Food

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found that the long-term consumption of “processed red meat, such as hot dogs, sausage, and bacon, is linked to an elevated risk of dementia,” reports Kay Lazar for The Boston Globe. The researchers “found that eating about two servings per week of processed red meat, which includes some cold cuts, correlated with a 13 percent higher risk of dementia compared to those who ate less than roughly three servings a month,” reports Lazar. 

Prof. Giovanni Traverso speaks with GBH’s “All Things Considered” host Arun Rath about his work developing new approaches to weight loss treatments that don’t involve surgery or pharmaceuticals. “Our team does a lot of work on ingestible systems, ingestible capsules that can do many things,” says Traverso. “You know, we recognize that we live now in a world where we have really incredible therapies that are very effective for the treatment of diabetes and obesity. But we also recognize that they’re not for everybody. There are people who have side effects, people who can’t take them, so these are certainly alternatives, or potentially synergistic interventions, that could work together either with those drugs or, as I was mentioning, for folks that have side effects from the drugs.”

Researchers at MIT have developed a new type of dynamic gastric balloon that inflates on demand and could be used to help patients feel more full before meals, reports Margherita Bassi for Gizmodo. The engineers have “designed a potential future alternative for patients who, for any number of reasons, cannot treat obesity through medications or invasive surgeries such as gastric bypass surgery or stapling,” writes Bassi. 

MIT researchers have developed a gastric balloon that can inflate before eating and contract afterwards in an effort to ensure the body does not grow accustomed to the balloon, reports Nicola Davis for The Guardian. “What we try to do here is, in essence, simulate the mechanical effects of having a meal,” explains Prof. Giovanni Traverso. “What we want to avoid is getting used to that balloon." 

Samara Oster MBA '22 has founded Meli, a company that has crafted a gluten-free beer made with organic quinoa, reports Ann Trieger Kurland for The Boston Globe. “With 4.4 percent alcohol, typical of light beers, it’s produced merely with water, high-quality organic quinoa, hops, and yeast,” explains Kurland. 

A new study led by researchers at MIT suggests that fasting and then refeeding stimulates cell regeneration in the intestines, reports Katharine Lang for Medical News Today. However, notes Lang, researchers also found that fasting “carries the risk of stimulating the formation of intestinal tumors.” 

Prof. Ömer Yilmaz and his colleagues have discovered the potential health benefits and consequences of fasting, reports Max Kozlov for Nature. “There is so much emphasis on fasting and how long to be fasting that we’ve kind of overlooked this whole other side of the equation: what is going on in the refed state,” says Yilmaz.

MIT researchers have discovered how fasting impacts the regenerative abilities of intestinal stem cells, reports Ed Cara for Gizmodo. “The major finding of our current study is that refeeding after fasting is a distinct state from fasting itself,” explain Prof. Ömer Yilmaz and postdocs Shinya Imada and Saleh Khawaled. “Post-fasting refeeding augments the ability of intestinal stem cells to, for example, repair the intestine after injury.” 

Falmouth’s Ben & Bill’s Chocolate Emporium has unveiled a new chocolate candy named Dr. Bob’s Dark Chocolate Maple Syrup Cream – inspired by Prof. Bob Langer’s love of maple, reports Jon Chesto in The Boston Globe. “To make the Dr. Bob’s candy, the staff takes the maple cream chocolates and then drizzles maple syrup over them as a topping,” writes Chesto. 

Plonts, a plant-based cheese company co-founded by Nathaniel Chu PhD '19, uses microbes to develop “nutritious, inexpensive and sustainable” cheese alternatives, reports Christine Hall for TechCrunch. Chu says “microbes, whether mold, bacteria or yeast, are important to create that flavor. The microbes themselves are tiny sacs of hundreds of different enzymes with many different combinations,” writes Hall. 

Research Scientist Christopher Mejia-Argueta is interviewed by Marina Mayer of Food Logistics about the food industry’s efforts to achieve a circular supply chain, which could help companies improve their sustainability. “Despite a growing trend to improve the food supply chains from farm to fork and back to farm, scalability is the biggest challenge,” he says.

Prof. Kripa Varanasi and Vishnu Jayaprakash SM '19, PhD '22  founded AgZen, a company aimed at reducing pesticide use by employing a feedback-optimized spraying system, reports Steven Savage for Forbes. Savage notes that for the researchers behind AgZen, “MIT turned out to be a good place to work on the specific imaging technology and on the AI needed to translate that into a practical solution for farmers.”

MIT researchers have developed “a robotic system that can rotate different types of fruit and vegetable using its fingers on one hand, while the other arm is made to peel,” reports Alex Wilkins for New Scientist. “These additional steps of doing rotation are something which is very straightforward to humans, we don’t even think about it,” Prof. Pulkit Agrawal. “But for a robot, this becomes challenging.”

Visiting Scientist Ariel Ekblaw speaks with Scientific American’s Andrew Chapman about a microgravity water cooker called the H0TP0T, part of a mock space habitat set to open in Boston in early August. For the project “Ekblaw and a colleague interviewed nearly two dozen astronauts—who often mentioned better cooking options and tastier food as important ways to improve their well-being,” Chapman explains.