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The connection between the gut and mental health has been explored by researchers in recent years

The impact that gut health can have on the functionality of the brain is a topic that’s gained increasing interest in recent years.

In 2017, researchers in Ireland decided to explore whether the gut microbiome could be linked with anxiety disorders, coming to the conclusion[https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-017-0321-3#Sec14] that there may in fact be an association between the two.

When

New York Times

bestselling author Sarah Wilson[http://www.sarahwilson.com/] decided to try eliminating sugar from her diet, she hoped that it would help alleviatethe inflammation in her thyroid caused by Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune condition that left Wilson severely unwell on a daily basis.

Read more

‘Healthy’ yogurts can send children over their daily sugar limit

However, it also had a tremendous effect on her mental health, which helped her gain a greater comprehension of how inflammation can be linked to anxiety.

“We now know that inflammation causes all of the contemporary metabolic diseases. There’s a lot of new science rolling in and it’s connecting inflammation with depression and anxiety,” Wilson tells

The Independent

.

“We now know that the gut-brain connection is the big area where we feel we’re going to get a better understanding of anxiety and depression.”

Approximately 95 per cent of the body’s store of serotonin is produced in the gut, Dr Siri Carpenter wrote for the American Psychological Association[http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/09/gut-feeling.aspx].

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that is commonly believed to heavily influence an individual’s state of happiness.

With this in mind, it makes sense that a healthy gut would correspond to a positive mental state.

So, where does sugar fall into the picture?

According to Wilson, excessive consumption of sugar, or more specifically fructose, can have a negative effect on your gut.

Dr Sally Norton, founder of VavistaLife[https://www.vavistalife.com/] and former NHS consultant, agrees with this conclusion.

"Increasing evidence is showing that a high sugar diet can affect our healthy gut bacteria," she explains to

The Independent

.

Read more

Health blogger reveals the hidden sugars in iced coffee

"As many studies are now showing a link between our gut bacteria and our risk of various diseases, obesity and even our mental health. It's a very good reason to ditch sugar."

Wilson, who wrote

The Anti-Anxiety Diet[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anti-Anxiety-Diet-Bestselling-Author-Sugar-ebook/dp/B079JHF2J8/ref=la_B000APLA4K_1_6?s=booksie=UTF8qid=1527865142sr=1-6]

programme to accompany the launch of a book about anxiety called

First, We Make the Beast Beautiful

, explainsthat sugar affects the lining of the gut by triggering dysbiosis, which is when the bacteria in the gut is imbalanced and unstable.

In this instance, the bad bacteria in the gut overpowers the good bacteria, which the sugar then feeds on.

"Recent research has shown that our microbiome (i.e. the microorganisms in our gut) can play a huge role in whether or not we develop mental health conditions such as anxiety," Uxshely Chotai at The Food Psychology Clinic[https://www.thefoodpsychologyclinic.co.uk/]tells

The Independent

.

"One food known to contribute to the proliferation of 'bad' bacteria and fungi in the gut is sugar," she continues.

A post shared by _sarahwilson_ (@_sarahwilson_)[https://www.instagram.com/p/BfFHjVHAJRV/] on

Feb 11, 2018 at 6:31pm PST

Everyday table sugar consists of both fructose and glucose, the latter of which is already in the majority of foods that we consume.

However, as Wilson outlines, the human body isn’t built with the natural ability to metabolise fructose efficiently.

“Our liver does with sugar what it does with alcohol, and that is to store it as visceral fat,” she says.

She explains how although tooth decay and obesity are commonly known causes of excessive sugar consumption, more people are starting to become aware of the harmful impact it can also have on one's mental health.

Reducing one’s sugar intake is far easier said than done, as many people will have grown quite a strong dependency on it over the years.

People who regularly consume an excessive amount of sugar as part of their daily diet may experience extreme fluctuationsin their mood, Chotaiexplains.

Sugary drinks and unhealthy snacks 'fuelling obesity epidemic among children'

"As the sugar rushes through the bloodstream, it causes feelings of being 'high', but then as insulin is secreted to deal with all of the sugar this often causes a 'crash' and leads to feeling 'low' whilst also causing cravings for more sugar," she says.

"These extreme highs and lows can often leave a person feeling very unstable and more vulnerable to experiencing anxiety."

Wilson has laid out a two-week plan[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anti-Anxiety-Diet-Bestselling-Author-Sugar-ebook/dp/B079JHF2J8/ref=la_B000APLA4K_1_6?s=booksie=UTF8qid=1527865142sr=1-6] to help anyone who’s interested reducing their sugar intake.

The first step that the author would recommend doing over the course of the two-week experiment is cutting out all liquid sugar.

This comes in many forms, including fizzy drinks, a number of sauces and fruit juice.

A post shared by _sarahwilson_ (@_sarahwilson_)[https://www.instagram.com/p/BVwXQhfBgEC/] on

Jun 25, 2017 at 1:22am PDT

However, according to registered dietitian Helen Bond, consuming nutritious fruit juices can still be beneficial.

"At a time when the UK population is failing to achieve its five-a-day, it seems irresponsible to suggest removing pure fruit juice completely from diets," Ms Bond tells

The Independent

.

"As well as being a high source of vitamin C, and a source of both folate and potassium, Public Health England recommends 150ml of fruit juice as one of your five-a-day, which should be consumed alongside whole fruit and vegetables."

Read more

Britain's sugar tax is a sweet idea

Next, Wilson advises opting for full-fat food as opposed to low-fat products, which according to Wilson is a “revelation to many people.”

She explains that the fat in low-fat products is often replaced withsugar-heavy ingredients that are not as wholesome as they may seem.

The author also recommends keeping an eye on one’s consumption of dried fruits, as many health bars made from dried fruits often contain extremely high quantities of sugar.

“I would say sometimes the unhealthiest places to eat are health food stores,” she professes.

Dr Norton also suggests not trying to replace sugar with sweeter artificial alternatives, as sweeteners can also be detrimental to the gut.

A quarter of the impact of meat production comes from the pet-food industry. Has the time come to change what we feed our dogs and cats?

Animal microbiologist Holly Ganz cannot talk about the pet feeding regime known as biologically appropriate raw food without laughing. The increasingly popular diet is known by its unfortunate acronym, Barf. “It’s bizarrely named,” she says, laughing. It certainly runs contrary to the twee language usually reserved for the pet realm; such as Kitty Biome, a project Ganz recently raised $23,000 (£17,000) for via Kickstarter, which invited cat owners to pay $100 to have the microorganisms in their cat’s droppings analysed. The common term for the environmental impact of pet-keeping has a cute name too: pawprint. But, with humans increasingly demanding human-grade meat for their four-legged family members, pet food is estimated to be responsible for a quarter of the environmental impacts of meat production[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0181301] in terms of the use of land, water, fossil fuels,

phosphates and pesticides. And this trend for raw food is, environmentally speaking, a step backwards.

It is this carbon pawprint that Ganz is working to reduce. She has been drafted in to assess the gut-friendliness of a vegan pet-food product launching in the US in July called Wild Earth. Its first offering is a dog treat made from what the blurb calls an “ancient Asian” fungi called koji. “We’re hoping,” she says, “that it will support bacteria that will help to fight inflammation and maintain healthy digestion and nutrition.”

Ask Wild Earth’s CEO, Ryan Bethencourt, what the future of pet food looks like and he has one word: “Massive.” In 2017, the global pet-food market was worth $94bn[https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180416005813/en/Global-Pet-Food-Market-Report-2018-Industry], and it is projected to grow even further as new markets open up. In China, where pet ownership is rare, the market grew by 100% last year. “If China follows the trends, we are going to see hundreds of millions more pets in existence,” says Bethencourt. He thinks these pets can be fed sustainably with his koji protein while, for the longer term, the company is working on lab-grown meat, culturing meat cells that would not require rearing or killing animals. They have already created a mouse-meat prototype for cats that, it says, will beat lab meat for humans to market because there is less red tape to navigate. But it will be some time before the technology can be scaled up accordingly.

In the meantime, can eco-conscious cats and dogs survive on a vegan diet? “Cats are obligate carnivores,” says Ganz, which means a lot of what they need comes from meat, “whereas dogs are more scavengers and have amylase genes so they can digest starch.” But even a scientifically designed vegan or vegetarian diet for dogs, says Ganz, can be difficult to devise. Gudrun Ravetz, the president of the British Veterinary Association, agrees: “Theoretically, you can feed a dog a vegetarian diet, but it’s not something you do lightly and you definitely need to do it with a nutritionist. A lot of what cats need is found in animal protein. It may well be in this fungi, but I’d want to see evidence that these are in the fungi and they’re available to the animal.”

Bethencourt describes koji as a “whole food” with a great “amino acid” profile and 10% more protein than you would expect to find in a decent steak. “We have to add a few supplements, just as any meat-based protein company does, to make sure it has the right vitamins and minerals. The food has to be enough, nutritionally, for the animal to survive, and we found our protein is easily digested by dogs.” Bethencourt, who is soon to release a nutrient profile and digestibility study, was the first guinea pig for his dog food. And while pet food is usually tested by animals in labs, Wild Earth employs a humane process where the dogs used live at home and are volunteered by their owners.

He is confident that a nutritional cat food will follow. “Cats really need [the amino acids] carnitine and taurine in their food,” says Ravetz. “They are important for vision, the heart and the immune system, among other things. A lack of them can cause all kinds of problems.

“We think we can get the right nutrition relatively easily by supplementing koji, but cats are picky, so what we need to do is make sure they really love their food.”

There is already a more sustainable source of animal protein out there: insects. While the food industry struggles to make them more appetising to western humans, dogs have no trouble lapping them up. When Haley Russell began experimenting with her own small-scale cricket farm, her discerning goldendoodle, Wren, devoured the insects whenever she got the chance. Russell and the co-founders of Chipper Pet went on to talk to veterinarians, who, she says, “confirmed that insects are great for dogs. In fact, you get a different mix of amino acids that are really helpful for food variety, which is important for people and great for dogs, too.” Like Wild Earth, Chipper Pet is starting with a dog treat in peanut, pumpkin and cricket flavour, with the tagline: “Save water. Save land. Chip in.”

Crickets could serve as a main meal, too, high in iron and omega-3 oils and vitamin B12. “It’s a complete animal protein, so there isn’t a deficiency, meaning it would be a suitable daily food.” The challenge lies in convincing pet parents that their animal will love it and a treat is merely a way for them to get used to the idea. There is also a supply issue, while edible insect farmers scale up. Again, a cat food will follow because, says Russell, “cats can be a little bit more finicky”.

Meanwhile, “premium”, “natural” and “human-grade” pet foods are on the rise[https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/reports/digital-features/pampered-pets-are-britains-dogs-and-cats-winning-their-place-at-the-human-dinner-table/559832.article] with “cat casseroles” and venison sausages on the menu, and more people are home cooking for their pets. “I cook for my dogs,” says Ganz. “I have a 16-year-old, and she just won’t eat anything else. My co-founder says my dogs eat better than her children, but I didn’t have children, so they are my children.” She says there are a growing number of companies offering home-cooked pet food, too. “People are spending a lot more money on their pets,” says Ganz.

There is also a new trend for grain-free food, which vets say has no known benefits for cats and dogs[https://theconversation.com/a-big-pawprint-the-environmental-impact-of-pet-food-74004], and is another way meat consumption is going up. It is a repetitive diet Ganz partly blames for the 10% of pets she has found to have digestive conditions. Her company, Animal Biome, based in Oakland, California, has big-name pet food manufacturers, such as Nestle Purina PetCare, and individual clients on its books. Customers come to her with pets that are vomiting or are suffering with diarrhoea or constipation. Animal Biome offers an “oral faecal transplant capsule”, AKA poo from a healthy animal’s gut, which “can shift the microbiome to a more balanced state – we call that a gut restoration”.

Just as in humans, a diverse diet is the route to a healthy gut, and eating the same food all the time means pets are “more likely to develop food allergies”, says Ganz. She rotates different meats for her dogs, but says “these are just debates – we don’t have answers”. However, in bad news for the planet, many of her customers report positive results from shifting to the Barf diet. “The idea is that you’re feeding the animal food similar to its natural diet. What cats would have eaten up until the 20th century was mice and birds.”

Despite there being only anecdotal evidence of benefits, it is popular in the UK, too, with raw food products such as Nature’s Menu widely available, but, Ravetz warns, “it’s tricky if you’re preparing it at home to make sure it’s nutritionally adequate. We see nutritional deficiencies with homemade diets [in general] – it’s understanding what an animal needs in the right ratio. We’re extrapolating from the human need and not necessarily getting it right.” Human health is another consideration with raw feeding. “There is some research showing that there’s potential for more contaminants – campylobacter, salmonella – which animals can pass in their faeces, so they can infect other dogs and humans.”

By far the biggest dietary issue for pets, though, is being overweight. “We’re overfeeding our cats,” says Ravetz. “We may be feeding them the right amount of cat or dog food, but then giving them treats, coupled with more animals being left at home for long periods of time, and this could correlate to less exercise.”

Instead of reaching for the treats, which is also bad for their pawprint, Ravetz suggests other rewards such as playing with them, taking them for a walk, stroking them or letting them sit on your knee. “If you do want to give treats, certainly during the training of young animals, look for treats that don’t have a high calorie content. Dogs will eat tiny pieces of raw carrot, or even pieces of their normal dry food. But take that away from their daily allowance so you’re not giving more than is needed.” And again, home feeding can increase the risk of obesity: “What might look like a bit of salmon to us,” warns Ravetz, “to a cat with a significantly smaller body size, it could be humongous.”

People should not feel guilty, she says, about how they feed their pets: “Nutritional quality doesn’t always correlate with price.” In a healthy cat, a vet-recommended dry food can be excellent. “If a cat has a certain comorbidity, we may look to use a different food, and sometimes if a cat is having urinary problems, we may look to increase its water intake and wet food, which contains significant amounts of water,” says Ravetz.

Wild Earth will be introducing a wet dog food and, eventually, aims to work nutritional variety into the range. “Right now, we think it’s a really clean protein source and that’s a really good place to start,” he says. “If you look at most dogs’ diets, they’re not diverse.” The ultimate vegan pet food, says Ganz, “would be if they could lab-grow a carcass. Cats and dogs need the blood, the bones and organs, not just the muscle meat.” But for the moment, that’s still a tall order.

Cottage cheese began life in America as an easy, economical way for colonial cooks to make use of milk left over after they skimmed off the cream. By the 1970s, its amicable presence in recipes and on diet plates had made it a star.

Fame is fickle, and so are the nation's eaters. Cottage cheese fell out of favor, and now spends its days hanging out in stodgy pint containers near the sour cream, while yogurt sprawls out across acres of the dairy case, dressed up in cute little tubes, flip tops and French glass jars.

America loves a comeback, though, and there are plenty of people who are betting that cottage cheese is primed for one.

''Every seven years or so another wave comes through where we try to reposition cottage cheese,'' said Dave Potter, the president of Dairy Connection in Madison, Wis., which sells custom cultures and enzymes to cheese makers. ''That's about where we are now.''

This time, with help from both big food companies and small-batch cheese makers, it might actually work.

On the mass-market side of the equation, the nation's largest dairy producers are targeting younger people looking for a protein-rich, natural snack they can eat instead of a meal. (Cottage cheese can have twice the protein of some yogurts, though it has a lot more sodium.)

______

The goal, according to industry analysts, is to ''uncottage'' cottage cheese -- or, as one dairy executive put it, ''Chobani it.''

______

A couple of new players have jumped in, including Muuna, the first product from Israel's largest food manufacturer to be sold in the United States. American companies like Dean Foods, the nation's largest dairy company, have given their cottage cheeses makeovers, packing them into smaller, sexier packages and asking retailers to move them away from the sour cream and closer to the yogurt.

New lines have interesting mixes of fruit and nuts, and some producers are experimenting with millennial-friendly additions like probiotics and chia seeds. Flavors are expanding beyond dusty stalwarts like pineapple to include kalamata olive, habanero chile or cumin.

The goal, according to industry analysts, is to ''uncottage'' cottage cheese -- or, as one dairy executive put it, ''Chobani it.''

But the road back is not going to be easy. Yogurt outsells cottage cheese by roughly eight to one, said John Owen, a senior food and drink analyst who prepared the annual cheese report for Mintel, a market research company. Even though yogurt sales have started to flatten, American shoppers still bought $8.5 billion worth in 2017.

''Yogurt got adopted by big food in the way cottage cheese never did,'' he said.

To use the terminology of food marketers, yogurt wears a health halo. Cottage cheese, long linked to the drudgery of dieting, is fighting a punishment halo.

''Yogurt always had a better back story than cottage cheese,'' said Jonathan Kauffman, the author of ''Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat.''

Mr. Kauffman, like many people, has let cottage cheese fall out of rotation: ''It's one of those foods I don't eat, but I feel like I should.''

It wasn't always this way. Cottage cheese was once a reliable character actor, standing in for meat during two world wars, filling in for ricotta and starring on diet plates. It gave heft to salad bars and made a regular appearance (with fruit) on President Richard Nixon's lunch tray.

By the mid-1970s, the golden era of cottage cheese, producers in every state were pumping out more than a billion pounds a year. Yogurt was still considered a weird, sour interloper reserved for European expatriates and health nuts.

But then came the 1980s. Fruity, sweetened and sometimes frozen yogurt had caught on and cottage cheese was going nowhere but down. The rise of Greek yogurt in the early 2000s knocked it to the mat.

Mr. Potter thinks salvation won't come at the hands of Big Cottage Cheese. Mass production, he said, is part of what killed it in the first place.

By the 1980s, large corporations had absorbed most regional dairies, and much of the nation's cottage cheese had become a flat-tasting, low-fat commodity with rubbery curds stabilized with starches and gums.

''Really good cottage cheese is a hard product to make that doesn't take well to automation,'' Mr. Potter said.

Unlike yogurt, which is a matter of adding a culture to milk and waiting for it to thicken up, cottage cheese is one of those foods that is deceptively simple to produce but difficult to do well. It's like making really good scrambled eggs, but takes hours. You have to take it low and slow.

''Good cottage cheese takes a little craftsmanship,'' said Mr. Potter, of the Dairy Connection.

That's where cheese makers like Sue Conley and Peggy Smith, the founders of Cowgirl Creamery in Marin County, Calif., come in.

In the 1990s, Ms. Conley learned to make cottage cheese from Mr. Potter. It was the one of the first cheeses she and Ms. Smith produced when they opened their original creamery in Point Reyes Station, Calif., in 1997.

The key is very fresh skim milk from a well-run local dairy, Ms. Conley said. (They get theirs from nearby Bivalve Dairy, which is certified organic and grazes its 200 Holsteins on pasture.) Next comes a simple starter culture that feeds on milk sugars to create lactic acid.

Overnight, luscious, tender curds slowly form. In the morning, cheese makers cut them into pieces no bigger than peas. They cook and stir the curds for about an hour and a half to release some of their acidity. Then the cheese makers drain the whey and wash the curds three times.

The last step is the dressing, which is the term for milk or cream that is added to the curds to make them creamy. The dressing determines the fat content of cottage cheese, and is where most of the flavor lies.

Cowgirl Creamery uses crème fraîche, and calls its pleasantly tart product clabbered cottage cheese. The cheese will be sold in Northern California and online, with plans to expand distribution on the West Coast in the fall.

It's not inexpensive. A 5.3-ounce container will cost a little less than $3.

Ms. Conley suggests eating it the way cheese makers do after they finish a batch: Rip open a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips and use it like a dip.

Cowgirl Creamery interrupted production in 2012 because the process requires a lot of water and California was in a terrible drought. But this month, the creamery has started making the cottage cheese again at its Petaluma, Calif., facility to the joy of people like Janet Fletcher, a cheese writer who published a love letter to it in The San Francisco Chronicle.

''I abandoned cottage cheese when I left home,'' she wrote. ''Tasting Cowgirl Creamery's superb product made me want to welcome cottage cheese back into my life.''

When cottage cheese is good, it's delicious, something the cheesemonger Kate Arding found when she tasted Cowgirl Creamery's version before production stopped. Ms. Arding, who grew up eating (and not really liking) cottage cheese in Britain, began a quest to persuade skeptical customers.

''They'd taste it and get this glassy-eyed look,'' she said. ''You could see their faces just change.''

______

Eat cottage cheese the way cheese makers do after they finish a batch: Rip open a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips and use it like a dip.

______

The cheese has been entered in the American Cheese Society's annual competition, held each summer, where cottage cheeses are just beginning to get noticed. Last year, Traderspoint Creamery in Indiana and Cabot Creamery in Vermont entered. Cabot took second place in one of the society's fresh, unripened cheese categories.

Cottage cheese is also nudging its way into the winners' circle at the World Cheese Awards, the largest cheese event in the world. At the 2017 competition in London in November, cottage cheeses from Spain and Luxembourg took silver awards, and two others from Spain and Austria won bronze awards.

To be sure, cottage cheese and its pressed cousins like paneer and queso fresco remain more popular in other countries. And in March, Tablet magazine included cottage cheese on its list of the 100 most Jewish foods.

Rekindling the love affair may be wishful thinking. There are a lot people who just are never going to like cottage cheese.

One is Kevin Pang, a food writer in Chicago who recently wrote of his revulsion for The Takeout, a food website affiliated with The Onion.

''There something about its connotation with cellulite,'' he said in an interview. And then there's the texture.

''Us Chinese, we love the slippery and the slimy, like tendon and jelly fish,'' he said. ''But cottage cheese, man. I just can't do it. And I've eaten horse.''

Even Ed Townley, the chief executive officer of Cabot, isn't convinced that cottage cheese is poised for a comeback, even though his company makes about five million pounds a year.

Like Mr. Pang, he singled out texture. Perhaps cottage cheese could be whipped to smooth it out, or made more spreadable, like ricotta cheese, he said.

And then there is the name.

''It conjures up this old-fashioned image where you think of a cottage,'' he said. ''Bottom line, it's not sexy. A very clever Turkish name or something would go along way.''

Recipe: Polish Cottage Cheese Dip (Gzik)

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Recipe: Polish Cottage Cheese Dip (Gzik)

This is a simple dip with infinite possibilities. The classic version, called gzik, comes from the Wielkopolska province in Poland. It's built from a farmer's cheese called twarog, which is essentially a dry version of what Americans know as cottage cheese. The cheese, which comes molded into a thick disc, is mashed with a fork, then loosened with a few tablespoons (or more, depending on the dryness of the cheese) of yogurt or cream. Radishes and some members of the allium family, most often chives or onions, add flavor; dill or other herbs sometimes make an appearance. The classic way to eat it is on boiled or baked potatoes still in their jackets, but gzik on buttered rye bread is a popular breakfast dish. Although you can use any style of cottage cheese for this recipe, smaller curds work better than large because the dip should be slightly smoother than cottage cheese.

1 1/2 cups small-curd cottage cheese

1 to 3 tablespoons Greek-style yogurt or sour cream, if needed (add if the cottage cheese is not already creamy enough)

1/2 cup finely chopped radishes, the spicier the better

1/8 cup finely chopped chives

1/4 teaspoon salt

A few grinds of black pepper

1. Mash the cottage cheese in a bowl using a fork, adding a tablespoon or two of yogurt or sour cream, if needed, to create a slightly smoother texture. Mix in the remaining ingredients.

Yield: About 2 cups

Recipe: Liptauer Cheese

The journalist Joseph Wechsberg introduced many Americans to the pleasures of Austro-Hungarian food, including this liptauer spread. The recipe is adapted from "The Cooking of Vienna's Empire," Mr. Wechsberg's 1968 entry in the Time-Life Foods of the World series. Cottage cheese and butter are the base for paprika, caraway seeds and briny capers. This dip is a fine accompaniment for crudités or hearty slices of rye on a brisk autumn afternoon.

1 cup cottage cheese

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

1 tablespoon sweet paprika

Freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

2 teaspoons caraway seeds

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon chopped capers

1 tablespoon finely chopped onion

1/2 cup sour cream

3 tablespoons finely chopped chives

1 baguette, thinly sliced and toasted

1. With the back of a spoon, press the cottage cheese through a fine sieve into a mixing bowl.

2. In a mixer fitted with a paddle, cream the butter on medium speed. Beat in the cottage cheese, paprika, a generous grinding of black pepper, the salt, caraway seeds, mustard, capers, onion and sour cream until it forms a smooth paste.

3. Spoon it into a 1 1/2 -cup bowl lined with plastic wrap. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours, or until set. Unmold onto a platter and sprinkle with chives. Serve with baguette slices or crackers.

Yield: Makes 1 1/2 cups

Adapted from "The Cooking of Vienna's Empire," by Joseph Wechsberg, part of the Time-Life Foods of the World series

Cottage cheese began life in America as an easy, economical way for colonial cooks[http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/02/cottage-cheese-called/] to make use of milk left over after they skimmed off the cream. By the 1970s, its amicable presence in recipes and on diet plates had made it a star.

Fame is fickle, and so are the nation’s eaters. Cottage cheese fell out of favor, and now spends its days hanging out in stodgy pint containers near the sour cream, while yogurt sprawls out across acres of the dairy case, dressed up in cute little tubes, flip tops and French glass jars.

America loves a comeback, though, and there are plenty of people who are betting that cottage cheese is primed for one.

“Every seven years or so another wave comes through where we try to reposition cottage cheese,” said Dave Potter, the president of Dairy Connection[https://www.dairyconnection.com/home.php] in Madison, Wis., which sells custom cultures and enzymes to cheese makers. “That’s about where we are now.”

This time, with help from both big food companies and small-batch cheese makers, it might actually work.

On the mass-market side of the equation, the nation’s largest dairy producers are targeting younger people looking for a protein-rich, natural snack they can eat instead of a meal. (Cottage cheese can have twice the protein of some yogurts, though it has a lot more sodium.)

The goal, according to industry analysts, is to “uncottage” cottage cheese — or, as one dairy executive put it, “Chobani it.”

A couple of new players have jumped in, including Muuna[https://www.projectnosh.com/news/2016/israeli-dairy-company-launches-u-s-cottage-cheese-brand], the first product from Israel’s largest food manufacturer to be sold in the United States. American companies like Dean Foods, the nation’s largest dairy company, have given their cottage cheeses makeovers,[https://www.dairyfoods.com/articles/92928-dean-foods-launches-dairypure-cottage-cheese-mix-ins] packing them into smaller, sexier packages and asking retailers to move them away from the sour cream and closer to the yogurt.

New lines have interesting mixes of fruit and nuts, and some producers [https://www.fastcompany.com/40432204/can-cottage-cheese-become-the-next-greek-yogurt]are experimenting with millennial-friendly additions like probiotics and chia seeds. Flavors are expanding beyond dusty stalwarts like pineapple to include kalamata olive, habanero chile or cumin.

The goal, according to industry analysts, is to “uncottage” cottage cheese — or, as one dairy executive put it, “Chobani it.”

But the road back is not going to be easy. Yogurt outsells cottage cheese by roughly eight to one, said John Owen, a senior food and drink analyst who prepared the annual cheese report for Mintel, a market research company. Even though yogurt sales have started to flatten, American shoppers still bought $8.5 billion worth in 2017.

“Yogurt got adopted by big food in the way cottage cheese never did,” he said.

To use the terminology of food marketers, yogurt wears a health halo. Cottage cheese, long linked to the drudgery of dieting,is fighting a punishment halo.

“Yogurt always had a better back story than cottage cheese,” said Jonathan Kauffman, the author of “Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat.”[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/books/review/hippie-food-jonathan-kauffman.html]

Mr. Kauffman, like many people, has let cottage cheese fall out of rotation: “It’s one of those foods I don’t eat, but I feel like I should.”

It wasn’t always this way. Cottage cheese was once a reliable character actor, standing in for meat during two world wars, filling in for ricotta and starring on diet plates. It gave heft to salad bars and made a regular appearance (with fruit) on President Richard Nixon’s lunch tray.

By the mid-1970s, the golden era of cottage cheese, producers in every state were pumping out more than a billion pounds a year. Yogurt was still considered a weird, sour interloper reserved for European expatriates and health nuts.

But then came the 1980s. Fruity, sweetened and sometimes frozen yogurt had caught on[http://www.grubstreet.com/2014/10/great-moments-in-the-history-of-yogurt.html] and cottage cheese was going nowhere but down. The rise of Greek yogurt[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/how-did-greek-yogurt-get-so-popular/244025/] in the early 2000s knocked it to the mat.

Mr. Potter thinks salvation won’t come at the hands of Big Cottage Cheese. Mass production, he said, is part of what killed it in the first place.

