintaining the same incredible growth rate and other nutritional attributes that make it the perfect plant for a space farm.
We are also testing another strategy that would grow duckweed in even lower-intensity light but would supplement those light levels with a few pulses of high-intensity light. In other plants, my team discovered that this can trigger high amounts of zeaxanthin accumulation and fast growth and, relevant to a spaceship, would cost less energy.
From these experiments, we are planning several customized growth conditions to optimize zeaxanthin production for a variety of different applications – whether it be a spaceship a greenhouse or even outdoors.
Why does it matter?
Due to the ionizing radiation in space, astronauts are susceptible to chronic inflammation and diseases caused by cellular oxidation. Zeaxanthin and lutein have been shown to fight radiation damage as well as eye disease, another common health problem that astronauts experience.
Many essential micronutrients have a finite shelf life – often only a few months. As astronauts begin going on longer missions, the only way they will be able to get these antioxidants is to grow them on board.
What still isn’t known?
While we know that intense light makes duckweed and other plants produce zeaxanthin, plants quickly remove it from their leaves when light levels drop. To meet the specific challenge of producing large amounts of zeaxanthin, more work is needed on how to coax leafy greens to retain zeaxanthin post-harvest.
What’s next?
Our project used duckweed grown in sterile environments – we used plants stripped of the microbes that normally occur in the water on which duckweeds float. Since researchers know that optimizing soil microbes can increase plant productivity, our next goal will be to explore opportunities to further enhance duckweed productivity by experimenting with beneficial microbial communities.
Duckweed is already grown for many uses on Earth, and duckweed salad might be a high-protein staple in the diets of many future space explorers. But this work is also proof that win-win solutions to food production are possible.
With the right know-how, it is possible to make small changes to a few variables in how plants are grown and get them to produce more micronutrients. Similar approaches taken with other crops could benefit people across the world, not just astronauts. On Earth, slight changes in how people grow food, backed by scientific research like ours, offer opportunities to greatly improve food production systems such that they need less, produce more and keep people healthier.
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Early in 2019, a year before the world shut its borders completely, Jorge A. knew he had to get out of Guatemala. The land was turning against him. For five years, it almost never rained. Then it did rain, and Jorge rushed his last seeds into the ground. The corn sprouted into healthy green stalks, and there was hope — until, without warning, the river flooded. Jorge waded chest-deep into his fields searching in vain for cobs he could still eat. Soon he made a last desperate bet, signing away the tin-roof hut where he lived with his wife and three children against a $1,500 advance in okra seed. But after the flood, the rain stopped again, and everything died. Jorge knew then that if he didn’t get out of Guatemala, his family might die, too.
This article, the first in a series on global climate migration, is a partnership between ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, with support from the Pulitzer Center. Read more about the data project that underlies the reporting.
Even as hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans fled north toward the United States in recent years, in Jorge’s region — a state called Alta Verapaz, where precipitous mountains covered in coffee plantations and dense, dry forest give way to broader gentle valleys — the residents have largely stayed. Now, though, under a relentless confluence of drought, flood, bankruptcy and starvation, they, too, have begun to leave. Almost everyone here experiences some degree of uncertainty about where their next meal will come from. Half the children are chronically hungry, and many are short for their age, with weak bones and bloated bellies. Their families are all facing the same excruciating decision that confronted Jorge.
The odd weather phenomenon that many blame for the suffering here — the drought and sudden storm pattern known as El Niño — is expected to become more frequent as the planet warms. Many semiarid parts of Guatemala will soon be more like a desert. Rainfall is expected to decrease by 60 percent in some parts of the country, and the amount of water replenishing streams and keeping soil moist will drop by as much as 83 percent. Researchers project that by 2070, yields of some staple crops in the state where Jorge lives will decline by nearly a third.
Scientists have learned to project such changes around the world with surprising precision, but — until recently — little has been known about the human consequences of those changes. As their land fails them, hundreds of millions of people from Central America to Sudan to the Mekong Delta will be forced to choose between flight or death. The result will almost certainly be the greatest wave of global migration the world has seen.