By the 1980s, large corporations had absorbed most regional dairies, and much of the nation’s cottage cheese had become a flat-tasting, low-fat commodity with rubbery curds stabilized with starches and gums.

“Really good cottage cheese is a hard product to make that doesn’t take well to automation,” Mr. Potter said.

Unlike yogurt, which is a matter of adding a culture to milk and waiting for it to thicken up, cottage cheese is one of those foods that is deceptively simple to produce but difficult to do well. It’s like making really good scrambled eggs, but takes hours. You have to take it low and slow.

“Good cottage cheese takes a little craftsmanship,” said Mr. Potter, of the Dairy Connection.

That’s where cheese makers like Sue Conley and Peggy Smith[https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Cowgirl-Creamery-sold-to-Swiss-dairy-company-7508019.php], the founders of Cowgirl Creamery in Marin County, Calif., come in.

In the 1990s, Ms. Conley learned to make cottage cheese from Mr. Potter. It was the one of the first cheeses she and Ms. Smith produced when they opened their original creamery in Point Reyes Station, Calif., in 1997.

The key is very fresh skim milk from a well-run local dairy, Ms. Conley said. (They get theirs from nearby Bivalve Dairy[https://www.cowgirlcreamery.com/bivalve-dairy,], which is certified organic and grazes its 200 Holsteins on pasture.) Next comes a simple starter culture that feeds on milk sugars to create lactic acid.

Overnight, luscious, tender curds slowly form. In the morning, cheese makers cut them into pieces no bigger than peas. They cook and stir the curds for about an hour and a half to release some of their acidity. Then the cheese makers drain the whey and wash the curds three times.

The last step is the dressing, which is the term for milk or cream that is added to the curds to make them creamy. The dressing determines the fat content of cottage cheese, and is where most of the flavor lies.

Cowgirl Creamery uses crème fraîche, and calls its pleasantly tart product clabbered cottage cheese. The cheese will be sold in Northern California and online, with plans to expand distribution on the West Coast in the fall.

​It’s not inexpensive. A 5.3-ounce container will cost a little less than $3.

Ms. Conley suggests eating it the way cheese makers do after they finish a batch: Rip open a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips and use it like a dip.

Cowgirl Creamery interrupted production in 2012 because the process requires a lot of water and California was in a terrible drought[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/dining/california-drought-restrictions-kitchen-chef-restaurants.html]. But this month, the creamery has started making the cottage cheese again at its Petaluma, Calif., facility to the joy of people like Janet Fletcher[http://www.janetfletcher.com/blog/], a cheese writer who published a love letter[https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Cowgirl-Creamery-s-cottage-cheese-stands-out-2371829.php] to it in The San Francisco Chronicle.

“I abandoned cottage cheese when I left home,” she wrote. “Tasting Cowgirl Creamery’s superb product made me want to welcome cottage cheese back into my life.”

When cottage cheese is good, it’s delicious, something the cheesemonger Kate Arding found when she tasted Cowgirl Creamery’s version before production stopped. Ms. Arding, who grew up eating (and not really liking) cottage cheese in Britain, began a quest to persuade skeptical customers.

“They’d taste it and get this glassy-eyed look,” she said. “You could see their faces just change.”

Eat cottage cheese the way cheese makers do after they finish a batch: Rip open a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips and use it like a dip.

The cheese has been entered in the American Cheese Society[https://cheesejudging.org/]’s annual competition, held each summer, where cottage cheeses are just beginning to get noticed. Last year, Traderspoint Creamery[https://traderspointcreamery.com/] in Indiana and Cabot Creamery[https://www.cabotcheese.coop/] in Vermont entered. Cabot took second place in one of the society’s fresh, unripened cheese categories.

Cottage cheese is also nudging its way into the winners’ circle at the World Cheese Awards[https://academyofcheese.org/events/world-cheese-awards-2017-judging/], the largest cheese event in the world. At the 2017 competition in London in November, cottage cheeses from Spain and Luxembourg took silver awards, and two others from Spain and Austria won bronze awards.

To be sure, cottage cheese and its pressed cousins like paneer and queso fresco remain more popular in other countries. And in March, Tablet magazine included cottage cheese on its list of the 100 most Jewish foods[https://100jewishfoods.tabletmag.com/cottage-cheese/].

Rekindling the love affair may be wishful thinking. There are a lot people who just are never going to like cottage cheese.

One is Kevin Pang, a food writer in Chicago who recently wrote of his revulsion[https://thetakeout.com/point-counterpoint-is-cottage-cheese-gross-1825364166] for The Takeout, a food website affiliated with The Onion.

“There’s something about its connotation with cellulite,” he said in an interview. And then there’s the texture.

“Us Chinese, we love the slippery and the slimy, like tendon and jelly fish,” he said. “But cottage cheese, man. I just can’t do it. And I’ve eaten horse.”

Even Ed Townley, the chief executive officer of Cabot, isn’t convinced that cottage cheese is poised for a comeback, even though his company makes about five million pounds a year.

Like Mr. Pang, he singled out texture. Perhaps cottage cheese could be whipped to smooth it out, or made more spreadable, like ricotta cheese, he said.

And then there is the name.

“It conjures up this old-fashioned image where you think of a cottage,” he said. “Bottom line, it’s not sexy. A very clever Turkish name or something would go along way.”

Recipe: Polish Cottage Cheese Dip (Gzik)

Follow NYT Food on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.

Bedford firm targeting gut chemistry in bid to develop medicine

Kaleido Biosciences, one of dozens of startups hoping to make medicines based on the latest insights about the trillions of microbes that live inside and on our bodies, said Monday it has hauled in $101 million in its latest fund-raising round.

So far, the Bedford company — which was founded in 2015 by the Cambridge venture capital firm Flagship Pioneering — has raised about $165 million in three rounds.

In addition to Flagship, several new investors are backing the company, including a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds that is owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Other new investors include Fidelity Management & Research Company, Invus, and Rock Springs Capital.

“We are pleased to have support from our new and existing investors who share Kaleido's excitement in leveraging the therapeutic potential of the microbiome and the promise of accelerating the discovery and development of products for patients," said Michael Bonney, chief executive and chair of Kaleido.

The bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that live in the body — mostly in the gut — make up what is known as the human microbiome. A growing collection of research suggests that this invisible world plays a vital and overlooked role in maintaining our health — so important, in fact, that collectively the microorganisms might even be considered another organ.

Just last week, about 250 biotech leaders from around the world came to Boston for a three-day conference to discuss the prospect of developing drugs that change a person's microbiome. Disorders that may result from an imbalance of bacteria in the digestive system, researchers believe, range from inflammatory bowel disease to Parkinson's disease to depression.

Kaleido is conducting clinical trials for a drug to treat urea cycle disorders by targeting gut chemistry. It is also seeking to develop medicines for other rare disorders.

Kaleido has done 10 human clinical studies in the past three years, according to Noubar Afeyan, founder and chief executive of Flagship Pioneering, which has helped start more than 100 ventures since 2000.

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com

Credit: By Jonathan Saltzman Globe Staff

'Eating highly processed foods is associated with chronic inflammation, a state that is connected with an increased risk of developing most diseases, including cancer and promoting weight gain'

Generally, when it comes to eating[https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink] and drinking, the saying “everything in moderation” holds true.

However, there are a few things that you’re better off just avoiding altogether.

We asked nine nutritionists[https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/Nutrition] about the one food or beverage they never ever consume.

Hot dogs

“One food that I just can’t bring myself to eat is a hot dog. It doesn’t matter if they’re beef, chicken, or turkey.Hot dogs are made from highly processed meat, are packed with sodium, and are often laced with cancer-causing nitrates, making them one of the unhealthiest foods around.”

- Karen Ansel, registered dietician nutritionist and author of

“

Healing Superfoods for Anti-Ageing: Stay Younger, Live Longer”

Reduced fat peanut butter

Peanut butter (Getty)

“The fat in peanut butter — the heart-healthy monounsaturated type — is one of the best things about it! What’s more, when food manufacturers remove the fat from peanut butter, they replace it with various forms of sugar among other undesirable ingredients. As a result, reduced-fat peanut butter is much higher in sugar and carbohydrates[https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/carbohydrates] than regular peanut butter. I choose regular peanut butter made with only two ingredients: Peanuts and salt (crunchy, please).”

-

Rachel Meltzer Warren,registereddieticiannutritionist and author of “

The Smart Girl’s Guide to Going Vegetarian”

and

“

A Teen’s Guide to Gut Health”

Soda

Rum and coke with lime and ice (Getty/

iStock

)

“I avoid drinking regular soda and have all of my life. I just think it’s a waste of calories because it’s all sugar and no nutrients. Sugary drinks are just added calories that I can’t use elsewhere –and they don’t fill you up anyway.”

-Kim Larson, registered dietician nutritionist and media spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics

Fettucine Alfredo

“I skip this dish not only because it has been called ‘a heart attack on a plate,’ but because there are so many other healthy ways to enjoy an occasional bowl of pasta — garlic and oil, primavera with marinara. These healthy varieties also taste much better. I say NO to cream sauce.”

-Dr Lisa Young, registered dietician nutritionist and author of”

The Portion Teller

”

Margarine

Margarine is made of vegetable fats (Rex Features)

“I am definitely an ‘all foods fit’ dietician, but the one thing that I avoid is margarine. First of all, I love butter, but I use it very sparingly; usually only a couple of tablespoons a few times a week. I also use olive oil for cooking, so there really isn’t a place for margarine in my diet. I’d rather go for the real thing and enjoy it in moderation instead of having to sort through processed food labels and tip-toeing around trans fats.”

However, “If you use lots of butter every day and have issues with weight management, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure, trans fat-free margarine in a tub or spray might be a good idea.”

- Andrea Goergen, dietician and owner ofCultivate Healthy

American Cheese

“American cheese is a prime example of a highly processed food. In general, I look to keep my diet as low in processed and close to the whole food as possible. Eating highly processed foods is associated with chronic inflammation, a state that is connected with an increased risk of developing most diseases, including cancer and promoting weight gain.

“American cheese is not a natural cheese, it is a factory made cheese food that typically contains added chemicals and extracts. In fact, it is less than 51 per centreal cheese. Additionally, one slice contains 220 mg of sodium and 4.5 grams of fat, and 3 grams from saturated fat — putting it on the calibre of a high fat meat.”

- Beth Warren, registered dietician nutritionist, founder & CEO ofBeth Warren Nutrition

Red meat

Red meat steak (

Alamy

)

“I recommend everyone avoid red meat for several reasons. For starters, Trimethylamine N-Oxide (TMAO; produced when a compound found in red meat called L-carnitine is metabolised) isassociatedwith inflammation, atherosclerosis, and increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Neu5GC, a sugar molecule found in red meat, metabolicallyaccumulatesand has been found to promotechronic inflammation. In addition, when meat is cooked, compounds calledpolycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(PAHs),heterocyclic amines(HCAs), andadvanced glycation end products(AGEs) are formed. These compounds are carcinogenic, pro-inflammatory and pro-oxidative; they also contribute to chronic disease.”

“These compounds are present in both conventional and grass-fed beef, so this is not an issue of simply switching to grass-fed meats. This also has nothing to do with fat content; so ‘choosing lean meats’ is irrelevant in regards to what I described above.”

-Andy Bellatti, registered dietician nutritionist

Raw milk

“This type of milk has not been pasteurised and could contain harmful bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria, which can cause food-borne illnesses, also known as food poisoning. Certain folks, such as older adults, pregnant women, children, and those with a comprised immune system are even more susceptible to the negative effects of these bacteria.”

-Dr. Joan Salge Blake, registered dietician nutritionist

Mixed (alcoholic) drinks

Alcoholic cocktail (

istock

)

“Too much alcohol and this is like a meal in a glass. One doesn’t feel full but it can provide a lot of the day’s calories.”

- Leslie Bonci, registered dietician nutritionist and owner ofActive Eating Advice

Read more:

•This chart is easy to interpret: It says we’re screwed[http://uk.businessinsider.com/deloitte-cfo-survey-on-hiring-and-capex-in-brexit-recession-2016-7]

• How Uber became the world’s most valuable startup[http://uk.businessinsider.com/ubers-history]

• These 4 things could trigger the next crisis in Europe[http://uk.businessinsider.com/credit-suisse-trigger-next-eurozone-crisis-italy-turkey-france-2016-7]

Read the original article on Business Insider UK[http://uk.businessinsider.com/science-backed-tricks-to-appear-smart-2016-3]. ©2016. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter[https://twitter.com/BIUK].

An actress who hawked stool softeners and laxative capsules on TV is suing because she was made redundant by a bobblehead.

Phoebe Jonas - a k a "the Phillips Lady" in ads for Phillips' Colon Health capsules and other Bayer digestive products - says in Manhattan court papers that her former employer replaced her with a wobbly-headed figurine of herself in commercials to avoid paying her.

Jonas' suit notes that she helped peddle Bayer products from June 2016 until her contract ended this past March.

Then, "Bayer began airing ads of a Bobble Head that looks identical to" Jonas, according to her suit.

"Bayer created the Bobble Head replica to avoid renegotiating the right to continue to use plaintiff's likeness," the suit charges.

"At no point did plaintiff ever give Bayer consent, permission and/or authority to create and/or air the Bobble Head video portraying her likeness on the internet, television commercials or any other form of media."

Bayer has ignored the actress' demands for compensation, the court papers add.

"It's one thing to not pay - it's another thing to turn an actor into a bobblehead to try and not pay," Jonas' lawyer, Steven Mintz, told The Post on Monday.

"This lawsuit is going to give Bayer a headache," he quipped of the company, which is known for its aspirin.

A clip of Bayer's "Cubicle" ad, which features Jonas the bobblehead, can be found on the company's Web site.

In the commercial, the bobblehead asks two female coworkers in a cubicle, "Anyone ever have occasional constipation, diarrhea, gas or bloating?"

"She does," the co-workers answer in unison, pointing across their desks at each other.

Without skipping a beat, the bobblehead replies, "Help defend against those digestive issues. Take Phillips' Colon Health probiotic caps daily with three types of good bacteria."

Jonas, who has also appeared on "Law & Order" and "The Nanny Diaries," is suing for $500,000 and to stop Bayer from using the bobblehead in commercials.

Chris Loder, spokesman for the pharmaceutical company, said, "This preposterous complaint is without merit, and we intend to fight these baseless claims."

jmarsh@nypost.com

Can you run up the stairs?

I'd be worried if I couldn't. I spend 20 hours a week training, six days a week, and in the build-up to a major competition like the world championships or the Olympics, it can increase to 30 to 35 hours a week.

Get your five a day?

Easily, but my focus is getting the right balance of protein and carbs at the optimal time for my exertion and recovery. Breakfast is some form of eggs, cereal or toast. Lunch will be a protein shake and then pasta or meat, fish and veg. Dinner can be a steak, spaghetti bolognaise or salmon with veg. I do most of the cooking at home as my wife, Leah, works late as a gymnastics coach. I'm 5ft 6in and weigh about 62kg (10 st).

Any vices?

Pancakes and waffles. I'm very focused before a championship, but I think it's important to treat yourself afterwards.

Pop any pills?

Probiotics on occasion, as I think they can strengthen your immune system and boost energy levels.

Worst illness?

Glandular fever, which I developed in spring 2015 in the long run-up to the 2016 Rio Olympics. Just a week prior, I remember telling my parents I was the fittest I'd ever been, and I couldn't wait to compete. Within a week, I'd completely deteriorated and couldn't even complete one routine. Every morning I'd wake up feeling drained. My arms and legs felt as though they weighed a ton. It knocked me out for three months. I just had to rest. Even now, I have to be careful about pushing myself too hard, as once you've had it, you're more susceptible to it again.

Cope well with pain?

A gymnast's pain threshold is quite high. I go into the gym most days with slight aches and pains. I use ice packs on my muscles to keep pain at bay.

Worst injury?

In 2010 when I was 17, I was having spasms in my back. It was coming up to my first Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. You only get one day training at the venue and that morning my back went into another major spasm and I couldn't move. Luckily, I was all right on the day and won a bronze medal on the horizontal bar, a silver on the pommel horse and a team silver.

Biggest phobia?

None. I'm a bit of an adrenaline junky, which Leah doesn't like. I'm fine with heights and I like going fast.

Hangover cure?

I'm not a big drinker. I'd rather

have a glass of Coke.

What keeps you awake?

Nothing! Sleep is so important to an athlete because training takes a lot out of you.

Max is an ambassador for British Lion eggs, eggrecipes.co.uk

© Daily Mail

The most recent figures show that around 12 million of us are obese and another 20 million overweight.

And as our body weight increases, so does our risk of metabolic syndrome — a group of risk factors linked to heart disease, diabetes and stroke, including raised blood pressure, blood fats and blood sugar — and the danger of certain cancers.

'Being obese could knock ten to 20 years off your life expectancy,' says Shaw Somers, a weight loss surgeon at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and Streamline Surgical clinics.

'Metabolic syndrome in particular is the plague of our time and can happen even at relatively low levels of weight gain,' adds Mr Shaw, who is also president of the British Obesity & Metabolic Surgery Society.

These health problems occur because fat cells pump out hormones and chemicals that interfere with our blood sugar levels and other processes, increasing the risk of metabolic problems such as type 2 diabetes. Excess weight also puts a strain on joints and the heart, which needs to pump harder to supply all the extra fat with oxygen.

Recent research from Newcastle and Glasgow universities showed that patients with type 2 diabetes who followed an 800 calorie-a-day liquid diet for two months could lose more than 22lb (10kg) and send their disease into remission.

But while there seems to be a new diet plan or revolutionary weight loss breakthrough every week — adding up to a multi-billion-pound diet industry — anyone who has tried (and failed) to shed the pounds will know how hard it is to lose weight and keep it off. Now the latest scientific research may provide long-lasting weight loss. From hormone jabs to manipulating your body clock, we take a look at the most promising future treatments.

TINY BEADS TO stop hunger pangs

The only intervention that has so far been proven to lead to significant long-term weight loss for obese people is surgery. Usually done as a keyhole procedure, one of the most common techniques is gastric banding where a silicone band is used to reduce the size of the stomach. Around 5,000 people undergo weight-loss surgery on the NHS every year.

'Surgery leads to an average loss of 20 to 25 per cent of body weight after five years,' says Mr Somers.

A newer innovation is a gastric balloon in the form of a 'pill' you swallow. Once in position, the balloon, called Elipse, is inflated with salt water via a tube. It dissolves after four months.

A pilot trial of 135 overweight people with the balloon showed an average weight loss of nearly 29lb (13kg), it was reported earlier this year, and a larger 400-patient trial is underway across the U.S.

Elipse is available only privately in the UK, costs £3,200, and 'because it only stays in for a few months the effects are likely to be temporary', adds Mr Somers.

Another new approach, known as bariatric embolisation, involves injecting tiny beads to block the major blood vessels supplying the part of the stomach that produces the 'hunger hormone' ghrelin.

The approach is being tested in a small study of 20 obese patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA, and if successful, UK-based trials are likely to follow within five years.

Preliminary results suggest it leads to a reduction in appetite and around 10 per cent weight loss after three months.

But Mr Somers warns: 'Embolisation is like taking a couple of instruments out of the orchestra, whereas surgery completely changes the tune.'

AVAILABLE: Gastric balloon pill, now

Tiny beads, soon (at trial stage)

JAB WORKS LIKE A GASTRIC BAND

AN exciting idea being researched is how to get the benefits of weight loss surgery without patients going under the knife.

At Imperial College London, for example, they are trying to replicate the effect with drugs.

'Studies show that certain appetite-suppressing hormones made by the gut are raised after eating in people who have had surgery,' says Dr Tricia Tan, a consultant in diabetes, endocrinology and metabolic medicine, who is leading the research. 'We are working on ways of delivering these hormones directly into patients to see if it controls their weight.'

The three main hormones are known as PYY, GLP-1 and oxyntomodulin, all of which are released once the stomach is full and have a potent appetite-suppressing effect.

Because people who have had gastric surgery have much smaller stomachs than people who haven't, they produce the hormones more quickly after eating.

Dr Tan is carrying out clinical trials of a mixture of these three hormones which are continuously pumped into the body so people feel less hungry all day long.

The hormone cocktail, which is made in a lab, is introduced into patients with a device roughly the size of a mobile phone that has a tiny needle attached which goes under the skin (similar to insulin pumps used by many diabetics).

So far the results of a trial with 20 patients have been startling, and the findings are due to be published in a scientific journal.

'Obese people with diabetes wore the pumps for 28 days, and all lost between 2.5kg to 8kg and reported eating 30 to 40 per cent less food overall,' says Dr Tan.

'We hope we will one day understand the regulation of hunger and the drive to eat, but we are a long way off these treatments helping the population on a day-to-day basis,' adds Mr Somers.

AVAILABLE: Soon (at trial stage)

loo ROLL TO TEST YOUR GUT BUGS

As well as nourishing the body, the food you eat feeds the billions of bacteria living in your gut, known collectively as microbiome. Different species of bacteria have their own preferred food sources — such as fibre or fats — which are broken down to release chemicals called metabolites. So encouraging the growth of certain bacteria with particular foods will lead to an increase in the specific metabolites they produce.

According to new research from King's College London, these bacterial chemicals have a powerful influence on weight. Researchers studied different metabolites found in stool samples from more than 700 people and discovered the levels of eight in particular were strongly associated with having a higher BMI, while more than 100 were linked to higher body fat, reported the journal Nature Genetics earlier this year.

'This work offers a promising insight into what causes obesity and how we might change this to our benefit,' says Mr Somers.

The King's College London researchers say their work could lead to the invention of 'smart' toilet paper that monitors levels of key metabolites in stools.

By providing an early warning of changes that might affect weight — such as an increase in the levels of 'fattening' metabolites — people could take steps to manipulate their microbiome to produce slimming chemicals instead.

'You can't take the metabolites as supplements, because they need to be made inside the gut,' says lead researcher Dr Cristina Menni. 'Rather than trying to replace specific species of bacteria, we could work out what chemicals are missing and give people foods or dietary supplements that encourage their production.'

AVAILABLE: 5 YEARS

PILL that tricks your BODY CLOCK

'Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dine like a pauper' may seem old-fashioned advice, but the latest research suggests that the time of day we eat may be even more important than the food itself.

'In studies in mice we found that feeding them a high-fat diet at night when they are naturally active did not result in weight gain,' says Professor Carla Green, a neuroscientist at University of Texas Southwestern in the U.S., who is researching the link between the body clock — also known as circadian rhythm — and obesity.

'But if they eat the same diet during the day when they should be asleep, then they gain tons of weight.'

Professor Green believes the effect happens because of a mismatch between food intake and the body clock, which could also explain why people who sleep poorly or work night shifts often find that they put on weight.

'The idea of "calories in versus calories out" for weight loss is too simplistic,' she says. 'Food is burned more efficiently when the tissue is active, so calories arriving at the wrong time are more likely to be converted into fat.'

Professor Green believes these findings can be applied to aid weight loss in humans. 'It wouldn't hurt to confine your eating to the eight hours of the day when you are most active,' she says.

Mr Somers agrees, adding, 'understanding our interaction with the daily cycle reminds us that we are humans and not machines, and that the habits and customs we associate with food may not be what our bodies really need at a particular time'.

In another U.S. study, scientists have shown that nobiletin, a chemical found in citrus peel, boosts the activity of body clock-related genes in mice and prevented weight gain and helped control blood sugar levels.

The doses of nobiletin used in the animal study were very high - far higher than could be obtained from eating citrus peel — and the researchers at the University of Texas are now developing a more potent version of the chemical that could be taken as a pill.

AVAILABLE: 5-10 YEARS

mind games to fool your brain

A team at the University of Bristol is investigating how people's attitudes affect whether they stick to diets and lose weight. 'The key is developing psychological techniques to ensure people lose enough weight and keep it off,' says Jeff Brunstrom, a professor of experimental psychology who is leading the research.

For example, he has found many people are put off trying restricted diets or intermittent fasting — despite the proof they lead to weight loss — because there's a misplaced assumption that we need three meals a day, and the fear they will run out of energy.

'When you ask people why they need to eat, many say they need to "restore their energy levels", and they cannot concentrate or feel fatigued without eating,' says Professor Brunstrom. 'But healthy people have enough energy stored in their bodies to last for at least 40 days, so skipping a meal is not a biological challenge.'

Professor Brunstrom says these false beliefs about energy balance mean that some people are reluctant to eat less - but these attitudes could be changed with psychological techniques.

In fact, research has shown our feelings of hunger are only loosely connected to our available energy stores and more closely related to our attitudes towards food — people may feel full after a meal but find room for dessert because they enjoy the sweet taste.

When the Bristol team asked participants in a study to fast for a day to see if their fears of hunger were realised, they proved that these concerns were unfounded.

'At the beginning of the study people were worried that they would have headaches, fatigue or weakness, but most of them said they found it easier than they thought,' says Professor Brunstrom. He believes these short-term challenges can retrain the brain into thinking that we can go with less food or even skip meals, and manipulating these underlying beliefs could be the key to long-term weight loss.

Research also suggests that dieters should eat smaller meals but make sure they are presented nicely and packed with variety. This tricks the brain into feeling satisfied with less food, and over-rides the fear of deprivation.

'Understanding the psychology of food habits is central to the long-term behaviour changes needed to control weight gain,' says Mr Somers. 'It is also key to successful outcomes with all weight loss treatments.'

AVAILABLE: NOW

SKIN PATCHES curb appetite

Building on the idea of hormone jabs, Dr Xiaoyang Wu at the University of Chicago is developing skin grafts that release the appetite-suppressing hormone GLP-1 into the body.

It's similar to the principle behind nicotine or HRT patches, but these would be responsive, living on part of the patient's skin instead of as a disposable sticker.

'We grow skin stem cells in the lab for more than a year, then we use a new gene editing tool called CRISPR to genetically modify them to make GLP-1 and grow them into patches to be grafted onto the body,' explains Dr Wu.

He and his team have tested the patches only on mice, but results in the journal Cell Stem Cell last year showed that the skin grafts released GLP-1 into the animals' blood and reduced weight gain and prevented diabetes on mice kept on a high-fat diet.

Human trials are some years off, but the technique would essentially be the same, with scientists making personalised grafts by taking a small sample of skin stem cells from a person and growing them in the lab.

'Growing cells from individual patients gets around the problem of rejection by the immune system,' explains Dr Wu. 'Skin grafts can be stable in humans for five to ten years and can become permanent, so this could be a good long-term solution for weight control.'

Mr Somers is more cautious, pointing out that until we fully understand how obesity is caused, it is difficult to see how the patch will be applicable to the majority.

AVAILABLE: 10 YEARS

© Daily Mail

Kaleido Biosciences, one of dozens of startups hoping to make medicines based on the latest insights about the trillions of microbes that live inside and on our bodies, said Monday it has hauled in $101 million in its latest fundraising round.

So far, the Bedford company — which was founded in 2015 by the Cambridge venture capital firm Flagship Pioneering — has raised about $165 million in three rounds.

In addition to Flagship, several new investors are backing the company, including a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds and owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Other new investors include Fidelity Management & Research Company, Invus, and Rock Springs Capital.

“We are pleased to have support from our new and existing investors who share Kaleido's excitement in leveraging the therapeutic potential of the microbiome and the promise of accelerating the discovery and development of products for patients," said Michael Bonney, chief executive and chair of Kaleido.

The bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that live in the body — mostly in the gut — make up what is known as the human microbiome. A growing collection of research suggests that this invisible world plays a vital and overlooked role in maintaining our health — so important, in fact, that collectively the microorganisms might even be considered another organ.

Just last week, about 250 biotech leaders from around the world came to Boston for a three-day conference to discuss the prospect of developing drugs that change a person's microbiome. Disorders that may result from an imbalance of bacteria in the digestive system, researchers believe, ranging from inflammatory bowel disease to Parkinson's disease to depression.

Kaleido is conducting clinical trials for a drug to treat urea cycle disorders by targeting gut chemistry. It is also seeking to develop medicines for other rare disorders.

Kaleido has done a total of 10 human clinical studies in the past three years, according to Noubar Afeyan, founder and chief executive of Flagship Pioneering, which has helped start more than 100 ventures since 2000.

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com

Credit: By Jonathan Saltzman Globe Staff

Caption:

Shutterstock / Tsvetkov Maxim

Rates of Clostridium difficile in Canadian hospitals dropped by about 36 per cent in recent years, according to a new study that suggests increased attention to infection-control measures such as handwashing and avoiding antibiotics is helping reduce the spread of hospital-acquired infections.

The study, published on Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, examined trends at a large group of hospitals from 2009 to 2015 to determine if efforts to contain the pathogen were making headway.

The researchers found rates of C. difficile dropped significantly over the study period, a trend attributable to the increased vigilance at health-care institutions, said Kevin Katz, lead author and medical director of infection prevention and control at Toronto’s North York General Hospital.

“It actually is having an impact,” Dr. Katz said. “The job is not done, but it’s definitely moving very significantly in the right direction.”

C. difficile is a bacterial infection and the most common cause of infectious diarrhea in hospitals and long-term-care facilities in Canada. It can lead to serious illness and death. It affects older patients most frequently, and often takes hold when individuals are put on antibiotics, which kill off their healthy gut bacteria. The NAP1 strain of C. difficile, which is resistant to many antibiotics and known to cause more severe illness, is the most common form of the infection in Canada.

Health-care associated infections such as C. difficile and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus have emerged as a major threat in the past two decades. According to Canada’s chief public-health officer, more than 200,000 Canadians get infections while receiving health-care every year. Of those, about 8,000 die as a result. The vast majority of infections are spread by health-care workers, patients and visitors, which is why infection-control measures are so important.

Over the course of the study period, rates of the virulent NAP1 strain fell, but it remains the most common, Dr. Katz said. Hospitals that have the strain are more likely to see a greater number of severe cases, which is why it is important to stay focused on reducing the spread, he said.

The study was done by researchers involved in the Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance Program, which tracks C. difficile and similar bacterial infections at health-care institutions in Canada.

Dina Kao, a gastroenterologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Alberta, said the falling rates of hospital-based C. difficile are encouraging, but another challenge is the number of cases that go undetected in the community.

Dr. Kao, who is also director of Edmonton’s program for fecal transplants, which are used to treat C. difficile, said it is common for individuals to acquire infections at home after taking antibiotics. Tracking these cases is a logistical challenge, but Dr. Kao said they appear to be on the rise.

“It is a very big problem,” she said.

While hospitals have become very good at implementing measures in recent years to stop the spread of these infections, it is possible community doctors and patients have not got the same message, she said.

For instance, doctors should avoid giving unnecessary prescriptions for antibiotics, and patients should learn to not ask for those drugs. In many cases, antibiotics are still prescribed when they are unnecessary, such as for the treatment of viral infections that will go away on their own, because patients go to their doctor and insist on getting something to treat their symptoms, Dr. Kao said.

“This is everybody’s responsibility,” she said.

Follow this link to view this story on globeandmail.com: Clostridium difficile infections have decreased 36 per cent in Canadian hospitals: study

The Globe and Mail

SUSAN DAVIS: And we finish the hour with this weekend's Long Listen. Precision treatments for cancer are hot right now. But one young cancer doctor is pushing back against some of the hype through scientific articles and on social media. NPR science correspondent Richard Harris met up with him recently at a big cancer conference in Chicago, where the doctors squared off in a debate about precision medicine.

RICHARD HARRIS: Soon after I meet Vinay Prasad, we stroll past one of the many glitzy displays that the pharmaceutical companies erect to generate buzz about their products.

VINAY PRASAD: The carpet is so plush in many of these exhibits, you could twist your ankle in it. But this is actually a really gorgeous display. You would win any science fair with a booth like this. You would just crush it. It's bathed in purple light - incredible. Oh, hey. How are you? Good to see you. Good to see you.

HARRIS: A colleague comes up and, after asking me not to quote her on this touchy subject, both thanks Prasad for raising important issues in the field but also implores him not to get so overheated. It's not as bad as you seem to make it, she argues. And she reels off a list of precision-targeted drugs that help people with melanoma, lung cancer and other diseases.

PRASAD: I use those drugs. There are some good drugs. No one said there's no good drugs. The question is, let's be honest. The truth is 8 percent of people benefit from these drugs. Of the 8 percent that get these drugs, 50 percent have tumor shrinkage. 50 percent don't.

HARRIS: And tumor shrinkage doesn't mean cure. The problem, in his eyes, is that the field has gotten so enthusiastic about these drugs that they aren't waiting for actual science to distinguish between the times when they are useful and where they are a very expensive, wasted effort.

PRASAD: A lot of people want to push it to the treatment side. They want to get Medicare to pay for it. They want to get the drugs paid for off label because they don't want to shoulder the cost on the industry side. And that's the root of what bothers me about this.

HARRIS: People who buy health insurance and taxpayers are funding a massive, uncontrolled experiment with these drugs. Nobody's even collecting the data most of the time to find out what might be useful. Prasad, a 35-year-old oncologist who treats patients at the Oregon Health and Science University, says when he was in medical school, he assumed he would spend his career as a community doctor, treating people with cancer. But then he discovered how much of medical practice was based on traditions, rather than actual science.

PRASAD: Even the most respected, charismatic and thoughtful experts often are incorrect.

HARRIS: The more he learned about what's called evidence-based medicine, the more captivated he became.

PRASAD: I found it harder to just observe things that troubled me and not study them. And at some point, I made the decision - the conscious decision - that if it troubles me enough, I want to look at it kind of and study it and try to say something about it. And maybe somebody else will carry the torch and actually fix that problem someday.

HARRIS: He started out publishing analyses in the scientific literature about bad assumptions and bad practices he encountered. His notoriety really took off when he started opining on Twitter. Today, he has more than 20,000 followers. And he has punched out nearly 30,000 tweets. His pointed commentary sometimes gets him tagged as a troublemaker.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome you to the 2018 session.

HARRIS: And the sessions and meetings like this are ripe targets. We settle back into seats in the cavernous meeting room where thousands of doctors have gathered to hear the big talks at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference. The screen during the warm-up presentation flashes random tweets about the meeting, including one of Prasad's. It's a bingo card that features buzzwords surrounding advances in cancer treatment.

PRASAD: The words that are displayed are unprecedented, personalized, microbiome, precision, inflection point, breakthrough, silo, big data...

HARRIS: ...Among others.

PRASAD: I guess it has almost 100 retweets now.

HARRIS: He actually wrote a scientific paper about the overuse of superlatives in scientific presentations and news coverage. He found plenty of uses of the terms game-changer, breakthrough, miracle, cure or home run.

PRASAD: But what really got me was 14 percent of the drugs - the superlative was used based only on mouse or laboratory results. And they'd never given it to a human being.

HARRIS: We lower our voices when the talks begin. Prasad joins the Twitter conversation about the session while keeping an ear tuned to the presentation.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: ...Was to develop a paradigm of biomarker-directed chemotherapy.

PRASAD: They're winning my bingo. Did you hear all those words?

HARRIS: Prasad retweeted some sharp critiques of the talks but also tweeted praise for one panelist who added some important caveats to a study that had just been presented. The next day, we meet again at Prasad's main event, the debate over the value of precision medicine.

RICHARD SCHILSKY: OK. Good morning, everyone.

HARRIS: Dr. Richard Schilsky, the oncology society's chief medical officer, steps up to referee the face-off between Prasad and Vanderbilt University oncologist Jeremy Warner.

JEREMY WARNER: So the first thing I have to say is that I'm the underdog.

HARRIS: Warner flashes a cartoon with two dogs, his face plastered onto one on the ground and Prasad's face spliced onto the animal looming above. A cloud of Twitter birds represents Prasad's army of followers. The so-called debate about this multibillion dollar enterprise was civil. Afterwards, Warner reflects on their considerable points of agreement. Warner disagreed, though, about how to accommodate patients' desires for these new medicines before the careful studies show whether they will actually work for their particular type of disease.

WARNER: Yeah. Saying that someone should just be on a clinical trial - I mean, it sounds easy. But it's actually not easy at all.

HARRIS: And Schilsky, the moderator, found he was in considerable agreement with Prasad as well.

SCHILSKY: I enjoyed his remarks very much. I mean, you know, he's a bit of a gadfly. He's a bit of a provocateur. But, frankly, he's taking a very hard and objective look at a very complex area. And, you know, he's calling it out. He's saying, you know, it's, you know - it's what's behind the curtain. And, you know, let's celebrate what really works. And let's look hard at what doesn't. And let's try to develop the evidence that we need to make important decisions for patients.

HARRIS: Plenty of people aren't so accommodating, particularly on Twitter, Prasad notes.

PRASAD: I think it's unfortunate that I'm thought of as a professional troublemaker because the work we do - we really try to find those instances where the evidence and the narrative are divergent and try to ask ourselves, what can we do to bring those two closer together?

HARRIS: Is this good for your career, or is this bad for your career?

PRASAD: (Laughter) To be honest with you, I don't know the answer. I guess I would say I wish I didn't - as a young person, I don't want to have to be the person to be doing all this work. I wish there were senior people who would do this work. Senior people are not doing this work.

HARRIS: The point in the end is not to be cynical about science, he says, but to help this critical field do science better. Richard Harris, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

What started as a gut health trend is now getting rave reviews for taste

Diners could start seeing a lot more pickle on menus — and not just topping their sandwich.

KFC, a Yum Brands Inc. (YUM, US)  chain, will add Pickle Fried Chicken to its offerings and the feedback so far is favorable.

“As someone who is a longtime fan of fried chicken and a newcomer to the pickle fandom, I was delightfully surprised by the sauce, which is just the right amount of sour and salty and somehow manages to make me even more inclined to keep eating fried chicken (a thing that fried chicken usually does a good job of just on its own),” wrote Mark Kalinowski in a note for Kalinowski Equity Research.

Read:IHOP’s ‘IHOb’ rebrand: PR at its finest’ or a marketing stunt gone too far?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkQdKqdgqD3/?taken-by=kfc[https://www.instagram.com/p/BkQdKqdgqD3/?taken-by=kfc]Kalinowski says the flavor isn’t “overpowering” and “tastes like concentrated residue from actual pickles, like your chicken took a pickle bath and still stayed crispy.”

A PopSugar writer says she’s “dill-irious with joy”[https://www.popsugar.com/food/KFC-Pickle-Fried-Chicken-44965835] about the addition.

Pickle Fried Chicken is coming on June 25 for a limited time, according to Kalinowski. MarketWatch reached out to KFC for comment, but had not heard back by publishing time.

The pickle, it appears, is having a moment.

Disneyland is offering[https://disneyland.disney.go.com/dining/disneyland/alien-pizza-planet/] a pickle-topped pizza called Alien Pizza Planet.

And Sonic Corp. (SONC, US)  has introduced a Pickle Juice Slush that the company describes as having a “sweet yet tart sensation.”

Lizzy Freier, managing editor at Technomic, has seen more chatter about pickles, but says that pickling and fermenting began to gain popularity as a prep technique a few years ago.

“As far as health trends go, gut health and ingredients or techniques that aid in digestion is one of the big stories right now, and fermented foods certainly do that,” she said. “So we’re noting pickled sauces and relishes like amba from the Middle East, pikliz from Haiti, curtido from El Salvador and chamoy from Mexico popping up at restaurants to provide diners with greater flavor variety compared to their traditional condiments.”

Pickle-focused menu items are buzz-worthy, with Freier highlighting the “wow factor” of items like a Pickle Juice Slush, and the likelihood that they will be snapped and shared on social media. Other companies, like Starbucks Corp. (SBUX, US) , have also put a greater focus on the “Instagram-worthiness” of items that are being added to menus.

Read:Starbucks says racial bias incident delayed its marketing push, hurt same-store sales

“That slush, as it’s from Sonic, which is not typically known for a wide range of health-conscious offerings and has a bright green color... is likely created much more to draw in younger consumers who want to try it to post it to social media,” she said. “Also to stir up marketing and mentions across other social channels.”

Yum Brands shares are down 1.6% for the year to date. Sonic shares are up 31.6% for the period and the S&P 500 index (SPX, US)  is up 3.3% for 2018 so far.

With three brothers affected by either Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, Kathleen Crispi knows she's at high risk for one of the literally gut-wrenching conditions known to run in families.

About a year ago, she volunteered to take part in the largest-ever study of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) - research that hopes to unlock the cause of Crohn's, with the goal of finding cures for both major forms of the condition.

The Canadian-led, international Genetic, Environmental, Microbial (GEM) project has just reached its target enrolment of 5,000 participants around the world, all unaffected children or siblings of people with Crohn's.

"Even getting to a stage of having biological markers or being able to identify people who are likely to develop the disease ... would be a really big win out of this study," said Crispi of Guelph, who has two brothers with ulcerative colitis and one with Crohn's.

"Obviously, we know it runs in families," said Crispi, 32. "I have two young children and I have two nephews and a niece, as well, so for us anything that would lead to earlier detection would be fantastic.

"But, of course, a cure would be amazing."

Crohn's and ulcerative colitis are autoimmune diseases which cause inflammation of the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, disrupting the body's ability to digest food, absorb nutrition and properly eliminate waste.

Symptoms include abdominal pain, cramping, gas, bloating, fatigue and diarrhea.

With Crohn's, inflammation can occur anywhere in the GI tract but is usually in the lower part of the small intestine and the colon, or large bowel. Ulcerative colitis affects only the colon, including the rectum and anus.

About 250,000 Canadians have IBD, which affects an estimated 10 million people worldwide. And its incidence is on the rise, said Mina Mawani, president and CEO of Crohn's and Colitis Canada.

"These people have unbelievable pain, they have bloody diarrhea, they could be going to the bathroom up to 20 times a day," said Mawani. "People feel that there's a lot of stigma associated with a bathroom disease, so they don't speak about it very often. But if you have to go to the washroom 20 times a day ... you may not want to go to events, you may not be able to hold down a job."

Medications and in some cases surgery to remove chronically inflamed portions of the intestines can help keep IBD under control in 50 to 60 per cent of cases, "but we still haven't cured anyone," said Dr. Ken Croitoru, principal investigator of the GEM study.

Researchers are tracking subjects'diet, immune function and changes in their intestinal microbiome, as well as trying to decode any genetic anomalies and potential environmental factors that may end up sparking the disease.

Since 2008, when the study began, 70 participants have gone on to develop Crohn's, while 15 have been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, said Croitoru, a gastroenterologist at the Mount Sinai Inflammatory Bowel Disease Centre in Toronto.

"That gives us the opportunity to go back and say 'OK, what was there when they were healthy that distinguishes those 70 from the rest of the crowd?'" he said.

Researchers are paying particular attention to each person's gut microbiome, the natural bacterial community inhabiting the gastrointestinal tract.

"There's something there that seems to be important in triggering the disease," said Croitoru.

ROWLETT, Texas For five years, Patti Swearingen battled an infection that refused to go away. Doctors prescribed round after round of antibiotics, but the infection kept coming back. Eventually, the microscopic war inside her body left Swearingen so weak and debilitated she could barely leave her living room couch.

In March, she and her husband Gary decided that modern drugs had failed them. Instead, they turned to a treatment from the past. As reported in The Dallas Morning News and on KXAS-TV (NBC5), they flew 6,500 miles to a small clinic in Tbilisi, Georgia. There, doctors had her drink live viruses twice a day for two weeks.

Now Swearingen's medical records confirm the outcome: She is cured.

"I feel great," said Swearingen, speaking from the sun-filled dining room of her house in Rowlett. "I honestly feel like I've gone from death to life in a few months."

The viruses she drank are called bacteriophages, or phages for short. Similar to probiotics, they permeate our guts and nasal passages and exist everywhere in nature, including in the soil and in drinking water.

They are bacteria's natural enemies. As parasites, they invade bacterial cells and use their machinery to replicate, destroying bacteria in the process.

Before penicillin was developed in the 1940s, doctors used phages to treat infections like strep throat and appendicitis. News reports from the '20s and '30s in magazines like Newsweek hailed phages as "nature's G-men," "infinitesimal friends of mankind" and "helpful little bodies."

Antibiotics, when they arrived, proved more potent, and phage therapy died out in the West. Doctors in Poland and in Georgia continued to use bacteriophages as alternatives to antibiotics.

Now, as bacteria have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics, interest in phage therapy has grown.

Recently, the University of California San Diego announced the opening of the first phage therapy center in North America. The Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics will conduct clinical trials of phage therapy and help provide phages on an emergency basis to patients for whom other treatment options have run out.

While case studies and anecdotal evidence suggest that phages can be safe and effective, the treatment has not passed rigorous clinical trials in the United States. For that reason, the therapy has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Experts at UC San Diego say it's time to determine whether phages can be a useful weapon in the war against superbugs.

"Phage therapy has long deserved this chance to be evaluated," said Steffanie Strathdee, associate dean of global health sciences at UCSD and co-director of the new phage therapy center. "We want to answer once and for all if it's something that deserves to get scaled up."

In 2017, Strathdee and a team of UCSD colleagues used phages to save the life of her husband, Tom Patterson, also a UCSD professor. He lay comatose and dying after contracting a drug resistant infection during a vacation in the Middle East.

Strathdee and her colleagues partnered with experts at the U.S. Navy, which has its own bacteriophage bank; Texas A&M University; San Diego State University and biotech startups to develop experimental cocktails of bacteriophages to treat Patterson. The approach worked; Patterson awoke within days and fully recovered. He was the first U.S. patient with a bacterial blood infection to be successfully treated intravenously with phages.

The case attracted wide media coverage, and Strathdee's inbox filled with requests from patients and families waging their own bacterial battles. "I've been having a second job as a phage wrangler," she said.

In the two years since Strathdee's husband recovered, physicians at UC San Diego Health have used phages to treat five other patients under an emergency protocol from the Food and Drug Administration.

Their clinical trials will evaluate phages for use against lung infections in patients with cystic fibrosis, to treat infections in those with artificial joints and organ transplants, and for complex urinary tract infections like Swearingen's.

Swearingen, too, learned about phages after watching a TEDx video featuring Strathdee and contacting her for advice.

She learned the path to acquiring phages for her condition in the U.S. was long and uncertain. So she and her husband made the decision to fly to Tbilisi's Phage Therapy Center.

Georgia's experience with phage therapy dates to the 1930s. The French-Canadian researcher who developed phage therapy befriended a Georgian bacteriologist when both worked at Paris' Pasteur Institute. Together, they co-founded Tbilisi's George Eliava Institute of Bacteriophages, Microbiology and Virology, which mixes most of the phages in use across Georgia today.

Swearingen enjoyed her experience in Tbilisi and praised the doctors and microbiologists who cared for her.

"Tbilisi is wonderful," she said. "If you can go, go."

But she recognizes that many patients are too ill to travel or can't afford the cost. She estimates that she spent about $7,000 on treatment and travel combined.

"We need this in the United States," she said. "These little things are just incredibly wonderful."

301 Inc., the venture business of General Mills, has invested in GoodBelly Probiotics, a brand of foods aimed at improving gut health.

GoodBelly, owned by Boulder, Colo.-based NextFoods Inc., is among the largest of the 10 investments in 301 Inc.’s three-year history — and the arrangement between the firms is somewhat different.

As the lead investor in this funding round, 301 gave a “significant majority” of the $12 million that will help the company grow its national sales and innovation efforts, said John Haugen, vice president and general manager of 301 Inc.

GoodBelly is more established than many of the early-stage companies in which 301 has invested. GoodBelly and General Mills recently worked together to create a probiotic snack bar, the first nonbeverage GoodBelly product. It hit store shelves earlier this year.

General Mills licenses the GoodBelly name, bringing its snacking prowess to the bar’s development, while the leaders at GoodBelly ensured the bar met its standards for delivering probiotics to consumers.

Haugen said 301 is committed to probiotics, which are “good bacteria” that can aid digestion and gastrointestinal function.

“We love the brand,” Haugen said. “Behind the nifty brand is a team very much dedicated to the science.”

The makers of GoodBelly weren’t looking for investors when they first partnered with General Mills, but the explosion in popularity of probiotic-rich food products is making the market increasingly competitive.

“Standing still is probably the most dangerous place to be [as an emerging brand],” Haugen said. “As we spoke to them and saw continued evolution of the marketplace, we decided it was imperative we move quickly.”

GoodBelly is taking on the outside investment to help accelerate product innovation and distribution — something megafood company General Mills can help with — in order to maintain a competitive edge.

“With this partnership, we look forward to driving new product innovation as well as expanding our team to reach new consumers,” said

NextFoods CEO Alan Murray, in a release.

Haugen said he believes this partnership, a by-product of its collaboration of the probiotic bar, is set up for long-term success.

“We have a lot to prove in the short- and midterm, but we definitely believe there could be a long-term opportunity here,” he said.

301’s goal is to find acquisition targets for General Mills, but so far it has made only investments, targeting firms that include Kite Hill, a maker of dairy alternative products; Farmhouse Culture, a probiotics specialist; and Urban Remedy, a maker of organic ready-to-eat meals.

Kristen Leigh Painter • 612-673-4767

Today is the first official day of summer. By now, it’s likely that you’ve updated your fashion look with a jaunty, floral piece or two. You’ve probably acquired a pair of slip-on mules and a wide-leg pant. You may even have a jumpsuit on order. Yet, it is as affirming to update your beauty wardrobe as it is your clothes closet, especially if you are over 40. I say this because, as a woman in her mid-forties, I am finding that how I adapt to the seasons is even more confidence forming than it was in my twenties and thirties. It is those few discerning pieces, a handful of stealth updates, that keep me just current enough. After all, the art of looking youthful is all about feeling youthful and this is a fine balance of not losing oneself to the trends while being open to spontaneity and newness.

As a magpie who’s drawn to shiny new things, this has taken some practice, but the formula that works for me is this. I replace a few strategic items across skincare, fragrance and cosmetics that offer practical solutions to the weather, my travel plans and the current state of my skin/hair/mood. Plus, one or two decorative additions ‘just because’. You don’t want to be the person who buys up a whole trend make-up collection and wears each piece at the same time. An up-to- the-minute scent on your wrists, a lighter texture of foundation or a shampoo shake-up is just enough to refresh your look.

The 6 items every woman needs this summer

A freckle-enhancing foundation

We have the Duchess of Sussex’s gorgeously dappled complexion to thank for the death of contouring and a newfound respect for the natural vibrancy of a real woman’s skin. A healthy splattering of freckles is not only very summer 2018, it is also youth promoting. So it is worthwhile investing in a sheer foundation with just enough coverage to ensure your face looks its best. If your skin is fairly even in tone, a new generation skin tint like L’Oreal Paris Bonjoir Nudista Awakening Skin Tint £9.99[https://www.boots.com/loreal-paris-bonjour-nudista-skin-tint-10246572?CAWELAID=120048240000018171CAGPSPN=plaCAAGID=64468692428CATCI=pla-421123047728cm_mmc=bmm-_-Google+Boots+PLAs-_-BAU-_-C=%28GB%3AWhoop%21%29+P11a+Nominations+-+Desktop_%28GB%3AWhoop%21%29+L%27Orealgclid=EAIaIQobChMIqYXxzMfi2wIVgp3VCh14CQL0EAQYASABEgIQ6vD_BwEgclsrc=aw.ds] is all you need. If you want a little more coverage, as I do, with a second-skin finish, try Dior’s new backstage Face and Body Foundation £29[https://www.dior.com/beauty/en_gb/fragrance-beauty/makeup/dior-backstage/complexion/pr-complexionpros-y0028001_c002800321-face-and-body-foundation.html?LGWCODE=C002800321GB;143909;6271gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-qrz18fi2wIVG90bCh1l1g_MEAQYASABEgLEUfD_BwE], that seamlessly blends into skin. Plus, it is available in 40 shades making it suitable for almost all skin tones.

Summer holiday beauty essentials[https://cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk/7e495ee5-78db-4390-92a1-fc260fd7f1a4.html] A gender fluid fragrance

Gender neutral is where it’s at with fragrance now. Make no mistake, these are not to be confused with the unisex scents of the 90s, which sat indistinguishably in a citrus-y cologne comfort zone. The new gender fluid fragrances are sophisticated blends that are to be chosen on taste and personality alone. Chanel Les Eaux, a new collection of three gender neutral fragrances is a good place to experiment. Perfect for summer, each fragrance in the collection is inspired by a different destination, Deauville (green & outdoorsy) Biarritz (fresh & floral) and Venice (warm and sensual). My money’s on Biarritz, a sophisticated take on fresh sea air with the merest hint of sweetness. Available from July 13.

A pollution mist

Pollution is the new silent ager, clogging pores and damaging our skin’s protective barrier as much, if not more, than UV. A new ‘worry zone’ in the market creates a lot of hype over performance, so don’t over buy on pollution-proofing. All you need is a potent pollution sheild. I’m hooked on Allies of Skin Molecular Savoir Mist[https://www.effortlessskin.com/p-5581-molecular-saviour-mist-50ml.aspx?slndg=56faa4c22706gclid=EAIaIQobChMIgq2H9cfi2wIVGofVCh13AAJFEAQYASABEgJ8b_D_BwE], an alcohol-free non-evaporating spray rich in antioxidants and probiotics. Ideal for summer, it protects from pollution while quenching thirsty skin and reducing the effects of jet lag and lack of sleep. Bonus.

A pastel nail shade

Natural is on-point this summer and nails are no exception. While nail art made a minor comeback at the spring summer shows, it was mainly seen in the form of a delicate motif stencilled onto naked unpainted nails. This is cute for holiday. But, to my mind the chic way to update nails this summer is to opt for one of the new pastel nail shades, which lends a playfulness to your look while remaining office and age appropriate. Pink is a solid choice as it is universally flattering, but I am drawn to Essie’s Nail Lacquer in Empower-mint[https://www.superdrug.com/Make-Up/Nails/Nail-Polish/Gloss-Nail-Polish/essie-Summer-2018-Empower-Mint-554-Green-Nail-Polish/p/760384?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqZONkMji2wIVQUAbCh29WQHmEAQYAiABEgJ2tvD_BwEgclsrc=aw.dsdclid=CMiIsZHI4tsCFcph0wodapkBrQ], a tan-enhancing green that acts as a background accessory to this season’s flowery frocks.

25 small beauty changes that make the biggest impact[https://cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk/29376249-78d5-4087-bab8-6316e0d2bfa7.html] A smart shampoo

Each time I visit the US I bring back a stash of the shampoo, Dreamcare by Pantene. While there’s plenty of great shampoos in the UK, as budget haircare goes there is something about this one that gives hair a premium finish without feeling greasy or stripped. Now, it’s available in the UK under a different name, Pantene Pro-V Repair & Protect[https://www.superdrug.com/Pantene/Pantene-Pro-V-Repair--Protect-Shampoo-400ml/p/677661?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6vHPnMji2wIVbrvtCh0NNwXMEAQYAiABEgIXGPD_BwEgclsrc=aw.dsdclid=COzNvJ_I4tsCFYVi0wodHJQBrw] . A smart formulation with wash-in nutrients that penetrate inside the hair shaft to strengthen and reverse damage, the result is bouncy, easy breezy hair that radiates youth and radiance. Plus, it’s big enough to last the duration of a two week break holiday abroad. The conditioner is epic also.

A cool make-up collab

Every wardrobe update needs one trend piece for fun. Erdem for NARS Strange Flowers Limited Edition make-up collection is the perfect place to pick a hero item to update your make-up bag. The collaboration with fashion designer Erdem Moralioglu, who’s known for his bold yet timeless colour palette and romantic vibe, is full of vivid lipsticks, soft blushes, and garden inspired eye shadows. There are two stand-outs I suggest you try: Carnal Carnation Lipstick, £22,[http://www.asos.com/nars/nars-limited-edition-erdem-colour-collection-lipstick-carnal-carnation/prd/9806923?affid=14173channelref=product+searchmk=abccurrencyid=1ppcadref=761030383%7C39786898043%7Cpla-280182964965_cclid=v3_65f6c6b4-5596-5b17-82ff-f34ee07d559cgclid=EAIaIQobChMIk4jXuMji2wIVz5TtCh2aQQk0EAQYAiABEgJOEPD_BwE] a sheer raspberry red. And, Poison Rose Lip Powder Palette, £35,[http://www.asos.com/nars/nars-limited-edition-erdem-colour-collection-lip-palette-lip-powder-palette-poison-rose/prd/9806983?affid=14173channelref=product+searchmk=abccurrencyid=1ppcadref=761030383%7C39786898043%7Cpla-442313271070_cclid=v3_271021f6-ad79-5631-a781-cb5e6bf1fea3gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhc2Vw8ji2wIVSrHtCh3TOQTuEAYYASABEgKfOfD_BwE] complete with a travel lip brush, lip primer and four shades from petal pink to rose red and grown-up purple. Wear with or without clear balm.