In March, Jorge and his 7-year-old son each packed a pair of pants, three T-shirts, underwear and a toothbrush into a single thin black nylon sack with a drawstring. Jorge’s father had pawned his last four goats for $2,000 to help pay for their transit, another loan the family would have to repay at 100 percent interest. The coyote called at 10 p.m. — they would go that night. They had no idea then where they would wind up, or what they would do when they got there.
From decision to departure, it was three days. And then they were gone.
For most of human history, people have lived within a surprisingly narrow range of temperatures, in the places where the climate supported abundant food production. But as the planet warms, that band is suddenly shifting north. According to a pathbreaking recent study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,the planet could see a greater temperature increase in the next 50 years than it did in the last 6,000 years combined. By 2070, the kind of extremely hot zones, like in the Sahara, that now cover less than 1 percent of the earth’s land surface could cover nearly a fifth of the land, potentially placing one of every three people alive outside the climate niche where humans have thrived for thousands of years. Many will dig in, suffering through heat, hunger and political chaos, but others will be forced to move on. A 2017 study in Science Advances found that by 2100, temperatures could rise to the point that just going outside for a few hours in some places, including parts of India and Eastern China, “will result in death even for the fittest of humans.”
People are already beginning to flee. In Southeast Asia, where increasingly unpredictable monsoon rainfall and drought have made farming more difficult, the World Bank points to more than eight million people who have moved toward the Middle East, Europe and North America. In the African Sahel, millions of rural people have been streaming toward the coasts and the cities amid drought and widespread crop failures. Should the flight away from hot climates reach the scale that current research suggests is likely, it will amount to a vast remapping of the world’s populations.
Migration can bring great opportunity not just to migrants but also to the places they go. As the United States and other parts of the global North face a demographic decline, for instance, an injection of new people into an aging work force could be to everyone’s benefit. But securing these benefits starts with a choice: Northern nations can relieve pressures on the fastest-warming countries by allowing more migrants to move north across their borders, or they can seal themselves off, trapping hundreds of millions of people in places that are increasingly unlivable. The best outcome requires not only good will and the careful management of turbulent political forces; without preparation and planning, the sweeping scale of change could prove wildly destabilizing. The United Nations and others warn that in the worst case, the governments of the nations most affected by climate change could topple as whole regions devolve into war.
The stark policy choices are already becoming apparent. As refugees stream out of the Middle East and North Africa into Europe and from Central America into the United States, an anti-immigrant backlash has propelled nationalist governments into power around the world. The alternative, driven by a better understanding of how and when people will move, is governments that are actively preparing, both materially and politically, for the greater changes to come.
Projected percentage decrease by 2070 in the yield of the rice crop in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala:
32
Last summer, I went to Central America to learn how people like Jorge will respond to changes in their climates. I followed the decisions of people in rural Guatemala and their routes to the region’s biggest cities, then north through Mexico to Texas. I found an astonishing need for food and witnessed the ways competition and poverty among the displaced broke down cultural and moral boundaries. But the picture on the ground is scattered. To better understand the forces and scale of climate migration over a broader area, The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica joined with the Pulitzer Center in an effort to model, for the first time, how people will move across borders.
We focused on changes in Central America and used climate and economic-development data to examine a range of scenarios. Our model projects that migration will rise every year regardless of climate, but that the amount of migration increases substantially as the climate changes. In the most extreme climate scenarios, more than 30 million migrants would head toward the U.S. border over the course of the next 30 years.
Migrants move for many reasons, of course. The model helps us see which migrants are driven primarily by climate, finding that they would make up as much as 5 percent of the total. If governments take modest action to reduce climate emissions, about 680,000 climate migrants might move from Central America and Mexico to the United States between now and 2050. If emissions continue unabated, leading to more extreme warming, that number jumps to more than a million people. (None of these figures include undocumented immigrants, whose numbers could be twice as high.)
The model shows that the political responses to both climate change and migration can lead to drastically different futures.