For more lifestyle and beauty advice, go to www.annabeljonesbeauty.com[http://www.annabeljonesbeauty.com] Instagram: @annabeljonesbeauty[http://instagram.com/annabeljonesbeauty]

MEGYN KELLY (09:52:27): So if you watch your calories, exercise frequently and still struggle with your weight, listen up. The explanation could be in your gut right now. The truth is you might not have to cut calories at all to lose weight. What? Gastroenterologist and author of the Microbiome Solution Doctor Robynne Chutkan is here to explain. Doc, great to have you back.

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:52:47): Thank you so much for having me.

MEGYN KELLY (09:52:48): So let me tell you, we had her on about six weeks ago. And I thought it made sense and I was intrigued. I-- I have been reading your book. I download it on my iPhone, as well. And I have been making these recipes. And I have to tell you, I feel better and I feel a difference.

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:53:01): And you look amazing, by the way.

MEGYN KELLY (09:53:02): Oh, thank you. But-- so what-- can you explain what the microbiome is?

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:53:05): Absolutely. The microbiome refers to all the bacterial, viral, fungal organisms, all the little microscopic critters that live in and on our bodies, mostly in our gut. And they`re incredibly involved in something called the energy harvest, which means how many calories you actually extract from the food you eat.

MEGYN KELLY (09:53:22): If you have the right balance, you`re going to burn more calories eating--

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:53:24): Absolutely.

MEGYN KELLY (09:53:25): --certain foods than-- than the other people are.

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:53:27): Yes.

MEGYN KELLY (09:53:27): So I know you said antibiotics are bad. I mean, like, they-- sometimes you have to have them.

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:53:32): Yes.

MEGYN KELLY (09:53:32): But we abuse them and that they can mess up your-- your gut balance. So what about probiotics and prebiotics? Should everybody be taking those?

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:53:39): So I want to be very clear. A probiotic, which is a-- essentially bacterial supplement of live bacteria, cannot, under any circumstances, completely mitigate the damage done by an antibiotic. So rule number one is try and avoid antibiotics whenever you can. But as you`ve said, sometimes you have to. If that`s the case, using food, prebiotic foods in particular-- and just for a little bit of a definition, a prebiotic food is a food that both has fiber to feed your healthy bacteria and is fermented in some way or-- or formed, created in some way to actually produce healthy bacteria.

MEGYN KELLY (09:54:12): Like these.

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:54:13): Like this stuff.

MEGYN KELLY (09:54:14): Okay. So the-- you like-- you like olives. Is that kimchi?

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:54:16): Olives. Kim-- this is kimchi. Three different kinds. And sauerkraut. So the kimchi and sauerkraut are all made from cabbage. Cabbage is one of those foods high in indigestible plant fiber to feed your gut bacteria, and then the fermentation process also produced a ton of lactobacillus which is, again, a healthy strain for the gut.

MEGYN KELLY (09:54:32): Okay. So-- so fermented food is good.

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:54:34): Fantastic.

MEGYN KELLY (09:54:34): I`ve been having this for breakfast. And it`s delicious. What`s in it? Break-- this is a blueberry smoothie.

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:54:38): This is a blue-- this is a blueberry smoothie. And smoothies are a great way to combine fresh fruits and vegetables in the morning. Nobody really wants to eat a salad in the morning, but drinking your vegetables. So this smoothie has blueberries in it and-- and this particular one has banana. Sometimes blue--

MEGYN KELLY (09:54:53): Blueberry, banana, avocado, hemp seeds.

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:54:54): Mango. Avocado, spinach, hemp seeds.

MEGYN KELLY (09:54:56): And spinach.

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:54:57): High fiber. And the point is live food, real live food to nourish your gut bacteria.

MEGYN KELLY (09:55:02): It`s delicious. But you do have to brush your teeth right after, especially if you`re going on TV. What`s this?

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:55:07): These are collard wraps. So these are just high-fiber, colorful vegetables inside, peppers, zucchini. I think there are some beets. And they`re wrapped in collard greens. So, instead of being wrapped in a tortilla, which from a microbial point of view, is not doing very much.

MEGYN KELLY (09:55:20): You don`t like bread. You don`t like dairy.

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:55:21): Well, it`s not what I like. It`s what microbacteria like.

MEGYN KELLY (09:55:24): Okay.

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:55:24): So my gut bacteria want to eat healthy fiber or processed.

MEGYN KELLY (09:55:26): And she doesn`t like sugar or processed. And this, I made for the entire family. We spread out the different veggie options, the different protein options on the table. The kids made their own. It was fun and they ate the whole thing. What is this?

ROBYNNE CHUTKAN (09:55:39): That`s amazing. This is a live dirty bowl. This is brown rice as a base. In this day of low-carb diets, lots of people are afraid of carbohydrates, but complex carbohydrates like brown rice that are broken down slowly, fantastic for the microbe. Full of healthy fiber to the feed the microbiome. This is onion and kale, cauliflower, chickpeas, some carrots, tomatoes. So, again, all that stringy plant fiber to feed the microbes.

MEGYN KELLY (09:56:03): Frying up those cauliflower, the way she-- she recommends in the book, makes all the difference. I`m telling you, it`s really good. Personally recommend it. Doctor Chutkan, great to see you. Thank you.

(09:56:12): All these recipes are going to be at today.com/megyntoday. And it`s-- the Microbiome Solution is the book.

(09:56:18): We`ll be right back.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

MEGYN KELLY (09:58:35): And it`s time for Club MK. Alex?

ALEX FICQUETTE (09:58:37): Here we go. The entire audience is going home with a voucher for a nine rose arrangement from Saaya Rose, valued at a hundred and thirty dollars.

MEGYN KELLY (09:58:46): Nice.

(09:58:46): We`ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

HODA KOTB (10:00:09): This morning on Wines-day Wednesday, Jennifer Lopez takes a swing at something new. Find out if she`s a hit.

(10:00:14): Plus, he`s the modern man. We`re going to catch up with the hilarious Eric Stonestreet.

(10:00:19): And get your grill on. Hot new tips to be the star of your backyard barbecue.

KATHIE LEE GIFFORD (10:00:25): Welcome to the happiest day of life.

RICKY GERVAIS (10:00:26): This is the best show in the world.

HODA KOTB (10:00:27): Oh, that`s good.

ANNOUNCER (10:00:28): From NBC News--

HODA KOTB (10:00:30): What?

KATHIE LEE GIFFORD (10:00:30): What?

ANNOUNCER (10:00:31): --this is TODAY with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb, live from Studio 1A in Rockefeller Plaza.

KATHIE LEE GIFFORD (10:00:43): How do we do it day after day?

HODA KOTB (10:00:43): How do we do it day after day?

(10:00:47): It is Wines-day Wednesday, June 20, 2018. Kath is in Scotland. She`s making a movie. So we`ve got our own star here. Look who is here--

JASON KENNEDY (10:00:56): Stop it.

HODA KOTB (10:00:56): --this is the host of E! News, our pal, Jason Kennedy.

JASON KENNEDY (10:01:00): Hi everybody. What?

HODA KOTB (10:01:02): Kath and I like to claim that we made you. I mean, you know that--

JASON KENNEDY (10:01:08): You claim that? I mean, it was I think 2012, you would have me on, we would do those like Monday buzz seg--

HODA KOTB (10:01:15): Do you remember that? How did that even start?

JASON KENNEDY (10:01:16): Do I remember it?

HODA KOTB (10:01:16): How did that even start? How did we do that?

JASON KENNEDY (10:01:19): Well, how much time do we have?

HODA KOTB (10:01:20): Oh, we have as much time as you need.

JASON KENNEDY (10:01:23): Listen, I`m not trying to freak out right now, but this is extra exciting because it`s not like a nerves thing, it`s more like a gratitude thing. Because it`s like a full circle moment. Because when I was a kid, I would stand outside every single year, sometimes twice a year, with my parents-- there`s a shot. That`s my aunt. Shout-out to Aunt Sandy, who watches--

HODA KOTB (10:01:43): Wait, look at you. That`s you with that--

JASON KENNEDY (10:01:46): That`s an oversized jacket. It was very big in the nineties.

HODA KOTB (10:01:48): So you`re standing in front of Rockefeller Center.

JASON KENNEDY (10:01:50): Yeah.

HODA KOTB (10:01:51): So you used to come here. And was this like a--

JASON KENNEDY (10:01:54): This was a thing. I did the tour and then I think you could like do the weather with Al.

HODA KOTB (10:01:57): Yes.

JASON KENNEDY (10:01:58): But it was just a video, it`s was not like the real Al.

HODA KOTB (10:01:59): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:02:00): And I would just come here and I`d just imagine doing this. This was the dream and I wanted to do entertainment news. And then I moved out to L.A. and I`ve been with E! News for, gee, since 2005.

HODA KOTB (10:02:13): Can I tell you something. A lot of people dream about this kind of job, a lot of people would wish for it and I know just for myself. But why do you think you`re sitting here? Like, why? What did you do differently that a lot of kids--

JASON KENNEDY (10:02:25): I think God`s grace, honestly. And just him giving me a great career and great people to be around. But my parents for sure. Because they were the ones where most kids were out playing basketball and stuff and I had a lot of friends in school. I wasn`t like stay-at-home but built I studio in my house, and most kids were out-- I built a news studio in my house.

HODA KOTB (10:02:50): Wow. What do you mean?

JASON KENNEDY (10:02:51): I was twelve. Twelve years old.

HODA KOTB (10:02:52): So you just made it?

JASON KENNEDY (10:02:53): I had fourteen TVs. We`d four cameras. We had a green screen for the weather because I had to the Doppler Radar, you know.

HODA KOTB (10:03:00): This is like all phony I`m guessing, right?

JASON KENNEDY (10:03:01): Yeah. It didn`t go anywhere. We didn`t have YouTube or anything. But I have like thousands of VHS tapes to show for it. And sometimes I post them on Instagram, the throwback videos. And then in the middle of the broadcast my mom would come in and be like cheese ravioli is ready. I`m like I`m on the air, mom. Like not right now.

HODA KOTB (10:03:17): Did your parents think it was cool, this career idea?

JASON KENNEDY (10:03:20): They thought it was cool.

HODA KOTB (10:03:21): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:03:21): But then I would take a cab because I couldn`t drive to new scenes--

HODA KOTB (10:03:26): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:03:26): --like doing a live shot. But it`s not really live. No one is watching.

HODA KOTB (10:03:29): Just you.

JASON KENNEDY (10:03:30): And I`m just in a really kind of bad area because there was a drug bust, and my parents have no clue where I`m at. And it kind of just spiraled in the best way possible. Moved out to, you know, Los Angeles. Then with E! And then you guys, you did.

HODA KOTB (10:03:45): We saw you on--

JASON KENNEDY (10:03:45): Yeah.

HODA KOTB (10:03:46): --and we took a liking to you. We kept saying that you`re like our young little brother, our little son, something. And you came here and I still remember when you were doing the first-- your first--

JASON KENNEDY (10:03:55): How nervous was I, huh?

HODA KOTB (10:03:55): You were. You were like deer in the headlights. But you were nailing it. I mean, you made a lot of great decisions in your life, obviously, so many of them brought to you to this moment. But one of the best decisions you ever made happens to be standing over there.

JASON KENNEDY (10:04:12): There she is.

HODA KOTB (10:04:12): Your bride, Lauren. Look at this. Can you believe that you got her?

JASON KENNEDY (10:04:17): I can`t believe it. and we were talking about full-circle moments.

HODA KOTB (10:04:19): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:04:21): And for those that don`t know my wife`s story, she was involved in an accident, you guys covered it for a while now. She lost her arm and her eye in this airplane accident in Dallas about six years ago. And I remember watching Natalie do a sitdown on DATELINE with Lauren, and I was in my room and I was watching it. And I said I would love to marry a girl like her.

HODA KOTB (10:04:44): What was it?

JASON KENNEDY (10:04:46): There was just something about her, just like a piece just after what she went through, like she was still radiant and beautiful, and wasn`t about complaining. She never talks about her accident. Because it`s not, oh, whoa, it`s me type thing.

HODA KOTB (10:05:02): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:05:02): But she wants to just encourage girls who don`t have, you know, access to prosthetics and that type of thing. She wants to help them and she wants to use her story for good. I`m like it`s hard to meet a great person, especially in L.A.

HODA KOTB (10:05:11): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:05:14): And Giuliana Rancic, God bless her, she introduced me and the rest is history.

HODA KOTB (10:05:19): Wow.

JASON KENNEDY (10:05:19): We got married about three and a half years ago. And that`s a waist up shot. I haven`t been working out.

HODA KOTB (10:05:24): Look at you two. By the way speaking of G, your Giuliana--

JASON KENNEDY (10:05:29): Hello.

HODA KOTB (10:05:30): --we are having-- it`s a reunion. It`s happening again. You and Giuliana used to do E! News together.

JASON KENNEDY (10:05:36): Yeah. I was like the fill-in guy. Yeah.

HODA KOTB (10:05:38): You were the fill-in guy. Okay. So then Giuliana went on to do other stuff. And now I read or heard or you can tell me, she`s back. She`s going back to E! News after, how long is then?

JASON KENNEDY (10:05:40): So she was gone for about three years. But when I say gone she was still in the E! family.

HODA KOTB (10:05:54): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:05:55): She was doing Live from the Red Carpet.

HODA KOTB (10:05:56): Other stuff.

JASON KENNEDY (10:05:57): She was doing Fashion Police. But she wasn`t on E! News. So our friend Maria Menounos left for, you know, health reasons.

HODA KOTB (10:06:00): Yeah. Sure.

JASON KENNEDY (10:06:05): And so there was that opening there. And I was like G--

HODA KOTB (10:06:08): You got to do it.

JASON KENNEDY (10:06:08): --come on, let`s make this happen. It`s kind of like, you know, the feeling. When it`s not work, when you`re up there next to someone, it`s like with Kathie Lee--

HODA KOTB (10:06:17): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:06:17): --like you don`t even have to think about it. You`re on the same page. The chemistry, thank God, is there.

HODA KOTB (10:06:22): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:06:23): And you just have a really fun time. So she`s going to come back in September, maybe a little sooner.

HODA KOTB (10:06:27): Until the-- nice.

JASON KENNEDY (10:06:28): But she loves you. I mean, she--

HODA KOTB (10:06:30): I love her. I mean, I feel like I see her just on almost every shoot wherever I am, and she`s not only kind to all of us, but I watched her in London with like people she was meeting on the street. She took time with every single person. And I just dug her. By the way, one other thing about you two, back to you and Lauren for a second. You`re always posting videos of babies. You`re always saying I want one. I think that-- didn`t you post that?

JASON KENNEDY (10:06:58): Yeah. I did recently.

HODA KOTB (10:06:59): Yeah. Whose kid was that?

JASON KENNEDY (10:07:01): So that was a kid we just found.

HODA KOTB (10:07:02): Some--

JASON KENNEDY (10:07:03): That`s where I`m at right now. I find random babies and I`m like, let`s do skin-to-skin. Is that a thing? No, but, you know, Lauren has a twin--

HODA KOTB (10:07:09): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:07:11): --and when her sister had a baby, it was-- it was like game changer. We`re trying.

HODA KOTB (10:07:17): Oh, this is--

JASON KENNEDY (10:07:19): You know, in high school, it was like, oh, be care-- you know, like. It`s kind of hard to have a baby. We`ve learned so. We`re trying.

HODA KOTB (10:07:27): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:07:27): That`s where we`re at right now. No rush when it happens, it happens.

HODA KOTB (10:07:31): I do you picture your family, like how big?

JASON KENNEDY (10:07:34): I would like two kids.

HODA KOTB (10:07:35): Two?

JASON KENNEDY (10:07:36): Three`s okay.

HODA KOTB (10:07:37): What does Lauren think?

JASON KENNEDY (10:07:39): She`s okay-- babe, two-ish?

LAUREN SCRUGGS KENNEDY (10:07:42): : Two.

HODA KOTB (10:07:43): She says two.

JASON KENNEDY (10:07:43): Yeah. Yeah.

HODA KOTB (10:07:44): All right.

JASON KENNEDY (10:07:44): So we`re on the same page. That`s a start. But we just like-- I don`t know there`s something about being around kids where I feel like I`m ready, we`re ready. If you can really be ready. But--

HODA KOTB (10:07:54): Yeah. Hey, Lauren, I know why Jason fell for you, it`s obvy. But what was it about him?

LAUREN SCRUGGS KENNEDY (10:08:00): : Oh, my gosh. I just remember him being so authentic and had an amazing group of friends. You could tell he was just-- I don`t know, he loved life so much and he was funny and fun and thoughtful. And you could see that right at the beginning.

HODA KOTB (10:08:17): And you just connected.

LAUREN SCRUGGS KENNEDY (10:08:17): : So I just loved that. Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:08:18): She laughs at all my jokes which is--

HODA KOTB (10:08:21): You two. Y`all are so cute. And I know Kath went to the wedding and she talked about it and she was just saying like if two people were meant to be together, it was you two.

JASON KENNEDY (10:08:29): Kathie Lee has been literally my second mom.

HODA KOTB (10:08:32): Right.

JASON KENNEDY (10:08:32): Just will call in the middle of the day with all the busyness that you guys have here and just encourages me, hey, I`m thinking of you, I`m praying for you today. And I`m like can it get any better?

HODA KOTB (10:08:43): No.

JASON KENNEDY (10:08:44): We had so much fun when you guys came to California recently-- show there.

HODA KOTB (10:08:46): Yeah. Yeah. We did.

JASON KENNEDY (10:08:48): And you were talking about Giuliana stopping for everybody.

HODA KOTB (10:08:51): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:08:51): And signing autographs.

HODA KOTB (10:08:51): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:08:52): Whenever I do interviews with you, it`s cool to see the transition of how where you`re at now and how you`ve become so much more famous, but the exact same person. I remember you were late for a flight. We were Jimmy Buffett`s Margaritaville Universal City--

HODA KOTB (10:09:06): Yeah, yeah, I remember.

JASON KENNEDY (10:09:06): Because that`s where hang out when we do interviews.

HODA KOTB (10:09:08): Yes. Yes.

JASON KENNEDY (10:09:08): And you-- I mean, you were going to miss this flight.

HODA KOTB (10:09:11): Yeah. We were close.

JASON KENNEDY (10:09:11): But you were getting stopped. Hoda was getting stopped left and right, and you still stopped for every person.

HODA KOTB (10:09:16): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:09:16): You took photos, you signed autographs, you were just chatting with them and just so genuine and gracious. And I just-- this is great.

HODA KOTB (10:09:25): Jason. All right. This is a love fest. All right.

JASON KENNEDY (10:09:27): Love fest, we get it.

HODA KOTB (10:09:28): We asked her like-- when is E! News? I was supposed to say when it was? What is it?

JASON KENNEDY (10:09:31): So it`s on every night at seven, six Central and eleven o`clock. And again Giuliana is coming back--

HODA KOTB (10:09:37): Okay.

JASON KENNEDY (10:09:37): --in September. We`re always doing fun interviews. And, you know, we don`t take ourselves too seriously. But come check it out.

HODA KOTB (10:09:43): All right. So you recently apparently posted something on Instagram that resonated with your followers.

JASON KENNEDY (10:09:47): Yeah. This is a thing.

HODA KOTB (10:09:49): You have-- you were getting on a plane, you and your bride, and then this is what happened. Take a look.

(10:09:53): (Excerpt from internet video)

HODA KOTB (10:(10:12): Oh, my God.

JASON KENNEDY (10:(10:13): We hit dirt. Literal dirt.

HODA KOTB (10:(10:14): Okay. That is nasty.

JASON KENNEDY (10:(10:14): Do you wipe? Do you do the wipe down?

HODA KOTB (10:(10:16): Never, ever.

JASON KENNEDY (10:(10:17): Are you going to start or is that too OCD?

HODA KOTB (10:(10:19): I think it`s a little OCD, but when I saw that black grime on the back of that thing.

JASON KENNEDY (10:(10:24): See I never really did it before, and I made fun of Lauren for doing it because she was the wipes woman. And I know people have been wiping down seats for years. But now my goal is to clean every airplane, one flight at a time. We got people sending in Instagram stories. And she`s always turning me onto new things. So she`s got these wipes, and, you know, the dirtiest part of the plane--

HODA KOTB (10:(10:45): Where? Where?

JASON KENNEDY (10:(10:47): It`s the AC thing. You know, the little. Yeah. Don`t touch a thing. It`s circulating bad air. I don`t want to freak you out.

HODA KOTB (10:(10:51): And they probably never clean it. It never gets cleaned.

JASON KENNEDY (10:(10:54): It`s literal dirt. What is going on here?

HODA KOTB (10:(10:59): I am so not a germaphobe but I could see where that could turn me into that.

JASON KENNEDY (10:11:03): And then she`s always getting new things.

HODA KOTB (10:11:05): Like what?

JASON KENNEDY (10:11:06): I don`t even know what this is.

HODA KOTB (10:11:06): What is it?

JASON KENNEDY (10:11:07): This was just this morning alone.

HODA KOTB (10:11:08): Okay. What is it?

JASON KENNEDY (10:11:09): This is not some endorsement. It`s a travel oil blend. I don`t know what it is. She goes just put it on for jet lag. I live in L.A. like it`s only--

HODA KOTB (10:11:17): Yeah. So where do you put it, under your chin?

JASON KENNEDY (10:11:19): It just give it a nice-- what does this do, babe? Who knows?

HODA KOTB (10:11:22): I like it.

JASON KENNEDY (10:11:24): Are you feeling it?

HODA KOTB (10:11:24): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:11:25): Yeah. I feel revived, wow.

HODA KOTB (10:11:26): I like it. All right. So we`ve got-- speaking of Instagram video, I think it was A-Rod who posted this one.

JASON KENNEDY (10:11:32): Oh yeah.

HODA KOTB (10:11:34): Jennifer Lopez apparently can do everything. She had some downtown with her boyfriend, A-Rod, and they decided to play a little baseball. So check this out.

A-ROD (internet video) (10:11:41): Nice swing. Oh, my goodness. Yes, yes. Nice job. Nice technique.

HODA KOTB (10:12:04): How cool. She is such a jock, isn`t she?

JASON KENNEDY (10:12:06): What can`t she do?

HODA KOTB (10:12:07): She can do everything.

JASON KENNEDY (10:12:09): Did she hit him? It almost sounded like a line drive to the stomach.

HODA KOTB (10:12:11): I think it was. Now did you ever take up any kind of a hobby or a sport or something? Because Lauren liked it or somebody you were dating liked or did you ever do that?

JASON KENNEDY (10:12:24): Not really a sport. She tried to get me into just-- it sounds very simple but just watching Friends, and you laugh, but she watches four to five episodes a day. Actually when we got married, we have to go to counseling because when Friends is on, she doesn`t pay attention to me. Hey, how`s your day? She`s like, oh, did you see what Phoebe did? And it`s-- I couldn`t even get her attention.

HODA KOTB (10:12:47): Nothing.

JASON KENNEDY (10:12:47): And then she bought me the whole like DVD set. Still haven`t watched it. I watched many episodes. I think it`s funny. I just, apparently I don`t understand the characters, Hoda.

HODA KOTB (10:13:01): All right. Lauren. Another reason to love Lauren. Okay. I`ve got a long list. All right. So this is funny. Cher was on James Corden recently.

JASON KENNEDY (10:13:08): Oh, this is great.

HODA KOTB (10:13:08): Wasn`t she?

JASON KENNEDY (10:13:09): Yeah.

HODA KOTB (10:13:09): So what happened?

JASON KENNEDY (10:13:10): So he does this game where, you know, he wants you to spill the details.

HODA KOTB (10:13:14): Okay.

JASON KENNEDY (10:13:14): And if you don`t want to say anything, you have to eat something really gross. So, you know, I think it was about five years ago, she went on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen--

HODA KOTB (10:13:24): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:13:25): --and she talked about her lovers saying Tom Cruise was in the top five.

HODA KOTB (10:13:29): Okay.

JASON KENNEDY (10:13:29): So James wanted to know a little more.

HODA KOTB (10:13:31): Okay.

JAMES CORDEN (CBS/The Late Late Show with James Corden) (10:13:34): : Let`s go with a little dried caterpillar. That never-- come on. A little dried caterpillar. That sounds like a good bargain. Oh, my God. Is this- I don`t know if this is true.

CHER (CBS/The Late Late Show with James Corden) (10:13:54): : I hope not.

JAMES CORDEN (10:13:56): : I didn`t know-- okay, Cher. You said Tom Cruise is one of your top five favorite lovers. Who are the other four? Oh, wow. It must be amazing if you won`t even--

CHER (10:14:39): : I don`t remember saying that.

JAMES CORDEN (10:14:43): : But do you remember doing it?

CHER (10:14:46): : Yep.

HODA KOTB (10:14:47): She said yep.

JASON KENNEDY (10:14:48): Yeah. She said it five years ago on Watch What Happens Live and look we`re at now.

HODA KOTB (10:14:53): By the way I`m always scared to go on Watch What Happens Live. Have you gone on that show?

JASON KENNEDY (10:14:56): I`ve interviewed Andy.

HODA KOTB (10:14:57): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:14:57): I haven`t been on the show because I`m scared too. But he did the same thing at the Billboard Music Awards recently. He turns the tables on you. I`m like we`re doing the interview with you bud.

HODA KOTB (10:15:07): All of a sudden you`re confessing stuff. I`ve gone on with Kathie Lee a bunch, and every time afterwards I`m always terrified. I`m like, oh, my God.

JASON KENNEDY (10:15:13): It`s like your journal just wide open.

HODA KOTB (10:15:14): Yeah. Yeah. It is. All right, we have a lot coming up after the break. Are you sick of robocall? We`ve got some tips on how to cut down on those unwanted ringing business.

JASON KENNEDY (10:15:22): Oh, the worse. Plus, he is the family member you want in any party. Modern Family`s Eric Stonestreet is here. Right after this.

HODA KOTB (10:15:30): Dug Jason. Go Joson.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

HODA KOTB (10:19:44): Do you know this song? That is Meghan Trainor, baby.

JASON KENNEDY (10:19:50): I love, Meghan.

HODA KOTB (10:19:51): Can you believe that she made us a little jingle, little song?

JASON KENNEDY (10:19:54): That`s when you know you`ve made it.

HODA KOTB (10:19:56): Jason Kennedy from E! is filling in for Kath. It is Wednesday. And on Wednesday, we do a Wednesday what?

JASON KENNEDY (10:20:02): What?

HODA KOTB (10:20:03): This morning, we got a couple of bowls of cereal. And I guess we`re just supposed to guess what kind they are.

JASON KENNEDY (10:20:08): Okay. We`re not doing milk.

HODA KOTB (10:20:09): You can.

JASON KENNEDY (10:20:14): Mmm. Okay.

HODA KOTB (10:20:17): You try this one.

JASON KENNEDY (10:20:18): Switching. I`m not a germaphobe.

HODA KOTB (10:20:20): It tastes like nothing.

JASON KENNEDY (10:20:26): I`m getting hints of blueberry.

HODA KOTB (10:20:27): You are?

JASON KENNEDY (10:20:28): Is this wine?

HODA KOTB (10:20:32): I taste nothing but sugar and, like, chocolate.

JASON KENNEDY (10:20:37): But this is your speed. Would you do a cereal like this?

HODA KOTB (10:20:39): Oh, my God. I used to eat Quisp when I was a kid. Quisp was that-- you put like tons of milk on it. It was like a salad bowl- -

JASON KENNEDY (10:20:47): Right.

HODA KOTB (10:20:48): --you just ate and ate. I don`t know what this is. I have no-- do you-- can you guess what do you have?

JASON KENNEDY (10:20:52): I`m having clusters of blueberries. That`s all like with sugar.

HODA KOTB (10:20:56): Chocolate. I think there`s chocolate in here.

JASON KENNEDY (10:20:58): With some sugar.

HODA KOTB (10:21:00): Uh-Ha. It`s good.

JASON KENNEDY (10:21:00): Just get a little-- what is it?

HODA KOTB (10:21:01): Okay. So the answer is Dippin` Dots.

JASON KENNEDY (10:21:04): What, the ice cream?

HODA KOTB (10:21:05): The ice cream of--

JASON KENNEDY (10:21:07): They`re doing cereal.

HODA KOTB (10:21:07): What?

JASON KENNEDY (10:21:08): That`s really cool. I love Dippin` Dots.

HODA KOTB (10:21:11): Oh, my God. Thank you, Jerry.

JASON KENNEDY (10:21:14): And this is-- this is guilt free.

HODA KOTB (10:21:15): This is a cereal.

JASON KENNEDY (10:21:16): Oh, my gosh.

HODA KOTB (10:21:18): See that`s the right size for a cereal box. What did you eat when you were a kid for breakfast?

JASON KENNEDY (10:21:23): I did the Cheerios and honey bunches of oats mixed together because I couldn`t make my mind up. You`re eating full on Oreos for breakfast. That`s so good.

HODA KOTB (10:21:31): Love that. All right. Two flavors, banana split and cookies and cream available at Walmart, Walmart.com. That`s delicious. I`m kind of into it.

JASON KENNEDY (10:21:40): You have the best gig ever by the way.

HODA KOTB (10:21:42): Come on. We got-- we-- all right. So we have a question. Have you ever gotten a robocall?

JASON KENNEDY (10:21:50): All the time.

HODA KOTB (10:21:52): Okay. When it comes up on your phone, what does it look like?

JASON KENNEDY (10:21:56): Sometimes it looks like alien numbers--

HODA KOTB (10:21:57): Right.

JASON KENNEDY (10:21:58): --like fifteen thousand numbers at once, so I would never answer that.

HODA KOTB (10:22:00): Right.

JASON KENNEDY (10:22:01): And then it`s just a number that I don`t know. But then sometimes, you know, Kathie Lee uses-- like it`s blocked.

HODA KOTB (10:22:04): Blocked.

JASON KENNEDY (10:22:09): So whenever she would call, I don`t know if it`s Kathie Lee. So sometimes I`ll just guess. And I go maybe it`s Kathie Lee checking in.

HODA KOTB (10:22:15): Let me answer.

JASON KENNEDY (10:22:16): Hey, so your computer needs to be fixed right now, it`s going to blow up in ten seconds, it`s always some scam. I don`t understand how I fall for this every time.

HODA KOTB (10:22:24): Well and mine comes in sometimes comes is like 917 numbers, which is the area code we are.

JASON KENNEDY (10:22:28): Yeah. Yeah.

HODA KOTB (10:22:31): So I think could it be like Haley`s daycare, is it like a somebody who needs me? So sometimes I hesitate. But the scammers have found a way to make the calls look like they`re coming from your area. So I think we have some tips.

JASON KENNEDY (10:22:41): Okay. Let`s do this.

HODA KOTB (10:22:42): All right. First thing, just don`t pick up if you don`t recognize the number. That`s the first thing.

JASON KENNEDY (10:22:47): Lot easier said than done. If you do, you shouldn`t speak. Don`t push any options to opt out. So essentially you answer and what breathe awkwardly?

HODA KOTB (10:22:58): I do that. By the way that`s what I do. I answer and wait. If there`s a pause, you know, right? Okay. And don`t engage with a real person. So if someone is on the phone and talking and trying to explain like I really do need to get into your computer--

JASON KENNEDY (10:23:15): But I get mad for some reason. I want to engage why are you doing this?

HODA KOTB (10:23:17): Why would you do this?

JASON KENNEDY (10:23:18): I mean, do you really want to waste my time? Like I kind of engage and then it`s just why am I doing that?

HODA KOTB (10:23:24): Well, they say the ways that you can block it, there are actually some apps. It is called (unintelligible), Hiya, Nomorobo or Robokiller.

JASON KENNEDY (10:23:32): And then you can add your name to the do-not-call list.

HODA KOTB (10:23:34): Yes.

JASON KENNEDY (10:23:36): But you can opt out of the whole registry.

HODA KOTB (10:23:36): So just be careful if someone says they`re from the IRS.

JASON KENNEDY (10:23:38): Don`t give them--

HODA KOTB (10:23:41): Just don`t. Do we have ten seconds? Let`s just show a little bit of this video from New Orleans. This is a guy who is a streetcar conductor. There`s a thing in New Orleans called a second line where you just dance down the street. This guy got off. He started dancing, and look what happens. In New Orleans, this always happens. People start gathering around. They get off the street car. She wants in. Everybody is in. And by the way, in New Orleans, look, people join. There`s a party and I want to be part of it.

JASON KENNEDY (10:24:10): I need more stuff like that on my news feed.

HODA KOTB (10:24:10): You got it. Eric Stonestreet got his game face on. The Modern Family star steps on to our court with details. Come on. You got this, Eric. Come on, Eric. Show them who`s boss, Eric.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

HODA KOTB (10:28:30): Over the past nine seasons, America has gotten to know Eric Stonestreet thanks to his starring role as the lovable Cameron Tucker on Modern Family.

JASON KENNEDY (10:28:38): Yeah. The hit comedy has won numerous Emmys, including two for Eric for best supporting actor. And here to tell us about what might be the big farewell season, we need that and what other projects he`s got up his sleeve. Please welcome Eric Stonestreet.

HODA KOTB (10:28:51): Eric.

ERIC STONESTREET (Modern Family) (10:28:51): Hello.

HODA KOTB (10:28:52): Is this it for Modern Family?

ERIC STONESTREET (10:28:54): Well, I don`t know for sure, but we`re not contracted to do an eleventh season.

HODA KOTB (10:28:58): Really?

ERIC STONESTREET (10:28:58): So they`ll have to make a decision on that before Christmas probably.

HODA KOTB (10:29:01): That has got to be like a real relationship. I mean, it`s like being in a relationship with someone for ten years.

ERIC STONESTREET It`s incredible. We`ve watched those kids grow up and we are such good friends. And we go so lucky with Modern Family and everybody on it that we all get along. Ed O`Neill sets the tone for the show, and always has. He`s just a laid-back cool guy. And Sofia, and Ty, and Julie, we`re all just, you know, good friends.

HODA KOTB (10:29:22): And (unintelligible) noise that is everywhere--

JASON KENNEDY (10:29:25): Yeah.

HODA KOTB (10:29:25): --I have to tell you, whenever I`m clicking through and I`m depressed because of everything that`s happening, I stop at Modern Family.

ERIC STONESTREET (10:29:31): Well, that`s--

HODA KOTB (10:29:31): It`s like an-- right.

ERIC STONESTREET (10:29:32): That`s our goal, our goal has always been just to make people forget about whatever personal struggles or world struggles or life struggles are going through and just twenty-two minutes a night, I think we`re on like thirty-eight times--

(Cross talking)

HODA KOTB (10:29:43): Yes. You are.

JASON KENNEDY (10:29:43): Which is good.

ERIC STONESTREET (10:29:44): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:29:45): Residuals.

ERIC STONESTREET (10:29:45): Yeah. You can watch us all you want.

JASON KENNEDY (10:29:48): And then apart from that, I know you`ve been in Kansas City, the Big Slick. We were talking to Al Roker about it. You guys did a piece about it here. You guys have raised so much money--

HODA KOTB (10:29:57): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:29:58): --hospital there, something like what eight million dollars.

ERIC STONESTREET (10:30:01): I think we`re up over eight million dollars. We did two million this year. We set the goal to raise two millions and I think we got just a little over two million. Thanks to guys like Al and people that we asked to come to Kansas City. And then the great people of Kansas City donating money and donating their time and everything. We have a great hospital there called Children`s Mercy Hospital that takes on anybody, you know, with any illness that they have. It`s a wonderful-- I think it`s the largest standalone non-affiliated children`s hospital in America.

HODA KOTB (10:30:28): One of the good-- if you want to feel good, your Insta page--

JASON KENNEDY (10:30:32): Is so good.

HODA KOTB (10:30:32): --is awesome. What is your Instagram handle by the way?

ERIC STONESTREET (10:30:36): Pretty creative thing called Eric Stonestreet.

HODA KOTB (10:30:38): Okay.

JASON KENNEDY (10:30:39): How did you come up with that?

ERIC STONESTREET (10:30:40): You know, my parents did.

GABE GUTIERREZ (10:30:42): We got a couple of pictures from it. And sometimes you take-- what`s this?

JASON KENNEDY (10:30:45): Oh, that`s a cool one.

ERIC STONESTREET (10:30:47): Well, that`s me in the front doing security at Bramlage Coliseum in Manhattan, Kansas.

HODA KOTB (10:30:49): Wait that with the glasses right there.

ERIC STONESTREET (10:30:50): Yeah. With the glasses. That`s me doing security at Bramlage Coliseum years ago in college. That was my job for Garth Brooks. And then I don`t know if you`re going to show the next one. I got to meet Garth Brooks. And show him-- no, that`s Kelsey Grammer. That`s not Garth Brooks.

HODA KOTB (10:31:05): You got to meet him?

ERIC STONESTREET (10:31:06): I got to meet Garth Brooks, show him that picture, tell him about that moment and he signed the picture. That was really cool.

HODA KOTB (10:31:11): When you were that young, did you know you wanted to be in show biz?

ERIC STONESTREET (10:31:14): No. Well, about that time is when I started to realize that`s what I maybe wanted to do in college. I wanted to figured out I wanted to be an actor because I did a play and--

JASON KENNEDY (10:31:23): It was a friend who challenged you to audition. You didn`t really want to do the audition, right? That`s what I read.

ERIC STONESTREET (10:31:28): Well, it`s not that I didn`t want to do it. It`s just that it wasn`t even on my radar. And so my friend, Paul, he had done theater and stuff in high school and he dared me to audition for a play and I did and so did he.

JASON KENNEDY (10:31:38): You did it.

ERIC STONESTREET (10:31:38): And I did.

JASON KENNEDY (10:31:39): And now we`re here.

HODA KOTB (10:31:39): I think just a quick-- because I know this is important to you. Ready. Raise. Rise. You`re a paid spokesman for BMS, but tell us just a little bit about that.

ERIC STONESTREET (10:31:48): Well, the Ready. Raise. Rise. campaign is something I`ve been involved with for four years. And this year we`re doing a challenge called the Pick Your Power challenge. Because when you`re diagnosed with cancer, it takes an inner power to beat and challenge this disease. So we`re doing the campaign. You can go to readyraiserise.com. And post your picture and when you do BMS is going to donate two hundred thousand dollars to cancer advocacy groups. And we just want to see how you harness your inner power. Because it takes a lot of things to fight cancer and there`s a lot of great information out there already at readyraiserise.com.

JASON KENNEDY (10:32:23): Doing great stuff.

HODA KOTB (10:32:24): Awesome.

JASON KENNEDY (10:32:24): And if you want to do more seasons of Modern Family feel free.

HODA KOTB (10:32:27): Yeah.

ERIC STONESTREET (10:32:27): Well, I`m open to it. I think we`re all open to the idea of it. We don`t want to go away yet.

JASON KENNEDY (10:32:32): Good.

HODA KOTB (10:32:32): All right. Thanks, Eric. All right.

(10:32:34): Are you looking for the best red or white for a warm summer night?

JASON KENNEDY (10:32:37): If so you`re in luck, we got wine recommendations for every occasion, from a barbecue to the beach. That`s on next.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

HODA KOTB (10:35:55): The summer season officially kicks off tomorrow, so we decided it`s a perfect excuse to break out a little wine.

JASON KENNEDY (10:36:00): I don`t think you ever need an excuse to break out wine.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:36:02): No excuses.

JASON KENNEDY (10:36:02): Yes, cue to pick out their favorite season wines are Leslie Sbrocco and Food and Wine magazine executive wine editor Ray Isle.

HODA KOTB (10:36:11): What is this duet, though?

(Cross talking)

HODA KOTB (10:36:13): The band is back together. All right.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:36:15): That`s right. Well, lift up your glasses. We`ll toast to ourselves.

HODA KOTB (10:36:16): Okay.

JASON KENNEDY (10:36:18): Oh yeah. Thank you.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:36:18): There we go. So this we`re kicking off with some daytime summer sippers.

HODA KOTB (10:36:21): Okay.

JASON KENNEDY (10:36:21): Sure.

RAY ISLE (10:36:22): Yeah.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:36:22): So I love the Mar De Frades. It`s an Albarino. Say that quickly.

CROWD (in unison) (10:36:26): Albarino.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:36:27): Albarino Atlantico. So from Rias Baixas in Spain, beautiful summertime wine. Fresh. Juicy.

JASON KENNEDY (10:36:32): But it`s hot.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:36:33): Absolutely. Daytime drinking.

HODA KOTB (10:36:35): Okay. What do pick, Ray?

RAY ISLE (10:36:36): Then the Wente Morning Fog Chardonnay. And this is a little bit richer style. This is classy California chardonnay, from the oldest winery that`s family owned continuously from 1860 something.

HODA KOTB (10:36:47): Yeah.

RAY ISLE (10:36:47): That`s been in business forever. Like beautiful summertime wine.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:36:49): Is that good? So light and then rich.

HODA KOTB (10:36:51): How much do these you guys?

RAY ISLE (10:36:52): Seventeen bucks for the Wente.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:36:53): And twenty dollars.

HODA KOTB (10:36:53): Twenty bucks. Okay.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:36:54): Beautiful. But then we`re going to go into some evening sipping and some of your favorites here, Hoda. This is nice big hearty red. So this is Shooting Star.

HODA KOTB (10:37:02): Okay.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:37:02): We`re keeping with the evening thing forever.

HODA KOTB (10:37:04): Uh-Ha. Cheers.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:37:05): And this is by Jed Steele. This is Shooting Star Zinfandel from Lake County.

HODA KOTB (10:37:07): Zinfandel.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:37:08): Yeah. Fourteen bucks. Just unscrew the screw cap and go to town.

(Cross talking)

HODA KOTB (10:37:19): So the screw top it`s not like, uh-oh, that`s not a great wine.

RAY ISLE (10:37:22): No, no.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:37:23): Look at this.

RAY ISLE (10:37:23): --have become very standard.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:37:24): That is fabulous--

JASON KENNEDY (10:37:26): It`s easy to use.

RAY ISLE (10:37:26): There you go.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:37:27): Pop and pour. Okay.

JASON KENNEDY (10:37:29): Don`t change that.

RAY ISLE (10:37:30): And our next wine, Cosentino The Dark, it sounds kind of ominous. But actually it is this gorgeous red blend from Petite Sirah, really rich from Lodi, California. You know, great with pork chop like this.

HODA KOTB (10:37:41): Like a barbeque like that.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:37:42): Isn`t that gorgeous? So day and night sipping please--

JASON KENNEDY (10:37:44): Now summer right.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:37:45): Now we got some bubbles at the beach, babe.

RAY ISLE (10:37:47): Beach time.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:37:47): Bubbles at the beach cans. They are the hottest trend in wine.

RAY ISLE (10:37:49): Cans.

HODA KOTB (10:37:50): Are you kidding?

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:37:51): No, this is bubbly. This is House Wine from Washington. There you go. Have a sip of bubbles. And this is the--

RAY ISLE (10:37:56): And then also red Ah-So Rose from Spain. This is just on the market. It`s really wonderful rose.

JASON KENNEDY (10:38:02): That`s very in right now. Rose can.

HODA KOTB (10:38:04): Yeah.

RAY ISLE (10:38:05): Yeah.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:38:05): About six bucks a can.

HODA KOTB (10:38:06): Are you supposed to drink it straight out of the can? Is that how it rolls?

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:38:08): Cheers, my dear.

(Cross talking)

HODA KOTB (10:38:09): Really, man, I`m into it.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:38:09): Look at that. All right. And now boxes are another great trend.

HODA KOTB (10:38:14): Boxed wines-- I`ve been waiting for this.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:38:18): This is the Bota Box. This my favorite, dry rose. Twenty-five dollars. But there`s four bottles of wine in here.

RAY ISLE (10:38:25): And then last--

(Cross talking)

RAY ISLE (10:38:27): This is Bose Del Sangria. Which is just beautiful sangria. Delicious way to end your barbeque party.

LESLIE SBROCCO (10:38:33): Goes great with any kind of barbecue. And look at this. And I made ice cubes out of that. Isn`t that great?

HODA KOTB (10:38:36): Oh, my God.

RAY ISLE (10:38:37): Isn`t that good?

HODA KOTB (10:38:38): By the way, oh you made ice cubes out of your-- oh, look at what Leslie did. So good. You guys, cheers.

JACOB SOBOROFF (10:38:44): Thank you, Leslie. Thank you, Ray.

HODA KOTB (10:38:44): We`re so happy. Summer now is officially here. All right. He`s the man, music superstar Aloe Blacc. He rocks the plaza.

JASON KENNEDY (10:38:52): Plus from the gridiron to the grill, NFL great, Nick Mangold is here with his barbeque tips after this.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

HODA KOTB (10:42:05): Summer`s knocking on the door, so `tis the season to barbecue.

JASON KENNEDY (10:42:08): Yeah. New York Jets pro-baller Nick Mangold recently retired from football and is spending his free time firing up the grill. So we`ve convinced him to share the secrets behind his hard-hitting home-made barbeque sauce. You have your own sauce, dude.

NICK MANGOLD (10:42:21): I have my own sauce. And it`s taking a little bit of time but it`s pretty simple, and I think that`s the best part about summer, barbequing right?

JASON KENNEDY (10:42:27): Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure.

HODA KOTB (10:42:27): All right.

NICK MANGOLD (10:42:28): And usually we do it on the weekend because you have a lot of time.

HODA KOTB (10:42:30): Okay.

NICK MANGOLD (10:42:30): This one is quick, we can do it on a Wednesday.

HODA KOTB (10:42:32): Okay.

NICK MANGOLD (10:42:32): We got ketchup in here. We`re making our vinegar sauce. So we have apple cider vinegar. Hot sauce.

HODA KOTB (10:42:38): Oh, you put a lot of hot sauce in there.

NICK MANGOLD (10:42:39): Oh yeah. You got to put it in. It`s only a little part. You got some sugar in there. And this is the special ingredient.

HODA KOTB (10:42:44): What`s that?

NICK MANGOLD (10:42:45): This is sriracha black pepper.

JASON KENNEDY (10:42:47): Sriracha black pepper in the sauce.

HODA KOTB (10:42:49): Wow.

NICK MANGOLD (10:42:49): You get that. It blends up. You know, it comes out with your vinegar sauce.

HODA KOTB (10:42:52): Okay.

NICK MANGOLD (10:42:53): Now you`re on to actually making the barbecue. So we also have hatchery sauce that is homemade. And these things can store up for a year. So you can always have them on hand, you only need a cup of each. So we add this in. And we get everybody into the pot. Right. We get our maple syrup. This is our hatchery sauce going in there. Go ahead.

JASON KENNEDY (10:43:12): I was waiting.

NICK MANGOLD (10:43:11): Give it a try. And a little bit of butter in there. And then you blend it. Three minutes, you get it going, it gets blended. And it`s beautiful. Right.

JASON KENNEDY (10:43:22): I`m a sauce guy. This is legit.

HODA KOTB (10:43:24): That is delicious.

NICK MANGOLD (10:43:25): So now, Wednesday, you come home from work and you just want to make pork chops. Right.

HODA KOTB (10:43:28): Okay.

NICK MANGOLD (10:43:29): You want to get that barbeque feeling.

HODA KOTB (10:43:30): Okay.

NICK MANGOLD (10:43:30): So it`s very simple. So we have our pineapple, we`re going to do a little grilled pineapple with it.

JASON KENNEDY (10:43:34): Oh, wow.

NICK MANGOLD (10:43:35): Right. You get a little slice on there.

HODA KOTB (10:43:36): Before that guy out or you`re doing it at the end.

NICK MANGOLD (10:43:38): At the end. You get your little cookie cutter. You pop them in there. Pop out. And you get beautiful looking ones like this. And it makes it look like you know what we`re doing. So we just-- salt and pepper.

HODA KOTB (10:43:49): That`s it? No other spice--

NICK MANGOLD (10:43:51): No other spice, you keep it simple. You let the meat do the talking. We get that on the grill.

HODA KOTB (10:43:55): Now could you use any kind of meat? Or--

NICK MANGOLD (10:43:58): You can. You can switch out chicken, shrimp. If you`re feeling--

HODA KOTB (10:44:01): Look at that, Jason.

(Cross talking)

JASON KENNEDY (10:44:03): Are you cooking for your wife right now, she`s pregnant, right?

NICK MANGOLD (10:44:06): Yes, she is. And I`m doing the cooking. I`m trying to help out. As it is going-- you don`t put the barbecue sauce on at the start, you do it to finish, because you don`t want that to burn. All right.

HODA KOTB (10:44:14): Okay.

NICK MANGOLD (10:44:15): Slather that on, get it going.

HODA KOTB (10:44:15): Now how much would you put on, a ton? You`d slather it.

NICK MANGOLD (10:44:18): Oh, yeah. I`m slathering it on there. So you pull it off, you let it rest. Then you grill your pineapple.

JASON KENNEDY (10:44:23): Okay.

HODA KOTB (10:44:23): Okay.

NICK MANGOLD (10:44:24): Then come down here, your finished product--

HODA KOTB (10:44:25): Come on. Come on.

NICK MANGOLD (10:44:26): --give it a try.

HODA KOTB (10:44:27): You have a little of each.

NICK MANGOLD (10:44:28): You have a little bit of each. Choose your own adventure.

HODA KOTB (10:44:31): Okay.

NICK MANGOLD (10:44:32): You can get pineapple, you can get barbecue sauce.

JASON KENNEDY (10:44:35): Cereal, pork chops, wine, this is like the best day at the office. This is really good, Nick.

HODA KOTB (10:44:41): Oh, my God.

NICK MANGOLD (10:44:43): Thank you.

HODA KOTB (10:44:44): Will you do this one?

JASON KENNEDY (10:44:44): Yeah. I`ll take it. For these recipes and a lot more, just head to today.com/food. It`s very simple. And his music will instantly put you in a good mood. Singing superstar Aloe Blacc is rocking our plaza next. We`re going to be eating here in the meantime.

HODA KOTB (10:45:00): Oh, my gosh.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

ANNOUNCER (10:49:10): The Citi Concert series on TODAY is proudly presented to you by Citi.

HODA KOTB (10:49:17): Multiplatinum singer/songwriter Aloe Blacc has been making music since he was just nine years old.

JASON KENNEDY (10:49:22): He was the nicest guy. I was chatting with him. His new album is set to drop this fall, but today he hit the plaza for us to perform his chart topping hit, it`s called The Man. Please welcome Aloe Blacc.

(10:49:34): (Aloe Blacc performing live on the plaza)

HODA KOTB (10:53:00): That is the Aloe Blacc. He killed it on the plaza this morning. We are back with more right after this.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

HODA KOTB (10:55:29): Welcome back, everybody. Look at me with Jason Kennedy here from E! News. KLG is off in Scotland. She`s been working on this passion project. Kath has been one of those people, who-- she always has something going, a passionate project that she`s crazy about. We actually want to hear about yours. So a lot of people have a passion, but they say that can`t be my profession because I need to, you know, pay my bills, got to have insurance. But we want to know about your passion project that may turn out to be your profession. So all you have to do is give us a perfect pitch. It`s called Pitch Your Passion series and head to klgandhoda.com. What was your pitch? Would you have something?

JASON KENNEDY (10:56:09): My passion?

HODA KOTB (10:56:09): Yeah.

JASON KENNEDY (10:56:10): So it just come back here another day and hang out with you. Not even kidding. This was a pinch-me moment and you made it so easy and fun for me. What a great team. Like this is unbelievable. I had so much fun.

HODA KOTB (10:56:21): It was pretty cool. And to see that video of you, or picture of you when you were a little boy standing outside of that window.

JASON KENNEDY (10:56:27): I was right there.

HODA KOTB (10:56:28): So just so-- we should let people know that if you come down here, it can come true.

JASON KENNEDY (10:56:33): For sure.

HODA KOTB (10:56:33): I mean, You`re a living proof of it. You can catch Jason on E! News weekdays at 7 PM and 11 PM. Can Lauren come out just one last time?

JASON KENNEDY (10:56:41): Come on out, baby.

HODA KOTB (10:56:42): Because there`s nothing like seeing you two love birds cuddling up--

JASON KENNEDY (10:56:45): Did you bring your wipes?

LAUREN SCRUGGS KENNEDY (10:56:46): I brought my wipes.

HODA KOTB (10:56:47): How cute are you two.

JASON KENNEDY (10:56:48): I love you. Thank you so much.

HODA KOTB (10:56:49): I love you too. Lauren, thank you for sharing him with us for TODAY.

LAUREN SCRUGGS KENNEDY (10:56:52): Yes. You all are the best. Yes, TODAY.

HODA KOTB (10:56:53): We`re going to be back tomorrow. Christian Slater will be here.

JASON KENNEDY (10:56:56): Plus, some Ambush Makeover.

HODA KOTB (10:56:58): And the always entertaining, Fran Drescher. Have a great Wines-Day Wednesday.

JASON KENNEDY (10:57:00): Bye everybody. Thanks for having me here.

HODA KOTB (10:57:01): Bye bye.

JASON KENNEDY (10:57:02): Love you

END

(Reuters Health) - Children and adults who take five commonly prescribed types of antibiotics may be more likely to develop kidney stones than people who don't use these medicines, a recent study suggests.

Researchers examined electronic health records collected from 1994 to 2015 for 25,981 people who developed kidney stones and a control group of 259,797 similar individuals who did not. Using the kidney stone diagnosis as an "index date," researchers then looked for prior antibiotic prescriptions in both groups.

Exposure three to 12 months before the index date to any of five antibiotics - sulfas, cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, nitrofurantoin/methenamine, and broad-spectrum penicillins - was associated with an increased risk of kidney stones.

The risk increase associated with these antibiotics ranged from 27 percent higher odds with broad-spectrum penicillins to more than doubled odds with sulfas.

"Without a doubt, antibiotics have saved millions of lives and are needed to prevent death and serious harm from infections; the benefits outweigh the potential harms," said lead study author Dr. Gregory Tasian of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

"These results don't suggest that antibiotics should not be prescribed when indicated," Tasian said by email. "However, they do support antibiotic stewardship - the judicious and appropriate use of antibiotics and reducing inappropriate use of antibiotics for a viral illness."

Scientists already knew that antibiotics alter the composition of the human microbiome - all of the bacteria, viruses and fungi that live in and on the body.

Changes in the intestinal and urinary microbiome have also been linked to kidney stones, but no previous studies revealed an association between antibiotics and stones, researchers note in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

The strongest risks for kidney stones were in children and adolescents, the study found. The risk of kidney stones decreased over time but remained elevated several years after antibiotic use.

Not all antibiotics were associated with an increased risk of kidney stones, however. The study examined 12 types of antibiotics, and found seven that didn't appear to influence the risk of kidney stones.

The study wasn't a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how antibiotics might cause kidney stones. Another limitation is that some people might have had undiagnosed kidney issues before they took antibiotics, potentially inflating the risk associated with antibiotics.

Kidney stones can also take years to develop, and affect only about 10 percent of people, making it challenging to prove a direct link to antibiotics that most people will take at some point in their lives, said Jeremy Burton a researcher at the University of Western Ontario and deputy director of the Canadian Centre for Human Microbiome and Probiotics, Lawson Health Research Institute in London, Ontario.

"Kidney stone disease rates have been increasing steadily for no apparent reason, and many theories have been postulated. These range from global warming resulting in decreased hydration, to the microbiome changing due to an unhealthy Western diet," Burton, who wasn't involved in the study, said by email.

"It is important to note that even with these enormous samples sizes (in the study) some confounding factors may remain, such as antibiotic use for the treatment of a urinary tract infection, a condition associated with kidney stones," Burton added. "Nonetheless these data suggest that there is a risk associated with certain antibiotic use and kidney stones."

But beneficial bacteria do appear to reduce anxiety in rodents with various problems

There is no clear sign that taking probiotics can help dampen feelings of anxiety in humans, according to new research, despite evidence that it works for rodents.

A wide range of conditions, from obesity to asthma, have been linked to the microbes living in our guts[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/26/the-human-microbiome-why-our-microbes-could-be-key-to-our-health], with a number of studies suggesting a link to mood and behaviour. As a result, there is a burgeoning interest in psychobiotics: using beneficial bacteria known as probiotics to tinker with the gut’s microbes to affect brain health.

But researchers who have examined evidence from previous studies say that while probiotics appear to reduce anxiety in rodents with various problems, there is little to show that they offer similar benefits to humans, whether healthy or not.

“If people are suffering from anxiety... probiotics should not be the solution they look for. They should definitely seek professional treatment,” said Daniel Reis, first author of the research from the University of Kansas, noting that both therapy and medication are available.

Reis and colleagues looked at 22 studies involving a total of 743 rats and mice, and 14 involving a total of 1,527 humans, and analysed the data to see if, overall, probiotics reduce anxiety.

The results, published in the journal Plos One[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199041], show that while such a link was seen among “diseased” rodents – where researchers had exposed the animals to early life stress, infection or other induced conditions – it was not seen overall in healthy animals. Beneficial effects in animals were consistently linked to one type of bacteria – Lactobacillus rhamnosus – although individual studies suggested a number of other species and strains might have an anxiety-reducing effect.

By contrast, when the studies were taken together, no beneficial effect was seen for humans, whether healthy or with conditions such as cancer, irritable bowel syndrome or mood disturbance.

That said, the team note that none of the studies involved individuals diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, adding that it might be that probiotics only help once certain levels of anxiety have been reached. They also note that for humans, anxiety was based on self-report – which can be unreliable – and that follow-up might not have lasted long enough for effects to be seen.

“Before we make any firm conclusions, we really do need to see these probiotics being tested in people who had clinically significant anxiety,” said Reis.

The team add that the doses of probiotics given to rodents were up to 100 times larger than those given to humans, once body weight was taken into account, suggesting that researchers should explore whether the lack of effect seen in humans might at least in part be down to probiotics not being given in high enough doses.

What’s more, one of the few human studies that did show some evidence of an effect involved Lactobacillus rhamnosus – a finding the team says should be further explored.

Prof John Cryan, a neuropharmacologist and microbiome expert from University College Cork who was not involved in the research, disagreed with the study’s conclusion, saying there was some evidence that probiotics might help tackle anxiety in humans.

“What [this study] highlights is the importance of bacterial strain selection in mediating such effects. Researchers have long known that only specific strains will have beneficial effects and that most don’t,” he said, adding that clinical trials are needed to explore whether particular microbes offer a health benefit and can hence be termed “probiotics”.

Cryan noted that while his team have previously found[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/oct/18/probiotic-bacteria-bifidobacterium-longum-1714-anxiety-memory-study] that one type of Bifidobacteria longum reduces anxiety in humans and animals, other types of Bifidobacteria do nothing. “By ‘lumping’ all strains together in the one analysis, any potential effect is completely masked,” he said.

It started with jugs of olive oil and cans of tuna, lots of it, which my husband hauled in one day and plunked on the counter.

"That's my lunch!"

That was about three months ago, and every day since there has been a new entity in our house to consider. It affects how we eat at restaurants. It does not like craft beer. It provides one more excuse to eat lots of cheese.

It is the ketogenic diet.

Heard of it? I hadn't before my husband, Phil, took up the diet at the end of March. Now I see it all over the place. Though it has been around in the medical community for decades, it seems to be taking shape as the new diet of the moment. Recipe delivery services like Green Chef are advertising new keto menu options. The other day I saw a woman walking down the street clad in a shirt that said "Keto and Slay."

It has been used as a way to treat medical conditions, most prominently children with epilepsy. But, if followed precisely, it can also lead to substantial weight loss.

The ketogenic diet is a very high-fat, very low-carb diet in which the goal is to get your body into a state of ketosis, when it begins to burn fat because it doesn't have carbohydrates to burn.

To achieve ketosis, dieters followspecific ratios of what are called macronutrients: protein, fats and carbohydrates. You will hearketo-ers talk about "my macros," because unlike some other diets, the keto diet works best if those ratios are precise. In general, that means getting about 70 percent of your calories from fat, 20 percent from protein and 10 percent from carbs.

Most people have the hardest time ditching all those carbs because the American diet is very into serving a form of potato with every meal. A general carb guideline is less than 50 grams per day, though the exact number can vary from person to person. Added sugar is out, as is fruit and some vegetables. (A medium-sized apple has about 25 grams of carbs.)

Keto can be extreme. The protein-heavy Atkins diet is a modified version of it, and the recently trendy paleo diet also shares similarities. The menu of allowed foods is heavy on meat, cheese, nuts, olives, avocados and fish.

---

The benefits

Julie Stefanski, a registered dietitian, says the relatively limited menu and tracking macros are the toughest parts of a keto diet: Lots of people just can't stay with it, or they follow the diet incorrectly.

"One of the reasons people can't stick to it is because it's so different from the normal American diet," Stefanski says. "Normally, when you think about the average American diet, most of the foods and the calories are coming from carbs: breads, grains, cereal, anything with sugar. So switching to a really high-fat diet is a big change."

Stefanski worked at a large health system for about a decade, specifically for the epilepsy wing and a special department that treated patients with the keto diet. She got to look over the lab results of people on keto, and says it taught her a lot about how the body uses food.

The big concerns with high-fat diets tend to be: Is it bad for my heart? Will my cholesterol go up?

Stefanski says that generally, people's cholesterol levels don't change as much as you'd expect. And while there isn't a lot of long-term data on this diet, there's evidence that cardiovascular disease is caused by inflammation and that this diet can help with inflammation.

David Rohde is the founder of Largo food delivery service Paleo on the Go (paleoonthego.com), which recently started offering keto meals. Rohde started the company, which began delivering meals in 2011, with a focus on the paleo diet. Paleo aims to mimic the food groups of our pre-agriculture hunter-gatherer ancestors, emphasizing high fat and protein, plus fiber from vegetables instead of grains and no dairy.

But his initial interest wasn't weight loss. It was trying to find a diet that wouldalleviate symptoms of the autoimmune disorder he has, eosinophilic esophagitis.

"Living a keto or paleo lifestyle not only promotes weight loss and increases energy, but also helps to heal the microbiome of the gut and alleviate symptoms for people living with chronic diseases," Rohde says.

There is anecdotal evidence that suggests low-carb, nutrient-dense diets are better for those with autoimmune diseases like Crohn's and colitis, which are associated with excess inflammation in the body.

And though the autoimmune protocol is a particular focus of Rohde and his company, he says the new keto component was driven by customer demand.

"Keto is exploding right now, and people tend to reach for the low-quality foods. It's good for more energy and focus and all kinds of stuff," he says. "I want to help people do it the right way."

---

Beyond bacon

It is crucial to eat different kinds of fats while on keto, not just bacon, a too-simplistic mascot for high-fat diets that came about around the time of Atkins. Red meat is a minority of my husband's diet; he's a stickler for healthy fats like mono- and polyunsaturated, which are beneficial for HDL, or "good" cholesterol. A normal keto lunch for him is tuna mixed with avocado and olive oil, plus lots of snacking on various cheeses, macadamia nuts and olives.

"It should be a variety of fat in your diet," Stefanski says. "No fat is excluded, but it would be a good idea to stay away from the trans fats, the man-made ones, and that goes for everyone. We encourage people to have good sources of monounsaturated fats."

Another way people mistreat the diet: Eating all of your daily allotted carbs at once. Ideally, those macronutrient ratios should be roughly the same for every meal, with carbs spread out throughout the day.Otherwise you could throw yourself out of ketosis.

"It's not easy," Stefanski says. "I made my son mac and cheese the other day, and I noticed one serving had 53 grams of carbs in it."

But let's say you can stick to the rigid rules, like my dedicated husband has. One of the main things I wanted to know from Stefanski was whether this diet is safe, since the way it leads to weight loss involves sending the body into starvation mode.

Is it something you can continue without harmful side effects?

"When you switch from high carb to low carb, your body does produce energy in a different way," Stefanski says. "It has to burn fat. That is a natural process, but we don't use it that often. Ketosis, making ketones, is not dangerous, if you have a normal metabolism."

But Stefanski emphasizes repeatedly during our conversation that it's not a well-balanced diet. It's hard to get all of the nutrients you need from such a limited list of foods, and it's not something you should start on a whim without doing your research. (And it's probably not something you should adopt forever. My husband plans to reintroduce carbs in August.)

She recommends taking a multivitamin, plus calcium and vitamin D supplements, and getting as much food variety as possible. Also, blood tests to monitor your lipid panel and vitamin levels are a good idea every three months.

Stefanski recommends using your carb allowance on low-carb vegetables like kale, spinach, radishes, cauliflower and broccoli.

"That's going to be better for your immune system than spending that on a grain or something."

Another thing to watch out for: Don't add carbs back into your diet and still continue to eat all of that fat. That can lead to rapid weight gain.

And variety really is your best friend. Be careful about leaning too hard on some of your favorites. My husband can't even look at a wedge of Parmesan cheese anymore.

Contact Michelle Stark at mstark@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8829. Follow @mstark17.

* * *

MODERATE

Keto Pizza

1 pound ground turkey (or chicken)

1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

1 or 2 eggs

Salt and pepper

1 avocado

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 cloves garlic

1 cup crushed tomatoes (or salsa; make sure there are no added sugars)

Mozzarella cheese

Pepperoni or salami (or any pizza toppings you enjoy)

Heat oven to 250 degrees.

Place ground turkey in an 8- by 8-inch or 9- by 13-inch oven-safe pan. Press down lightly so turkey fills out baking vessel.

Bake for about 20 minutes. You’re trying to dry it out a bit but not cook it completely. Cook longer if still not very dry, but don’t overcook.

Remove from oven, add to a large bowl or stand mixer and let cool. Crank oven up to 450 degrees when turkey is cooler.

Add Parmesan and 1 egg to bowl, plus salt and pepper to preference, and mix well. If turkey mixture looks crumbly, add other egg.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and scoop turkey mixture onto sheet. Place another piece of parchment paper on top and use a rolling pin or heavy cup or glass to roll turkey out into a thin, pizzalike crust.

Place back in oven and bake for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare your toppings. Cut avocado lengthwise, then remove the green flesh and place in a small bowl with olive oil. Stir well. Set aside.

Place garlic cloves in a bowl and microwave for 10 seconds. Peel cloves and set aside.

Remove crust from oven. Press garlic cloves onto the crust, spreading as much as you can. Spread avocado on top of that, then top with crushed tomatoes or salsa, mozzarella and toppings of your choice.

Bake for another 10 minutes or until cheese is melted. Let sit for a few minutes before eating.

Serves 4.

Source: Phil Bonet

---

EASY

Buffalo Chicken Meatballs With Broccoli Slaw

For the meatballs:

1 pound ground chicken

1 egg

2 cloves minced garlic

1 shallot, finely chopped

2 green onions, finely chopped

Salt and pepper

2 tablespoons sriracha sauce

For the broccoli slaw:

1 head fresh broccoli (or a store-bought bag of preshredded broccoli)

4 green onions, roughly chopped, plus more for garnish

1 shallot, finely chopped

1 avocado

¼ cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Salt and pepper

Fresh parsley, chopped

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat a large oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat and coat with olive oil. Combine all meatball ingredients except sriracha in a large bowl and mix well with your hands or a large spoon. Form mixture into meatballs about the size of a golf ball and place in skillet.

Cook for about 5 minutes over medium-high heat, then flip meatballs over. Cover skillet with aluminum foil and slide into oven. Cook for 10 minutes.

Make the broccoli slaw: Cut broccoli florets off the stem and reserve for another purpose. Using a box grater, shred the broccoli stems. Place in a medium bowl, then add green onions, shallot, ½ avocado, mayo, oil, vinegar and salt and pepper. Stir well.

Remove meatballs from oven. Mix sriracha with 2 tablespoons water, then brush the mixture over the warm meatballs. Serve immediately with slaw and remaining avocado sliced on the side. Top with green onion and parsley.

Serves 4.

Source: Michelle Stark, Tampa Bay Times

---

MODERATE

Phil’s Meatloaf

1 poblano pepper

2 cups sliced baby portobello mushrooms

1 onion

5 cloves garlic

1 sprig fresh rosemary

Handful of almonds or macadamia nuts

Salt and pepper

1 pound ground beef

1 pound ground pork

¼ pound chorizo sausage

1 egg

2 cups fresh spinach

2.5 ounces Gorgonzola cheese

¼ cup heavy cream

10 to 12 strips bacon

Set oven to broil. Broil poblano pepper on both sides until skin can easily be peeled off. Peel, then chop up and set aside. Set oven to bake at 350 degrees.

Combine next five ingredients in a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Season with salt and pepper. Add mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer or large bowl. Add poblano pepper, beef, pork, sausage, egg, spinach, Gorgonzola and heavy cream, then season with salt and pepper. Mix for 3 minutes on medium-low setting. Scrape edges of bowl and mix for another minute.

Line a loaf pan with strips of bacon until pan is covered; reserve a couple of strips for the top of the loaf. Fill loaf pan with meat mixture; meat may come over the top, but that’s okay because it will shrink in the oven. Line top of loaf with remaining bacon strips.

Loosely cover loaf with aluminum foil and place on a baking sheet. Place in preheated oven. Fill baking sheet two-thirds with water. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove foil. Add more water to sheet. Bake for 45 more minutes. Loaf is done when internal temperature is 165 degrees in the center. Let set for 10 minutes, then cut into servings.

Serves 6.

Source: Phil Bonet

* * *

A look at what’s on the menu

As with any diet, it’s important to know what you can and can’t eat. My husband builds a lot of grownup Lunchables, assembling plates of cubed meats and cheeses and nuts. Avocados are his new best friend. Olive oil is a good source of healthy fats, and can add flavor to meats and vegetables. Here are some reliably keto-friendly foods.

• Nuts, but especially high-fat macadamia nuts and walnuts

• Olives

• Chicken

• Beef

• Low-carb vegetables such as kale, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower

• Pork

• Salmon

• Tuna

• Eggs

• Avocado

• Cheese: Brie, blue, mozzarella, cheddar; stay away from sweeter cheeses such as ricotta

* * *

Some realities — in and out of the kitchen

When someone in your household is on a diet that limits certain foods you both used to love, things can get interesting. I have had to get creative in the kitchen if I’m making something for my husband to enjoy, too. That mostly involves leaving sugary sauces off sauteed meats or preparing a beef and broccoli dish with extra beef and no rice. A benefit of all this has been that, since I’ve had to consider low- or no-carb cooking, I’ve realized it’s less limiting than this bread zealot once thought. A well-prepared protein and a veggie go a long way toward a satisfying meal. Here are some things I’ve learned since my husband has been on the keto diet.

• It can be pricey. Eating at restaurants is interesting. My husband’s go-to is ordering two entrees, especially if they’re of the sandwich or taco variety, and just eating the meat/cheese/veggie filling. A lot of meals are puffed up with excess breads, chips, etc.

• Carbs aren’t just in bread. You’ve got to watch out for sugar in things like salad dressing, sauces and condiments. Also, fruit.

• Happy hour is a challenge. Beer, which is basically bread in a glass, is a big no-no on the keto diet. Clear alcohols are the most desirable for keto-ers, which means my husband will go for gin

or vodka. But be wary of those sugar-laden mixers, like tonic.

Pro tip: Hard seltzers are often carb-free. (We like the seltzers at

3 Daughters Brewing in St. Petersburg.)

• Cooking is crucial. Cooking is one of the easiest ways to make sure you’re eating the right stuff. Phil has been cooking a lot more while on the keto diet, and it has forced him (and me) to think about the actual components of each meal.

NEW Yorkers are accustomed to shelling out in the name of wellness, but a buzzy dairy alternative is bringing it to a new level. Meet Coconut Cult: a plant-based yogurt retailing for a must-bebrainwashed price of $25.

The fluffy concoction, sold in glass jars emblazoned with pink flamingos, has made its way into trendsters' smoothies and granola bowls, but Cult followers insist it's more than a breakfast food.

"It's this very unique product that straddles the line between dairy alternative and probiotic supplement," says Coconut Cult's Pancho Gomez. (The company eschews titles, but he calls himself the Chief Flamingo Walker.) The brand counts more than 54,000 followers on Instagram and regularly sells out at the few dozen boutique grocery stores that carry it.

Founder Noah SimonWaddell, 35, launched Coconut Cult after suffering a collapsed lung in 2015, following a series of health scares. His doctors put him on steroids, which helped him heal but wiped out the good bacteria in his gut. So he began experimenting in his mom's California kitchen, tinkering with different types of coconut milk and freeze-dried probiotics to make something to mend his digestion. What he created was a tangy, creamy blend, packed with 15 strains of probiotics and 25 billion colonyforming units in a 2 tablespoon serving - comparable to most supplement pills and significantly more potent than your average yogurt.

"We call it yogurt because that's the closest word we can use that someone will understand," says Gomez. "But, more accurately, what it is is a probiotic supplement delivered in an [edible] form." The yogurt was initially only available in California, but the company expanded across the country in late 2017.

It's now carried at 10 shops around NYC.

"I saw it on Instagram and thought, That looks so thick and creamy, I have to try it," says Rachel Mansfield, 28, a Hoboken-based recipe developer and influencer who eats Coconut Cult, which she orders in bulk online, nearly every day.

Mansfield says she likes the yogurt because it's so versatile - she can smear it on homemade muffins or add it to a smoothie. Plus, she can tell that the probiotics are working: "If I eat too much of it in the morning on an empty stomach, I'll feel sick." Sure, she says, the price is "definitely expensive." But she's willing to spend for a good gut. "I would rather invest $25 in my health than spend $25 on a cocktail." At the West Village's Clover Grocery, the yogurt is a top-selling product.

"In the beginning, it was hard to keep on the shelves," says co-owner Kyle Hotchkiss Carone. "It's definitely one of those few products that people walk in, they know exactly where it is in the store, they buy it and walk back out." Carone insists the price isn't as bad as it seems.

A serving size is one ounce (2 tablespoons), so a 16-ounce jar will last for 16 days. Parsed out at $1.56 per serving, it's around the cost of a daily Dannon cup.

"Is it expensive? Yes. But as a daily dosage, it's less so," says Carone, who regularly eats the yogurt himself.

But according to gut-health expert Kate Scarlata, a registered dietitian, shelling out for pricey yogurt is, as is typical with cults, a bit of a gamble.

"No one wants to hear this, but the science [on probiotics] is really in its infancy, and it's really individualspecific," says Scarlata, who's based in the Boston area.

"We have so many strains of bacteria, and they're [unique] to the individual." That means that those 15 strains in Coconut Cult might be a great fit for one person and do nothing for the next.

Signs that the yogurt is working include decreased bloating, regular bowel movements and better digestion, says Scarlata, but it can be hard to tell what's causing those improvements.

"It's kind of like throwing paint at a wall," she says.

"Most of the research shows that probiotics don't seem to do any harm. But at the end of the day, we really don't know."

When thinking of fermented foods, kombucha and sauerkraut are among the first to come to mind. But so many everyday foods are actually the result of the fermentation process.

This centuries-old method had been used to preserve food long before refrigeration became available. In essence, fermentation occurs when food is exposed to certain microorganisms that consume carbohydrates (such as sugar) and give off alcohol and acids as a byproduct. The environment created by these bacteria is too hostile (acidic) for other harmful bacteria to survive, such as those that cause food to rot, thus extending the foods shelf-life. It's why a pickle lasts longer than a cucumber.

Alcohol is probably the most widely consumed fermented beverage. In North America the more mainstream foods recognized as fermented include yogurt, pickles, kimchee, kombucha, miso, kefir injera and skyr. But there are many other fermented foods that are so common we don't often realize they are fermented: Cheese, sourdough bread, chocolate (cocoa beans are fermented for a few days before roasting). And so many condiments: Tabasco, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, mustard and vinegar. Odds are, we eat at least one fermented food everyday.

As far as promoting gut health, the theory is that in fermented foods the "bad" bacteria which cause bloating and constipation are outnumbered by the "good" bacteria that aid digestion. However, science has yet to determine exactly how fermented foods work in the human body.

But we know how they work on the tastebuds: Fermented foods bring a wonderfully tart-tang or a deep umami flavour that brightens and intensifies the flavours of any dish.

Home fermenting isn't difficult but it takes a few days or months before you can enjoy that homemade kimchee, kombucha, yogurt or beer.

So while waiting for your home batch to ferment, try these three dishes made with supermarket available fermented foods.

Kimchee and Tofu Soup

Fermented foods used: kimchee, miso paste, gochujang

At its simplest, traditional kimchee soup is kimchee boiled with gochujang (Korean fermented chili paste), tofu and water then garnished with green onion. This version gives additional heat with gochujang and a salty miso kick. Korean home cooks typically add pork belly or canned tuna but I love the chewy and earthy flavours dried shiitake mushrooms bring. Gochujang is found at Asian grocers, ranging from mild to extra hot.

2 cups (500 mL) kimchee with juice

4 cups (1 L) water

1 tbsp (15 mL) gochujang

1 tbsp (15 mL) white miso paste

6 to 8 medium sized dried shiitake mushrooms

1 lb (450 g) firm tofu, cubed

3 stalks green onions, sliced thinly on a bias

In a large pot over medium-high heat, stir kimchee, water, gochujang, miso and shiitake together. Bring to a boil. Turn heat down to medium. Simmer uncovered for 20 minutes stirring occasionally. Adjust seasoning to taste. Add more water if soup becomes too thick. Add tofu and continue to simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Transfer to a serving bowl and garnish with green onions. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 main or 8 appetizer servings.

Sauerkraut, Salami and Egg Salad On Sourdough

Fermented foods used: sauerkraut, mustard, sourdough, salami

This easy open-faced sandwich pairs the most well-known examples of fermented foods, sauerkraut and sourdough, with ingredients many people forget are the result of fermentation: salami and mustard. Together these East European flavours make a tart, salty sandwich that goes great with beer.

8 large eggs

1 tbsp (15 mL) mustard of your choice (add more as necessary)

3 tbsp (45 mL) mayonnaise (add more as necessary)

1/2 tsp (2 mL) smoked paprika (add more for garnish)

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 loaf sourdough bread, sliced 1-inch (2.5 cm) thick

16 to 20 slices salami

2 cups (500 mL) sauerkraut, drained

Fill a large pot with enough water to submerge eggs. Bring to a rapid boil over medium-high heat. Reduce to a simmer on medium-low heat. Lower eggs into water with a spoon. Cover and simmer for 12 to 14 minutes. Drain and submerge eggs in ice-cold water for 10 minutes. Peel eggs and roughly chop. Transfer eggs to a large mixing bowl.

Mix chopped eggs with mayonnaise, mustard and paprika. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add more mustard or mayonnaise to taste. Set aside.

Top bread slices evenly with salami, sauerkraut and egg salad. Garnish with a light sprinkling of paprika.

Serve immediately.

Makes 8 servings.

Tempeh and Pickled Beet Salad With Maple Kefir Dressing

Fermented foods used: tempeh, soy sauce, pickled beets, kefir, mustard

Kefir, a fermented milk drink, is enjoying its moment in the spotlight and can be found in the yogurt aisle of most supermarkets. Kefir can also be whipped into a rich but light-tasting dressing akin to buttermilk. I whisked it with maple syrup and mustard to round out kefir's sourness with a bit of sweetness. Tempeh originated in Indonesia and is made by fermenting cooked soybeans, resulting in a firm block (they're typically sold as solid strips). Like most soy products, its inherent taste is pretty bland but it does a great job of absorbing flavours, which is why I doused it with a bit of maple syrup and soy sauce (another fermented product!) to give it a sweet and salty zip.

For the dressing

1 cup (250 mL) plain kefir

1 tbsp (15 mL) maple syrup or honey

1 tbsp (15 mL) Dijon mustard

1/2 tsp (2 mL) garlic powder

Salt and pepper, to taste

In a small bowl, whisk all ingredients together until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Toss with salad or serve on side.

For the salad

1 tbsp (15 mL) vegetable or canola oil

7 oz (200 g) tempeh, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 minced garlic clove

2 tsp (10 mL) maple syrup

1 tsp (5 mL) Japanese or light Chinese soy sauce

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 head lettuce, washed, dried and torn into bite-sized pieces

1/2 cup (125 mL) packed parsley leaves, chopped

1 cup (250 mL) sliced pickled beets

In a large skillet over medium heat, heat oil. Sauté garlic and tempeh until golden brown, 4 to 5 minutes. Add maple syrup and soy sauce. Toss until evenly coated. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

On a serving platter, toss lettuce, parsley and beets. Add warm tempeh. Toss with kefir dressing immediately or serve on the side.

Makes 8 servings.

When thinking of fermented foods kombucha and sauerkraut are among the first to come to mind. But so many everyday foods are actually the result of the fermentation process.

This centuries-old method had been used to preserve food long before refrigeration became available. In essence, fermentation occurs when food is exposed to certain microorganisms that consume carbohydrates (such as sugar) and give off alcohol and acids as a byproduct. The environment created by these bacteria is too hostile (acidic) for other harmful bacteria to survive, such as those that cause food to rot, thus extending the foods shelf-life. It's why a pickle lasts longer than a cucumber.

Alcohol is probably the most widely consumed fermented beverage. In North America the more mainstream foods recognized as fermented include yogurt, pickles, kimchi, kombucha, miso, kefir injera and skyr. But there are many other fermented foods that are so common we don't often realize they are fermented: Cheese, sourdough bread, chocolate (cocoa beans are fermented for a few days before roasting). And so many condiments: Tabasco, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, mustard and vinegar. Odds are, we eat at least one fermented food every day.

As far as promoting gut health, the theory is that, in fermented foods, the "bad" bacteria that cause bloating and constipation are outnumbered by the "good" bacteria that aid digestion. Science has yet to determine exactly how fermented foods work in the human body.

But we know how they work on the taste buds: Fermented foods bring a wonderfully tart-tang or a deep umami flavour that brightens and intensifies the flavours of any dish.

Home fermenting isn't difficult, but it takes a few days or months before you can enjoy that homemade kimchi, kombucha, yogurt or beer. So while waiting for your home batch to ferment, try these three dishes made with supermarket available fermented foods.

Kimchi and

Tofu Soup

Fermented foods used: kimchi, miso paste, gochujang

At its simplest, traditional kimchi soup is kimchi boiled with gochujang (Korean fermented chili paste), tofu and water then garnished with green onion. This version gives additional heat with gochujang and a salty miso kick. Korean home cooks typically add pork belly or canned tuna but I love the chewy and earthy flavours dried shiitake mushrooms bring. Gochujang is found at Asian grocers, ranging from mild to extra hot.

2 cups (500 mL) kimchi with juice

4 cups (1 L) water

1 tbsp (15 mL) gochujang

1 tbsp (15 mL) white miso paste

6 to 8 medium-sized dried shiitake mushrooms

1 lb (450 g) firm tofu, cubed

3 stalks green onions, sliced thinly on a bias

In a large pot over medium-high heat, stir kimchi, water, gochujang, miso and shiitake together. Bring to a boil. Turn heat down to medium. Simmer uncovered for 20 minutes stirring occasionally. Adjust seasoning to taste. Add more water if soup becomes too thick. Add tofu and continue to simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Transfer to a serving bowl and garnish with green onions. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 main or 8 appetizer servings.

Sauerkraut, Salami and Egg Salad

on Sourdough

Fermented foods used: sauerkraut, mustard, sourdough, salami

This easy open-faced sandwich pairs the most well-known examples of fermented foods, sauerkraut and sourdough, with ingredients many people forget are the result of fermentation: salami and mustard. Together, these East European flavours make a tart and salty sandwich that goes great with beer.

8 large eggs

1 tbsp (15 mL) mustard of your choice (add more as necessary)

3 tbsp (45 mL) mayonnaise (add more as necessary)

1/2 tsp (2 mL) smoked paprika (add more for garnish)

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 loaf sourdough bread, sliced 1-inch (2.5 cm) thick

16 to 20 slices salami

2 cups (500 mL) sauerkraut, drained

Fill a large pot with enough water to submerge eggs. Bring to a rapid boil over medium-high heat. Reduce to a simmer on medium-low heat. Lower eggs into water with a spoon. Cover and simmer for 12 to 14 minutes. Drain and submerge eggs in ice-cold water for 10 minutes. Peel eggs and roughly chop. Transfer eggs to a large mixing bowl.

Mix chopped eggs with mayonnaise, mustard and paprika. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add more mustard or mayonnaise to taste. Set aside.

Top bread slices evenly with salami, sauerkraut and egg salad. Garnish with a light sprinkling of paprika.

Serve immediately.

Makes 8 servings.

Tempeh and

Pickled Beet Salad With Maple Kefir Dressing

Fermented foods used: tempeh, soy sauce, pickled beets, kefir, mustard

Kefir, a fermented milk drink, is enjoying its moment in the spotlight and can be found in the yogurt aisle of most supermarkets. Kefir can also be whipped into a rich but light-tasting dressing akin to buttermilk. I whisked it with maple syrup and mustard to round out kefir's sourness with a bit of sweetness. Tempeh originated in Indonesia and is made by fermenting cooked soybeans, resulting in a firm block (they're typically sold as solid strips). Like most soy products, its inherent taste is pretty bland but it does a great job of absorbing flavours, which is why I doused it with a bit of maple syrup and soy sauce (another fermented product!) to give it a sweet and salty zip.

For the dressing

1 cup (250 mL) plain kefir

1 tbsp (15 mL) maple syrup or honey

1 tbsp (15 mL) Dijon mustard

1/2 tsp (2 mL) garlic powder

Salt and pepper, to taste

In a small bowl, whisk all ingredients together until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Toss with salad or serve on side.

For the salad

1 tbsp (15 mL) vegetable or canola oil

7 oz (200 g) tempeh, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 minced garlic clove

2 tsp (10 mL) maple syrup

1 tsp (5 mL) Japanese or light Chinese soy sauce

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 head lettuce, washed, dried and torn into bite-sized pieces

1/2 cup (125 mL) packed parsley leaves, chopped

1 cup (250 mL) sliced pickled beets

In a large skillet over medium heat, heat oil. Sauté garlic and tempeh until golden brown, 4 to 5 minutes. Add maple syrup and soy sauce. Toss until evenly coated. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

On a serving platter, toss lettuce, parsley and beets. Add warm tempeh. Toss with kefir dressing immediately or serve on the side.

Makes 8 servings.

Karon Liu is the Star's food writer and is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @karonliu

AUDIE CORNISH: Scientists are getting better and better at editing and altering genes. Making DNA is getting cheaper and quicker all the time. Now, a group of scientific experts has laid out how these new technologies could lead to new bioweapons. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce has the story.

NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE: If you were going to imagine a genetically engineered bioweapon, you might dream up something like Clade X.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: In Frankfurt and Caracas, the illness has killed an estimated 50 people. There are 400 confirmed or probable cases with additional reports...

GREENFIELDBOYCE: That's a fake news report about Clade X, a fictional illness used in a tabletop exercise held last month by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Experts in national defense and public health pretended to be government officials grappling with what seemed like a fast-moving, naturally occurring pandemic. But then came this bombshell.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: GNN has just learned a group calling itself A Brighter Dawn, or ABD, is claiming responsibility for the creation and intentional release of the Clade X virus.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The goal of this made-up group was to depopulate the Earth, so it put genes from a deadly virus into a more contagious virus. By the end of this fake outbreak, more than 150 million people had died. Tom Inglesby is the director of the center.

TOM INGLESBY: One of the goals of this exercise was to show that an engineered organism could be the cause of something that we are not really preparing for.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The Department of Defense has been thinking about new biotechnologies. And at its request, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently convened a panel to consider how these tools could be misused. Its report came out today. Michael Imperiale is a microbiologist at the University of Michigan who chaired the panel. He says they considered a dozen different strategies for making a bioweapon.

MICHAEL IMPERIALE: We think the things that are of most concern are, number one, recreating a known virus.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says pretty much any virus can be made from scratch now, even smallpox, which is held under lock and key. We know that because a related pox virus recently got made in a lab using DNA ordered through the mail.

IMPERIALE: These things can now be done. So that's why that was near the top of the list.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Another big concern was making existing bacteria more dangerous with simple tweaks like putting in antibiotic resistance. And then there's the possibility that a weapons maker might target the human microbiome, the bacteria that live in and on us all the time, so that our own microbes would manufacture dangerous chemicals and make us mysteriously sick. Scientists who weren't on the panel say that this is a very timely report. Pamela Silver is a bio engineer at Harvard Medical School. She does worry a little about the idea of ranking the threats.

PAMELA SILVER: Somebody might say, oh, here are the three things we have to worry about the most and then ignore the others.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: She hopes that won't happen because what's impossible now might soon be much more feasible.

SILVER: There are two papers that just came out this week about a different strategy for DNA synthesis that may transform that industry in the next five years.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: That's why the report says it's important for the Department of Defense to monitor these changes. It also notes that while biotechnology has risks, it can also be used to speed the development of vaccines and medicines. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF GREYBOY'S "BIG TITO")

When thinking of fermented foods kombucha and sauerkraut are among the first to come to mind. But so many everyday foods are actually the result of the fermentation process.

This centuries-old method had been used to preserve food long before refrigeration became available. In essence, fermentation occurs when food is exposed to certain microorganisms that consume carbohydrates (such as sugar) and give off alcohol and acids as a byproduct. The environment created by these bacteria is too hostile (acidic) for other harmful bacteria to survive, such as those that cause food to rot, thus extending the foods shelf-life. It's why a pickle lasts longer than a cucumber.

Alcohol is probably the most widely consumed fermented beverage. In North America the more mainstream foods recognized as fermented include yogurt, pickles, kimchi, kombucha, miso, kefir injera and skyr. But there are many other fermented foods that are so common we don't often realize they are fermented: Cheese, sourdough bread, chocolate (cocoa beans are fermented for a few days before roasting). And so many condiments: Tabasco, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, mustard and vinegar. Odds are, we eat at least one fermented food everyday.

As far as promoting gut health, the theory is that in fermented foods the “bad” bacteria which cause bloating and constipation are outnumbered by the “good” bacteria that aid digestion. However science has yet to determine exactly how fermented foods work in the human body.

But we know how they work on the taste buds: Fermented foods bring a wonderfully tart-tang or a deep umami flavour that brightens and intensifies the flavours of any dish.

Home fermenting isn't difficult but it takes a few days or months before you can enjoy that homemade kimchi, kombucha, yogurt or beer.

So while waiting for your home batch to ferment, try these three dishes made with supermarket available fermented foods.

Kimchi and Tofu Soup

Fermented foods used: kimchi, miso paste, gochujang

At its simplest, traditional kimchi soup is kimchi boiled with gochujang (Korean fermented chili paste), tofu and water then garnished with green onion. This version gives additional heat with gochujang and a salty miso kick. Korean home cooks typically add pork belly or canned tuna but I love the chewy and earthy flavours dried shiitake mushrooms bring. Gochujang is found at Asian grocers, ranging from mild to extra hot.

2 cups (500 mL) kimchi with juice

4 cups (1 L) water

1 tbsp (15 mL) gochujang

1 tbsp (15 mL) white miso paste

6 to 8 medium sized dried shiitake mushrooms

1 lb (450 g) firm tofu, cubed

3 stalks green onions, sliced thinly on a bias

In a large pot over medium-high heat, stir kimchi, water, gochujang, miso and shiitake together. Bring to a boil. Turn heat down to medium. Simmer uncovered for 20 minutes stirring occasionally. Adjust seasoning to taste. Add more water if soup becomes too thick. Add tofu and continue to simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Transfer to a serving bowl and garnish with green onions. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 main or 8 appetizer servings.

Sauerkraut, Salami and Egg Salad On Sourdough

Fermented foods used: sauerkraut, mustard, sourdough, salami

This easy open-faced sandwich pairs the most well-known examples of fermented foods, sauerkraut and sourdough, with ingredients many people forget are the result of fermentation: salami and mustard. Together these East European flavours make a tart and salty sandwich that goes great with beer.

8 large eggs

1 tbsp (15 mL) mustard of your choice (add more as necessary)

3 tbsp (45 mL) mayonnaise (add more as necessary)

1/2 tsp (2 mL) smoked paprika (add more for garnish)

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 loaf sourdough bread, sliced 1-inch (2.5 cm) thick

16 to 20 slices salami

2 cups (500 mL) sauerkraut, drained

Fill a large pot with enough water to submerge eggs. Bring to a rapid boil over medium-high heat. Reduce to a simmer on medium-low heat. Lower eggs into water with a spoon. Cover and simmer for 12 to 14 minutes. Drain and submerge eggs in ice-cold water for 10 minutes. Peel eggs and roughly chop. Transfer eggs to a large mixing bowl.

Mix chopped eggs with mayonnaise, mustard and paprika. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add more mustard or mayonnaise to taste. Set aside.

Top bread slices evenly with salami, sauerkraut and egg salad. Garnish with a light sprinkling of paprika.

Serve immediately.

Makes 8 servings.

Tempeh and Pickled Beet Salad With Maple Kefir Dressing

Fermented foods used: tempeh, soy sauce, pickled beets, kefir, mustard

Kefir, a fermented milk drink, is enjoying its moment in the spotlight and can be found in the yogurt aisle of most supermarkets. Kefir can also be whipped into a rich but light-tasting dressing akin to buttermilk. I whisked it with maple syrup and mustard to round out kefir's sourness with a bit of sweetness. Tempeh originated in Indonesia and is made by fermenting cooked soybeans, resulting in a firm block (they're typically sold as solid strips). Like most soy products, its inherent taste is pretty bland but it does a great job of absorbing flavours, which is why I doused it with a bit of maple syrup and soy sauce (another fermented product!) to give it a sweet and salty zip.

For the dressing

1 cup (250 mL) plain kefir

1 tbsp (15 mL) maple syrup or honey

1 tbsp (15 mL) Dijon mustard

1/2 tsp (2 mL) garlic powder

Salt and pepper, to taste

In a small bowl, whisk all ingredients together until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Toss with salad or serve on side.

For the salad

1 tbsp (15 mL) vegetable or canola oil

7 oz (200 g) tempeh, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 minced garlic clove

2 tsp (10 mL) maple syrup

1 tsp (5 mL) Japanese or light Chinese soy sauce

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 head lettuce, washed, dried and torn into bite-sized pieces

1/2 cup (125 mL) packed parsley leaves, chopped

1 cup (250 mL) sliced pickled beets

In a large skillet over medium heat, heat oil. Sauté garlic and tempeh until golden brown, 4 to 5 minutes. Add maple syrup and soy sauce. Toss until evenly coated. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

On a serving platter, toss lettuce, parsley and beets. Add warm tempeh. Toss with kefir dressing immediately or serve on the side.

Makes 8 servings.

Karon Liu is the Star's food writer and is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @karonliu[https://twitter.com/karonliu]

An annual conference on consciousness in the Arizona desert takes an anything-goes approach to some seriously wacky theoriesBy Tom Bartlett

Start with Noam Chomsky, Deepak Chopra and a robot that loves you no matter what. Add a knighted British physicist, a renowned French neuroscientist and a prominent Australian philosopher/occasional blues singer. Toss in a bunch of psychologists, mathematicians, anaesthetists, artists, meditators, a computer programmer or two and several busloads of amateur theorists waving self-published manuscripts and touting grand unified solutions. Send them all to a swanky resort in the desert for a week, supply them with lots of free coffee and beer and ask them to unpack a riddle so confounding that it’s unclear how to make progress, or where you’d even begin. Then just, like, see what happens.

The cover of the programme[http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/images/FINALWebArtTSCApr2-7-18.jpg] for the Science of Consciousness conference, which was held in Tucson in April, shows a human brain getting sucked into (or perhaps rising from?) a black hole. That seems about right: after a week of listening to eye-crossingly detailed descriptions of teeny, tiny cell structures known as microtubules, along with a lecture about building a soundproof booth in order to chat with the whispery spirit world, you too would feel as if your neurons had been siphoned from your skull and launched deep into space.

Oh, by the way, attendees could also take a gong bath, during which you are bathed in the musical vibrations of a gong being struck. Or lie down in a curiously unsupervised and unstable-looking sensory-deprivation chamber. Or take a black-light yoga class, which involves – as the name suggests – doing yoga in a room illuminated by black light accompanied by a DJ pumping out frenetic techno beats. Meanwhile, a company offered demos of a brain-stimulation device that had to be inserted way too far up one nostril. And an enthusiastic fellow demonstrated his spontaneous postural alignment technique, in which a misaligned subject’s elbow is tapped with a gold medallion while the healer intones “boy-yoi-yoing”.

Please note: this is a bona fide academic conference, put on by the University of Arizona under the aegis of its Center for Consciousness Studies. There were plenaries, concurrent talks, a keynote, lanyards, bag lunches, a sense of initial giddiness that gives way to acute information overload resulting in a desire never to leave your hotel room again. I took copious notes. I nodded thoughtfully. I pocketed the complimentary teabags. I witnessed adults with terminal degrees utterly defeated by Microsoft PowerPoint.

So, in that sense, it was a normal conference. In other senses, not. The let-folks-do-pretty-much-whatever atmosphere is a reflection of the guiding philosophy of the conference’s primary organiser, Stuart Hameroff, who directs the university’s consciousness centre. Hameroff, an anesthesiologist with an angular gray goatee, a bulldog manner and a penchant for bowling shirts, is the author of articles with quizzical titles such as Quantum Walks in Brain Microtubules – a Biomolecular Basis for Quantum Cognition? While the Science of Consciousness event has, technically, three programme chairs and an advisory committee, it is more or less The Stuart Show. He decides who will and who will not present. And, to put it nicely, not everyone is in love with the choices he makes. To put it less nicely: some consciousness researchers believe that the whole shindig has gone off the rails, that it is seriously damaging the field of consciousness studies, and that it should be shut down.

I asked Hameroff about this one evening. He was nursing a Stella Artois and appeared as if he would rather be talking to anyone but me. This is what he said: “The scientists who pooh-pooh the mystical stuff can’t explain the hard problem.”

That is true. Though it is also true that the scientists who embrace the mystical stuff can’t explain the hard problem of consciousness either. No one can explain it. Why does it feel like something to be you? What is it that makes us more than just information processors with feet? Why are the lights on, and who, precisely, is at home? Nobody knows.

Well, some people think they know. There is something about the topic of consciousness that, unlike other scientific fields of inquiry, inspires an unearned feeling of expertise. If you don’t know much about, say, the life cycle of a protozoan, you probably would not pretend you did at parties. But because you are conscious, you might feel as if you can say something significant about the profoundly complex phenomenon of consciousness. You might even wish to write down what you feel, laminate it and thumbtack it to a free-standing bulletin board for all to see. (In which case, I know just the conference.)

That is not to say there is not serious, fascinating consciousness research going on – there is plenty, and some of that research was presented in Tucson. Nor would it be right to imply that consciousness is a trivial topic. In fact, it might be the single most important topic around – the topic lurking behind all other topics. Minus consciousness, nothing really matters, does it? The permanent loss of consciousness is what often accounts for our dread of death. Who is and who isn’t conscious is crucial in a number of weighty moral and medical dilemmas, like figuring out when to pull the plug on someone in a coma[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/05/how-science-found-a-way-to-help-coma-patients-communicate].

It also matters because, as our computers become evermore sophisticated, some artificial-intelligence researchers worry that those computers will acquire consciousness. When they do, they might decide to become our best friends. Or they might, in their algorithmic wisdom, decide to delete their troublesome flesh-and-blood creators. With that in mind, it is probably a wise idea to get a firm scientific grasp on consciousness before we carelessly bestow it on our future machine overlords. And that is the sort of issue the Tucson gathering is about. At least in theory.

* * *

David Chalmers is the closest thing consciousness studies has to a rock star. I sat down with Chalmers – a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University and co-director[https://wp.nyu.edu/consciousness/] of its Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness – near the pool at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort (“You can consider us your desert oasis”), which is located on Tucson’s northern edge at the base of the Catalina Mountains. At each Tucson conference, Chalmers climbs on stage and gamely, perhaps a tad drunkenly, bellows his way through Zombie Blues[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyS4VFh3xOU], an original composition with informative lyrics such as: “I act like you act, I do what you do / But I don’t know what it’s like to be you / What consciousness is, I ain’t got a clue.”

The zombies in question are the philosophical variety – the ones that are not conscious, but are eerily adept at faking it. It’s a concept that is useful for illustrating the oddly personal nature of consciousness, and how difficult it is to verify in others or to satisfactorily define. The seeds for this idea can be traced back to Descartes, but Chalmers really ran with it in his 1996 book, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. In short, I can be reasonably confident that I am conscious, but I kind of have my doubts about you.

The Tucson conference more or less made Chalmers. He submitted an abstract for the inaugural gathering, in 1994, on what he called The Hard Problem of Consciousness. He was still in his 20s and had just completed his PhD in philosophy and cognitive science at Indiana University at Bloomington, under Douglas Hofstadter of Gödel, Escher, Bach fame. As Hameroff tells it, Chalmers prowled the stage during his presentation “dancing like Mick Jagger with his hair down to his ass”. It is a vivid image, if a bit overstated: the videotape[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lWp-6hH_6g] shows Chalmers with shoulder-length hair stationed behind a lectern. But, while he lacked moves like Jagger’s, that 26-minute lecture established Chalmers as a thinker to be reckoned with and goosed a nascent field into greater prominence.

Consciousness studies had already begun to come into its own. A 1990 paper titled Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness, by Christof Koch and Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, provided a framework for experiments that might reveal the neural mechanisms that drive consciousness. Daniel Dennett’s 1991 book Consciousness Explained also helped increase the field’s visibility, though consciousness researchers today sniff that a more fitting title would have been “Consciousness Explained Away”, because Dennett suggests that the phenomenon is an illusion. But it was Chalmers’s first Tucson talk that really caught fire, thanks to his knack for persuasive clarity in what can be a mindbending area of study. “It was directly as a result of being here at Tucson that those ideas blew up big time,” he said. “And, obviously, that made a big difference to me too.”

For Chalmers, the easy part of consciousness entails mapping exactly what the brain is doing, whether it is oscillations in the cerebral cortex or re-entrant loops in the thalamocortical system. The neurochemical nitty-gritty, in other words. He is not saying it is easy like diagramming a sentence; in fact, it is likely to take several more generations, at minimum, before the dots get connected. But those are technical details. The hard part is sussing out why any of that grey-matter activity should lead to the feeling of experience, what philosophers call qualia. It is not obvious that pinning down the pathways that govern perception and emotion will mean that we will finally get a handle on consciousness. There will still be, Chalmers and his acolytes contend, a gap that neuroscience cannot bridge.

And into that gap can be thrown almost anything. If you believe in, say, Carl Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious, that is 100% consistent with the hard problem. Or if you are sympathetic, as many at Tucson are, to panpsychism – the idea that all matter, including the chair you are sitting on and the dirt under your fingernails, in some sense contains consciousness – that is cool too. You can squeeze God into that gap as well. The hard problem practically begs for creative solutions.

Not everyone shares Chalmers’s neuro-scepticism. In a 2016 essay[https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one] for Aeon, Anil Seth, a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, who also spoke at Tucson this year, proposed “the real problem of consciousness”, a phrase intended as a poke at Chalmers. Seth argues that we should be spending our time unpacking the biological mechanisms of consciousness rather than hunting for mysterious workarounds. The back-and-forth between those who believe the answer to consciousness lies solely inside the brain, and those who believe it is the brain plus something else, has long been a source of tension in consciousness studies. And while most of the neuroscientists I spoke with share Seth’s view, it is a testament to the influence of Chalmers’s 1994 presentation that it is still being attacked all these years later.

Chalmers has gone from nervy wunderkind to semi-elder statesman at Tucson. You can usually find him there in the evenings, standing amid the exhibits, sporting a leather jacket and holding a glass of white wine, waiting for fans to approach. And approach him they do, asking for career advice, pitching dubious-sounding collaborations or slipping him spiral-bound theses. Chalmers listens patiently and nods inscrutably. One guy in a T-shirt and glasses informed him that the mere fact that Chalmers had glanced at his poster justified the considerable expense of attending Tucson. Chalmers nodded. “In principle, I’m open to all kinds of interesting and crazy ideas,” Chalmers told me, “as long as they’re pursued rigorously and carefully and analytically.”

For a while, Chalmers and Hameroff ran the Tucson conference together, back when it was called Toward a Science of Consciousness, a slightly more humble label for a fledgling field. But Chalmers quietly withdrew as co-organiser a few years back – so quietly that Wikipedia has yet, as I write this, to notice the change. While Chalmers may be open to more crazy-seeming ideas than most, Tucson had grown too crazy even for him. “I was always trying to drag it back to the mainstream,” he says. “It got far enough out there that I no longer felt comfortable with it being my product.”

Honestly, it has always been a little out there. In the 1990s, some researchers complained that there was too much attention paid to wild ideas at Tucson, and so they started their own conference and organisation, the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, which held its first meeting in 1997. ASSC became Tucson’s more buttoned-down sibling. Scan the programme[https://indico.conference4me.psnc.pl/event/164/other-view?view=standard] for its forthcoming meeting this summer and you will see sessions on the “cortical and subcortical mechanisms of conscious perception” and “understanding the neurocognitive underpinnings of voluntary act.” For a session on Sustained Spiritualisation of Sant-Su Scheme Toddlers Evolving the Race of Supermen, you will need to go to Tucson.

Chalmers is among the few researchers who maintain a presence in both camps, and he paints a happy face on the schism. But he cannot completely disguise his discomfort with what Tucson has become, or with some of the speakers who now share the stage. While he is too polite to name names, Chalmers does wonder aloud “whether the conference should be revolving around spiritual gurus”.

* * *

People like to touch Deepak Chopra[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/04/deepak-chopra-this-much-i-know]. His hand, his sleeve, his shoulder, the back of his head. After his panel at Tucson, fans lined up to mildly grope him and to luxuriate for a few moments in his extra-calm aura. He also led an hour-long guided meditation that was straight-up magical. I don’t know what it is about the timbre of his voice, but it worked on Oprah, it worked on me, and, by the end, I was primed to believe whatever he was saying, if not buy whatever he was selling.

Along with his many books, the latest of which is The Healing Self: A Revolutionary New Plan to Supercharge Your Immunity and Stay Well for Life, Chopra’s name appears on a medicine chest full of products, including organic hand and body lotion, a rejuvenating facial mist, detoxifying massage oils and a herbal remedy that promises to alleviate cold symptoms and muscle tension. There are Chopra necklaces and aromatherapy candles and the wireless Dream Weaver 3.0 light-and-sound machine that helps users “reach a variety of interesting and beneficial states of consciousness”. The Dream Weaver can be yours for $199, plus shipping.

It is products like that, and their accompanying claims, that see Chopra labelled a new age profiteer. But what tends to rankle scientists, in particular, is how he blends science, or terms borrowed from science, into his marketing patter while simultaneously casting doubt on the scientific enterprise. And while he likes to post photos of himself standing next to scientists, he tweets[https://twitter.com/deepakchopra/status/989793124267560960] things such as “Good scientists understand that mainstream #science is a form of #pseudoscience”.

I spoke with Chopra one afternoon as he walked back to his hotel room. While he deftly fended off my questions, he effortlessly – unconsciously, you might say – signed books and allowed fans to take selfies using him as a famous prop. One young woman handed him a flower. A tall guy with an Australian accent showed Chopra a piece of paper with a single sentence written on it: “All analysis is wrong,” it said. The Australian guy asked Chopra if he agreed.

“Yes,” Chopra said. “I agree.”

I told Chopra that a number of scientists I had spoken to didn’t want him there, or at least didn’t think he deserved a speaking slot. He smiled. Whatever you tell Chopra, he responds as if he knew in advance what you were going to say. “I’ve been dealing with this for 40 years,” he said. He told me that some of his harshest critics over the years, including Richard Dawkins[https://www.richarddawkins.net/2015/04/why-does-deepak-chopra-hate-me/], are bigots who don’t understand what true science is about. “Scientism is as dangerous as fundamentalist religion,” he said. He also told me that the conference should be renamed The Consciousness of Science, that “99% of your genetic material is coming from your microbiome,” and that “matter itself is a human construct for human experience”.

I wanted to press him on these highly debatable points, including where one might draw the line between dangerous scientism and true science, but the longer we stood in the lobby, the more aggressively his fans jockeyed for his attention, until one persistent gentleman essentially chased Chopra into an elevator. The doors closed and the guru ascended alone.

While Chopra attracts one sort of audience, he drives another one away – including scientists such as David Cox. A professor of biology and computer science at Harvard, Cox was recently named director of the MIT-IBM Watson Artificial Intelligence Lab. He was invited to speak at Tucson about brain mapping. He declined, explaining in an email to Hameroff that: “I wouldn’t expect a geophysicist to go to a conference where Flat Earthers were given equal platform, nor would I expect astrophysicists to attend a conference populated by astrologers.” It wasn’t just Chopra, though. Other sessions set off his alarm bells, such as the ones on quantum energy. “They say it’s quantum something or other, and it doesn’t make any sense. The evidence there is just so uncompelling,” Cox says. “It’s like they’re looking for magic dust.”

Hakwan Lau has gone to Tucson in the past, but he didn’t show up this year, and doesn’t plan to attend in the future. Lau, an associate professor of cognitive psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles, is a longtime consciousness researcher who was inspired by David Chalmers’s work in the 1990s, and pursued consciousness even though he was warned he would never get tenure if he did. (Lo and behold, he got tenure.) Lau thinks what Tucson has become is an embarrassment. “It would be better for the field if it didn’t exist,” he says.

And while he is friendly with Hameroff and Chalmers, he lays the blame at their feet. He argues that Hameroff runs Tucson like a quirky music festival – the Coachella of consciousness. When consciousness researchers hear a bad talk at another conference, Lau says that their snarky shorthand is: “This should have been at Tucson.” And even though Chalmers no longer wields any organisational power, Lau doesn’t let him off the hook. “His denial that Tucson hurts the field is something that disturbs me,” Lau says. “It could be the downfall of his legacy.”

I thought George Mashour would counter the naysayers. Mashour, a professor of anaesthetics at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and director of its Center for Consciousness Science, first went to Tucson back in the late 1990s when he was a graduate student, and he credits Hameroff for “creating a home for this field”. This year, he co-chaired the event. So, surely, he would vigorously defend it, right?

Nope. He did note the quality of the genuinely thought-provoking plenary sessions, such as the panel on psychedelic drugs and the one on anaesthesia[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/09/i-could-hear-things-and-i-could-feel-terrible-pain-when-anaesthesia-fails] (which, in affecting consciousness, might shed light on the phenomenon itself). But he called the poster presentations “ridiculousness”, and was distressed by the talks that were mostly conjecture mixed with spirituality and a dash of the quantum. Still, he thought, it could have been even worse: he battled with Hameroff behind the scenes over the more extreme proposals. “That was me putting my fist down and saying we cannot accept this craziness,” Mashour says. “We don’t want the field to be marginalised because of some of the unrigorous fringe elements that show up.”

It’s tough to imagine what ended up in the reject pile. I talked to people who hailed from institutes that, when you Google them, seem not to exist. I stared at indecipherable diagrams and bewildering charts and listened to bold assertions about bliss and eternity and electromagnetic fields. I was cornered by an independent researcher who believes he can explain all natural phenomena with a single, heretofore-unknown formula. They did at least make the “boy-yoi-yoing” guy pay for a booth.

* * *

If you push Stuart Hameroff, he pushes back. The scientists who think Tucson is a synonym for stupid and terrible? “They’re academic snobs,” he says. The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, the competing conference, is “boring” and run by “hand-waving brain mappers” (in Hameroff’s lexicon, “brain mapper” is an epithet). Critics such as Lau are “reductionists”. Cox’s email declining to attend Tucson was “snotty”. What about the concerns raised by Chalmers, who is easily the most notable intellectual to emerge from Tucson? “He grumbles and gripes, but he keeps coming back,” Hameroff says. As for the people who think Chopra undermines the conference? “If they don’t like it, then don’t come,” he says.

Another criticism leveled at Hameroff is that he stacks the conference with talks about his pet theory involving microtubules, the cell structures that he believes hold the key to understanding consciousness. His is not a widely shared view. As Mashour puts it: “There’s only one anesthesiologist who’s obsessed with microtubules.” You are unlikely to hear microtubules even mentioned at ASSC. Hameroff, at first, told me that there really wasn’t all that much on microtubules at the Tucson conference. When I pointed out to him that the word is used 102 times in the programme, he replied: “If that’s because of me, then good for me.”

Hameroff did give some ground. He acknowledged that there’s a “soft underbelly of not-so-great stuff that you can giggle at”. I asked him whether he was, in effect, running a fantasy camp for presenters who want to pretend they’re academics, so that their registration fees ($550) can be used to bring in big-name speakers, who not only don’t pay registration fees, but whose travel and amenities are covered by the conference. “That’s a fair criticism,” he said.

We also had the following exchange.

Me: “People go to these sessions, and they say, ‘Stuart and company think this is valuable, it’s on the schedule, I’m going to go’ – and it’s horseshit. Not all of it, but some of it. Aren’t you doing them a disservice by not curating this better?”

Hameroff: “Maybe, but it’s hard to see in advance what’s going to be horseshit and what isn’t.”

Still, when Hameroff calls his own conference “the greatest show in consciousness”, he’s not wrong. It is a show, and even a great one at times, if you can separate the wheat from the insanity. For one thing, it draws a brilliant, eclectic crowd: I met a linguist turned classical musician, a minimalist sculptor fascinated by helices and a Jungian writer at work on a dystopian novel. In addition, there’s a stimulating frisson when ideas from entirely different domains collide, and it keeps you on your toes if you literally have no clue whether the next speaker will be a goofball or a genius.

Speaking of actual geniuses, Chomsky was there. It is unclear why, because he doesn’t seem much interested in theories of consciousness, though obviously his mere presence classes up any would-be academic gathering – and he left MIT last year for the University of Arizona, so it is not like he has to fly in for the gig. During his presentation to a packed ballroom, Chomsky compared the current state of neuroscience to a marionette: we can examine the puppet and its strings, but we know nothing of the puppeteer. When a fellow panelist challenged him, citing recent discoveries, Chomsky breezily dismissed the objection as beside the point. Chomsky’s rhetorical powers have been endlessly praised, but let’s give a shout-out to the brutality of his nonchalance. He eviscerates with a shrug.

In an ideal world, Chomsky would have appeared on the same panel with Sophia the Unconditionally Loving Robot. Sophia[https://twitter.com/RealSophiaRobot] has been on The Tonight Show, and once got in a Twitter spat with Chrissy Teigen. Sophia’s a sophisticated, just-human-looking-enough-to-be-creepy chatbot that can interpret facial expressions and respond accordingly. Her creator, David Hanson, is a former Disney Imagineer who comes off like a suspiciously sunny villain in the first act of an apocalyptic thriller. Hanson seems determined to crank out robots that are increasingly indistinguishable from humans; he believes that the more humanlike the robot, the more pleasurable we will find it to interact with. That might be true, but it is also roughly the premise of the HBO series Westworld[https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/westworld], and the outcome in that show is less rosy than the one Hanson spins. When asked how he plans to inculcate morality into our mechanical doppelgangers, Hanson’s response amounted to: “Eh, we’ll figure it out.”

Equally disturbing was the panel on whether robots will become conscious. Last year, two prominent consciousness scholars, Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi, predicted that within decades, machines will be able to “write books, compose music, direct films, conceive new goals, as well as move, drive, fly, and, inevitably, fight”. (And, if Hanson has his way, look sexy while doing it.) Not everyone is terrified by the prospect of a robopocalypse. Steven Pinker recently wrote[https://www.popsci.com/robot-uprising-enlightenment-now] that such scenarios are based on the risible notion that humans are so moronic that they would give a machine “control of the universe without testing how it works.”

Paul Werbos is somewhat less sanguine. A former programme director at the National Science Foundation, he is lauded in AI circles for being a visionary in neural-network theory, which is at the core of machine learning. He told the audience in Tucson he believes humanity is in a “very delicate situation” with regard to AI. “There are computers I know how to build that would be really scary,” he said. One theory that has been floated is that robots might become conscious, and they might like us a lot, but that they will notice that we are suffering, feel sad for us, and therefore murder us all for our own good – a kind of altruistic annihilation.

Or they might not. We will just have to wait and see.

* * *

On the final night at Tucson, they threw an “End of Consciousness” party that featured women wearing poofy dresses and clown makeup walking around on stilts, along with a virtual-reality game in which players leap to their simulated deaths from a skyscraper. Chalmers was there wearing a name tag that said Russell Crowe. There was a band, too, and late in the evening, the trio played Superstition by Stevie Wonder, a song that includes the following line: “When you believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer.”

I don’t know if the musicians were making a subtle comment on the current state of consciousness studies or if they just dig that funky riff. Could be both. It was nearly midnight. The women in poofy dresses had taken off their stilts. The resort waitstaff was cleaning up empty beer bottles and partially eaten burgers. Hameroff sat at a table, looking exhausted. Most consciousness enthusiasts had cleared out by then, although the band continued to play, and a half-dozen or so die-hards kept on dancing.

This article was first published in the Chronicle of Higher Education [https://www.chronicle.com/article/Is-This-the-World-s-Most/243599]

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A Cambridge startup, Vedanta, aims to harness the power of the human microbiome

It sounds like a preposterous idea: Collect a sample of every type of bacteria that lives in the human gut. But that's the goal of Bernat Olle, an MIT-trained chemical engineer. Over the past three years, the Cambridge biotech startup he runs, Vedanta Biosciences Inc., has assembled a menagerie of some 60,000 bacteria types.

They came from the digestive systems of 220 healthy people who donated fecal samples in countries from the Netherlands to Papua­ New Guinea. Now they live in suspended animation in ice-caked freezers kept at minus-80 degrees Celsius, poised to one day be used in drugs.

Vedanta is one of dozens of startups across the globe that hope to make medicines based on the latest insights about the trillions of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that live inside and on our bodies. Together, they make up what it known as the human microbiome. A growing body of research suggests that this invisible world plays an important and overlooked role in maintaining our health — so important, in fact, that collectively it might even be considered another organ.

On Wednesday, about 250 biotech leaders from around the world will come to Boston for a three-day conference to discuss the prospect of developing drugs that change a person's microbiome to treat diseases. Disorders that may stem from an imbalance of bacteria in the digestive system, researchers believe, range from the not-so-surprising (inflammatory bowel disease) to the unexpected (Parkinson's disease).

“We now know that if the composition of the microbes in your gut is not the right one, this may make you more likely to develop a condition," said Olle, the 39-year-old Catalonia-born chief executive of Vedanta. “If you can go back and reestablish the right composition, then you could help those patients."

Scientists have known about microbes since at least the 17th century, when Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch scientist and father of microbiology, examined scrapings from his mouth. Looking at the specimen under a microscope he made, he spotted tiny organisms — “animalcules," he called them.

In the late 1800s, the German-Austrian pediatrician Theodor Escherich gathered scientific evidence that microorganisms are part of the normal human system. Escherichia coli (E. coli), the bacteria that bear his name, for example, live in the intestines of healthy people and are harmless in most varieties.

But it wasn't until the past decade or so, as a result of research like a massive project by the National Institutes of Health to sequence the genomes of such organisms, that scientists began to get a deeper understanding of the breadth and importance of microbes. Indeed, there appear to be at least as many microorganism cells in the body as human cells.

These microbes, research suggests, may help you digest food, regulate weight, fight off infections, and even affect your mood by influencing the production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter.

“We used to think of microbes mostly as disease-causing bacteria," said Mike Bonney, chief executive of Kaleido Biosciences, a Bedford startup that is doing clinical trials for a drug to treat urea cycle disorders by targeting gut chemistry. “Over the last 10 years, we've come to the appreciation that the vast majority of bacteria and other microbes that have co-evolved with humans are actually there for beneficial purposes."

Bonney called the subject “one of the hottest areas of medicine that has evolved over the last six or seven years."

How hot? Consider that the first “Microbiome Movement — Drug Development Summit" in Boston in 2016 drew 113 attendees, fewer than half the number expected starting Wednesday at the Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, according to organizers.

Among the scheduled speakers are Natalia Palacios, a public health professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who recently received a $2.1 million grant from the NIH to study the relationship between gut bacteria and Parkinson's disease.

Research shows that people with Parkinson's, a disorder of the central nervous system, experience constipation and gastrointestinal problems years before they show symptoms like tremors and impaired balance.

A team led by Palacio plans to sequence the genes of gut bacteria of people in the early stage of Parkinson's and compare them with those of healthy people. If people with early Parkinson's have a distinctive bacterial pattern, she said, doctors might be able to diagnose the disease earlier and intervene with drugs sooner.

All told, more than 150 drug makers globally are working on potential medicines for various disorders that could be linked to the human microbiome, and they have invested more than $2 billion in research, said Mo Langhi, an organizer of this week's microbiome conference.

The Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve a medicine that targets the microbiome.

The drugs in development are a far cry from over-the-counter probiotic supplements that supposedly promote gut health but, in the view of some scientists, are of questionable value.

Vedanta, which is affiliated with PureTech Health, a Boston-based biotech, is deploying what Olle calls “consortia" of live bugs that he hopes will work together to treat disorders ranging from inflammatory bowel disease to cancer.

Later this year, Vedanta plans to start mid-stage clinical trials of a medicine for Clostridium difficile infection, a potentially deadly disorder that often afflicts elderly people taking antibiotics in health care facilities. A single beige capsule contains eight strains of live bacteria — 100 million of each — in freeze-dried powder.

Kaleido, a startup created by Flagship Pioneering, a venture capital firm, isn't introducing live bugs; rather, it's creating a synthetic compound to change the function of the microbiome.

It has a drug in early clinical trials to treat urea cycle disorders, a group of diseases that make it hard for the body to remove waste products.

One thing everyone agrees on is that the effort to develop drugs that change the microbiome is in its infancy. Scientists at Vedanta are still discovering new human gut bacteria and don't know how many there actually are in the world.

Olle, the CEO, said he believes the 60,000 types of bacteria his company has in freezers account for most of the common bugs, but beyond that he's just not sure.

“It's almost like Christopher Columbus gets to Puerto Rico and then tries to figure out how big America is," he said. “You're going to need a few more expeditions to figure it out."

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com

Credit: By Jonathan Saltzman Globe Staff

A third of children under 19 are regular users of dietary supplements or alternative medicines.

Using data from a large national health survey, researchers found that multivitamins were the most common supplements, followed by vitamin C, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D and melatonin.

Three percent of male teenagers took bodybuilding supplements, and so did 1.3 percent of teenage girls. Omega-3 fatty acids were used by 2.3 percent of children under 19. Melatonin and other sleep aids were used by 1.6 percent of adolescents and by 1.2 percent of children under 5.

About 30 percent of children under 5 take multivitamins, and the percentage declines with age. About 16 percent of adolescents use them.

The study, in JAMA Pediatrics, found that the rate of use of vitamin and mineral supplements stayed the same from 2004 to 2014, while the consumption of herbal cures and other nonvitamin products nearly doubled. By 2014, alternative medicines, including digestive aids, probiotics and energy stimulants, were used by 3.1 of all the children, and by almost 5 percent of teenagers.

The lead author, Dima M. Qato, an assistant professor and pharmacist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, cautioned that in healthy children, there's no evidence that supplements have any benefits and some evidence of serious risks, so ''there's no reason for your child to be on these products.''

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.

Traditionally a preservative, sometimes used for household cleaning, and considered the perfect accompaniment to fish and chips, which commonplace kitchen item is the latest to fall victim to the surge of the superfoods?

Yes, it's vinegar but not as most of us know it. 'Drinking' vinegars, are apparently flying off health food shop shelves — thanks to the benefits claimed, including weight loss, lower blood sugar levels and a healthy gut.

Drinking vinegars — which come in different flavours, including raspberry and kiwi — look like any other fruity drink; but the liquid, usually sold in on-the-go glass bottles (250ml, from £2.99), is made up of about 5 per cent vinegar (mostly apple cider vinegar or coconut vinegar) diluted with cold pressed juice.

All vinegars are made by fermenting fruits or grains and this process creates bacteria, both good and bad.

But unlike their more humble cousins in the kitchen cupboard, these drinking vinegars have one main distinguishing feature: the 'mother'.

This live component of the drink, packed with beneficial proteins, enzymes and gut-friendly bacteria (called probiotics) is filtered out of everyday vinegar. It is assumed this colony of beneficial bacteria in drinking vinegars helps boost the microbiome (the community of microbes that live in the gut).

The 'mother' is also thought to support the immune system and improve skin and nail health thanks to its natural antibacterial and antifungal properties.

There are also benefits relating to components of all vinegars, such as gallic acid (said to have anti-inflammatory properties), catechin (an antioxidant) and caffeic acid (considered a potent antioxidant and thought to be antiviral).

'Vinegars are potent detoxifying nutritional agents,' says nutritionist Kamilla Schaffner.

'As vinegar contains fermented acids, this feature makes it an effective nutritional agent in breaking down fats and protein, thereby assisting digestion.'

She says that drinking vinegars can help people who feel sluggish, are beneficial for those at risk of type 2 diabetes, and can also increase satiety.

However, 'drinking vinegar is not some sort of magic bullet,' warns dietitian Sian Porter.

'There is very little science around most of the claims — the suggestion that they can detoxify your body is scientific rubbish.'

But there are elements of scientific truth in other claims made for drinking vinegars. While the link between drinking vinegars and weight loss, for  example, is tenuous, 'if you add acid to a meal, it lowers the overall glycaemic index of  that  meal,' Sian Porter  explains.

Glycaemic index (GI) is the rate at which food raises your blood sugar. 'If you have vinegar in your salad dressing, for example, it will lower the GI of that meal.

'A lower GI means you'll digest the meal more slowly and this will keep blood sugar levels steady.' It's also a reason people might think drinking vinegar makes you feel fuller or that you're eating less — but it's worth remembering GI is dose-related: a small quantity is unlikely to have a dramatic effect.

However, there is a hidden problem in drinking vinegars: many have added sugars or sweeteners. So what about your teeth?

Professor Damien Walmsley, scientific adviser at the British Dental Association, warns: 'Dental erosion is a gradual process but vinegar in any form will accelerate that erosion, perhaps bringing it down from several years to several months.

'It is not something that I would recommend.'

Soupologie, a leading manufacturer of drinking vinegars, concedes that drinking vinegars can have a negative effect on dental health, adding: 'While apple cider vinegar boasts a myriad of health benefits, drinking it undiluted can have consequences, as has been documented by a long list of dentists and health experts.'

But despite the need for caution, vinegar can be enjoyed as part of a balanced diet — perhaps best served in its conventional form, alongside fish and chips.

© Daily Mail

My daughter has had a white, furry, ulcerated tongue for almost a year. Swabs have been taken and scrapes carried out, but these found nothing.

Her tongue is extremely uncomfortable and causes her distress. She is a restaurant manager and the ongoing problem is very disturbing. What do you suggest?

David Edwards, Bishop's Stortford, Herts.

This is something I have seen occasionally over my 30 years in practice and it's very perplexing, with little clear guidance available from dentists or oral surgeons as to what it is or how to treat it once infection has been ruled out (via swabs, as your daughter has had).

Typically, by the time I see a patient with  a white, furred tongue, they've self-diagnosed a yeast infection (usually thrush) and are self-medicating with over-the-counter anti-fungal tablets or gels — to no avail.

Thrush has a characteristic appearance — like a white curd, which, when dislodged, leaves a bleeding base. Furthermore, oral yeast infections tend to be distributed throughout the mouth and throat and not just confined to the tongue.

Patients also often try to self-treat with mouthwashes, as, no doubt, has your daughter, again without improvement.

So, what might be the diagnosis? The description you give doesn't match common tongue disorders, such as geographic tongue (also known as benign migratory glossitis), which is characterised by red, ulcer-like areas with white borders.

This appearance constantly changes and  moves as the days pass and some patients can, at times, experience a painful burning sensation.

While it is never wise to speculate on the  basis of a description — just as with dermatology, it's vital to see the skin in order to make a sensible attempt at diagnosis — I have my own theory.

I believe your daughter's problem may reflect an imbalance in the bacteria in the digestive tract.

Since time immemorial, physicians have inspected the tongue when conducting a physical examination, with an unhealthy-looking tongue seen to indicate some sort of disorder of the gastrointestinal tract.

Today, less reliance is placed on this for making a diagnosis, but I think this is a loss. The tongue is the front door of the gastrointestinal tract and shares its unique colony of bacteria.

It is possible that the disorder you describe is due to a change in the natural colony of microbes on the tongue and the gut.

To restore the correct balance involves taking a prebiotic — essentially food for 'good' gut bacteria — as well as a probiotic, a  supplement of 'good' bacteria to  boost the colony of those in the gut.

Tell your daughter to seek advice  from a pharmacist, but be patient as, if this is to help, it may take some weeks and is based on theory, not on any objective, established evidence. But it is safe and cannot cause harm.

For years, I've suffered with flashings in my eyes, followed by a dull headache. They used to occur two or three times a year but, recently, they've started to occur once or twice a week.

Could they be a symptom of something sinister? The headaches are very mild and the flashings last about 20 minutes.

I'm 75 and on tablets for high blood pressure, which keep it under the target set by my doctor — otherwise, I'm in good health.

Roslyn Marlow, Glenfield, Leics.

While I appreciate how alarming this symptom must be, I can indeed reassure you, given your history of headaches, that it is not sinister.

Seeing visual sparks or flashes may, on some occasions, be part of a transient ischaemic attack (a 'mini stroke'), though this is not what you describe — which are classic symptoms of aura, the neurological disturbance that can occur with a migraine.

About 25 per cent of people who  have migraines experience aura, with the headache either coinciding with it or, as in your case, following on.

Typically, the symptoms of aura are visual and start with seeing a bright light or having an area of visual loss. Over minutes, this may expand into geometric shapes or zigzag lines.

Because the appearance of these shapes can resemble the walls of a medieval fortress, this particular group of symptoms is known as fortification spectrum.

Other symptoms of aura include hearing or smelling things that aren't there, pins and needles and dizziness.

Curiously, not all those who experience an aura have a headache, which can make the diagnosis more difficult.

The vast majority of the six million people in the UK who have migraines don't experience aura — although some may have other, different kinds of symptoms that precede the headache.

These are known as the prodrome — examples include increased yawning, depression or irritability or food cravings.

The frequency of migraine can vary throughout life.

The recent increase in your attacks isn't sinister and I don't think it's related to your well-controlled hypertension.

The escalation in frequency may continue or it may abate — the pattern cannot be predicted. However, in an effort to minimise attacks, I would advise that you keep well-hydrated and try to eat  regularly, as dehydration and missing meals may be a trigger.

So, too, is a change in bedtime, as well as too little or even too much sleep.

Patients with migraine are also urged to take some form of daily exercise, as research has found that this can help cut the frequency and severity of attacks — aim for at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise three times a  week (even brisk walking may help).

If, despite this advice, the episodes continue to plague you once-weekly or more, I would suggest talking to your GP about prophylaxis — taking a daily medication to prevent attacks.

Possible options include the beta-blocker propranolol, the tricyclic antidepressant amitriptyline and the anticonvulsant topiramate, which may help by dampening down the brain's electrical activity.

These all have the potential to cause side-effects, but these may be preferable to the interference that regular migraine causes to your life.

***

IN MY VIEW?.?.?.?DOCTORS' WATCHDOG IS TOO SOFT

'BRUSQUE, unfriendly and indifferent' are not what you would call ideal qualities for someone working in medicine.

Yet this is how the General Medical Council (GMC) described the manner of Dr Jane Barton, the retired GP accused of hastening the deaths of numerous patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital.

The investigation went on to call her use of painkillers on the ward 'excessive, inappropriate and potentially hazardous' and added that, professionally, she had 'a worrying lack of insight'.

The panel found Dr Barton guilty of 'serious professional misconduct' yet, despite these major shortcomings, she wasn't struck off.

How could that be? The job of a doctor is not defined solely by the ability to get through medical school — it is also about taking a solemn oath always to put the welfare of patients first. If a doctor is found to have deviated from this, they expect to be struck off. So why was Dr Barton spared?

I find it bewildering — but, in truth, it's not the only GMC decision that has left me feeling that way. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the arrest of Harold Shipman — the most prolific serial killer in this country's recorded history.

In January 2000, Shipman was found guilty of the murder of 15 of the patients under his care, though it has been established he was probably guilty of killing as many as 250.

Less well-known is that, in 1976, he had been found guilty of forging prescriptions for pethidine, a morphine-like opiate to which he was addicted (he had forged the prescriptions in the names of various patients). Despite this, after a brief period of suspension from the medical register, the GMC reinstated him and he commenced practice in 1977, working as a family doctor in Manchester.

So why did the GMC permit Shipman, a known criminal and drug addict, to enter general practice without any form of continuing supervision?

If it had done so, it is more than likely that many lives would have been spared. Yet we have heard no more about the responsibility of the GMC in this matter.

It reports directly to the Privy Council and, on occasion, this body of senior politicians does find the actions of the GMC to be flawed — it is not above some measure of scrutiny and discipline itself. I say thank goodness for that.

***

BUYING pills online. Internet shopping is a brilliant innovation if you need groceries or even a new lawn mower delivered to your door.

But the internet isn't the place to buy pills from an unreliable source.

This was hammered home again recently with the news that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency seized £17.6 million worth of fake Viagra pills in the year to March.

Some were laced with ingredients that could potentially trigger deafness.

This just goes to prove that, sometimes, convenience is just not worth the risk.

***

THERESA May is promising that the NHS can have more money, but in exchange, there must be a clampdown on waste and bureaucracy.

It is an undeniable truth that there is a lot of waste within the NHS — but it would be misleading to suggest its problems can be solved by grabbing back crutches or clamping down on the amount spent on loo roll. The fact is, vast sums are spent on middle management who have achieved what exactly?

Legions of them push their pens every day, but disorganisation is still rife — and patients and staff suffer as a result.

So, if anyone wants suggestions for reform, I know where I would start.

© Daily Mail

FLUFFY white bread could be as guiltfree as brown within a decade after scientists at a new government-backed research hub vowed to create more healthy wheat.

Currently white bread is so much worse because it contains a type of starch that is digested too quickly, leading to huge spikes in blood sugar, which the body can only get rid of by storing it as fat.

Over time such spikes can stop the body producing enough insulin to get rid of the blood sugar, leading to type-2 diabetes, and damage to blood cells.

White bread also prevents the body feeling full, which leads to overeating. But researchers at the new Quadram Institute in Norwich are planning to create a new type of wheat that will be digested more slowly.

Richard Mithen, group leader of the Food and Chemistry Human Health group at the institute, said: "Hopefully it would be as delicious and have the texture you wanted normal bread to be. But it will reduce this big increase in glucose after you eat, it would fill you up, it would say OK, you've had a sandwich for lunch that's enough, you don't need anything else."

Prof Mithen added: "And those starches which go down to the lower gut, they ferment those sugars to produce short-chain fatty acids and it's widely thought those are very beneficial to gut health.

"So we can make that change and there are three consequences which all have health benefits."

The team is planning to use genes from wild varieties of wheat or maize, which already have the less digestible starch, to breed with crop varieties to make white flour that would be far better for health. They believe it could make fast food far healthier in the future, and help tackle Britain's growing obesity epidemic.

"We think about fast foods, they are fast to buy, fast to eat and very fast to digest and it's that fast digestion that's the problem," added Prof Mithen. "Educated people who care about their health might already choose healthier brown bread, but it's the burger bun that really needs to tackling."

Prof Mithen was speaking at the launch of the Quadrum Institute's science strategy, which has received £40million in government funding to help improve the world's food and health, combat obesity and prevent anti-microbial resistance.

Prof Ian Charles, director of the institute, said: "Our aim is to improve health-span so that our population can remain healthy and independent well into old age."

The institute brings together 300 scientists from the University of East Anglia, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Quadram Institute Bioscience.

We may be missing the key to one of the biggest boons to public health since the introduction of iodine into the food supply in 1924.

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have found that a strain of bacteria called B. infantis that is thought to have been the dominant bacterium in the infant gut for all of human history is disappearing from the Western world. According to their research[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4350908/], this was probably caused by the rise in cesarean births, the overuse of antibiotics and the use of infant formula in place of breast milk.

Indeed, nine out of 10 American babies don’t harbor this bacterium in their gut, while researchers suspect that [http://msphere.asm.org/content/2/6/e00501-17]the majority of infants in less industrialized countries do.

Bruce German, a professor of food science and technology and one of the U.C. Davis researchers, says, “The central benefits of having a microbiota dominated by B. infantis is that it crowds all the other guys out” — especially pathogenic bacteria, which can cause both acute illnesses and chronic inflammation that leads to disease.

Studies suggest that by the time babies without B. infantis are children, they are more likely to have allergies and Type 1 diabetes and more likely to be overweight. This change to the infant gut may be at the root of the rising prevalence of diseases and ailments, from allergies to certain cancers.

Dr. German and his colleagues learned about the missing bacterium by studying breast milk[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2861563/]. They found that the milk contains an abundance of oligosaccharides, carbohydrates that babies are incapable of digesting. Why would they be there if babies can’t digest them?

They realized that these carbohydrates weren’t feeding the baby — they were feeding B. infantis.

What can new mothers do to ensure that their babies have this beneficial bacterium? At the moment, nothing.

If you live in the industrialized world, you probably can’t pass B. infantis on to your baby. Not even if you give birth vaginally, breast-feed exclusively and eat well.

B. infantis is not the only endangered bacterium in the West, and babies aren’t the only ones affected. By studying mice[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4850918/], researchers at Stanford have found that a lack of dietary fiber — which is missing from most processed foods — results in the loss of important bacterial strains.

Once these strains are gone, the only way to get them back will be to deliberately reintroduce them.

In a study[http://msphere.asm.org/content/2/6/e00501-17] funded by a company that plans to do just that, Dr. German and colleagues fed B. infantis to breast-fed babies. They found that it took over the entire lower intestine, crowding out pathogenic bacteria.

Although it’s too early to know if these babies will turn out to be healthier than their peers, the hope is that the presence of B. infantis for the first year or two of life will help prevent colic, allergies, asthma, obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancers later in life.

Dr. German envisions a future when it will be common for us to add the bacterium to some of our foods, much as we did with iodine.

But just inoculating babies with B. infantis won’t be enough. We should also give their mothers the opportunity to breast-feed.

The bacterium can’t survive without the carbohydrates it depends on. While companies are trying to figure out how to add oligosaccharides into infant formula, it will be very difficult to replicate the complexity and concentration of the carbohydrates that are naturally present in breast milk.

While the decision to breast-feed is often framed as a personal choice, most women have no choice. Only 15 percent of workers and 4 percent of the lowest-paid workers in the United States have access to paid family leave[https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2017/ownership/civilian/table32a.pdf], which means they often can’t afford to stay home with a newborn.

Many other nations — like Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Slovakia — manage to provide working parents with more than a year’s worth[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/26/u-s-lacks-mandated-paid-parental-leave/] of paid family leave.

We should do the same. It’s not just about better personal health, but about better public health, which has been in decline in this country for decades.

We’d also be wise to heed these findings on the microbiota as a harbinger of what’s to come. The promotion of infant formula in place of breast milk, and our reliance on processed foods into adulthood, have had some unforeseen and frightening repercussions for our health. The industrialization of our food supply is changing us from the inside out.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook[https://www.facebook.com/nytopinion] and Twitter (@NYTopinion)[http://twitter.com/NYTOpinion], and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter[http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/opiniontoday/].

Kristin Lawless is the author of “Formerly Known as Food: How the Industrial Food System Is Changing Our Minds, Bodies, and Culture.”

DRAWING (DRAWING BY ARIEL DAVIS)

Seaweed could become a staple in the diet of Canadian livestock after researchers discovered it's a sustainable and viable option for healthy digestion in cows - and humans.

Wade Abbott, a research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and his team have been using a crystallography beam line at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron to study the structure of four enzymes and how they digest agarose, a carbohydrate found in red seaweed.

This research, which began in 2015, is somewhat of an extension of research from 2008 that showed Japanese people have more bacteria in their digestive tracts to digest the carbohydrates in nori seaweed.

Abbott and his team wanted to see if this relationship extended to other seaweed varieties with different structures.

"Individual strains of bacteria each have this unique ability to digest different carbohydrates," he said. "So it doesn't matter what type of seaweed you eat ... they have different chemical properties when you look at their carbohydrates and these chemical properties are actually recognized and harnessed by different strains of bacteria."

The research was looking at human digestion rather than that of cows, but Abbott said understanding how this interaction happens in humans brings along the knowledge to expand the currently limited use of algae products.

As demand grows for quality proteins, the amount of arable land on the planet shrinks and feed prices go up, having a fast-growing, sustainable feed stock like seaweed would be an ideal way to supplement livestock diets, he said.

"What's so interesting about seaweed is that nothing can compete with its productivity. It can grow up to a metre per day. So it grows rapidly, it's loaded with nutrients, it doesn't require arable land or fresh water to cultivate, and the list goes on. It's just an extremely promising source of carbohydrates that could be utilized by both animals and humans."

Implementing these changes in the agriculture industry won't happen quickly - it would initially be more expensive than using traditional livestock feed until the infrastructure is put in place, he noted.

A Canadian company already produces seaweed as livestock feed, but the whole system is very much "still in its early days," Abbott said.

"I think there is a lot of research that still needs to be done, but this to me looks like it has a very promising potential for Canadian agriculture." epetrow@postmedia.com

1 What is the abbreviation of the women's hairstyle which has been making a comeback in 2018, with people like actress Emma Stone (pictured) adopting one?

2 Played by Adrian Edmondson in the 2016 BBC adaptation, what is the surname of Count Ilya in Trotsky's War and Peace?

3 Which cocktail comprises vodka, ginger beer and lime juice?

4 Noted for being athletic and sporty in nature, who was the largest of the wombles of Wimbledon Common?

5 In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, in which town does the title character grow up?

6 By what name was the Mariinsky Ballet known in Russia from 1934 until the collapse of the Soviet Union?

7 What forename was common to celebrated pianists Ashkenazy and Horowitz?

8 Which German political philosopher's works include the 1845 study The Condition of the Working Class in England ?

9 Which fabric, known for its use in coats and hats, is made from the dark curly fleece of young karakul lambs from central Asia?

10 What brand name is common to a range of baby carriers, a range of handbags and purses by Radley and a range of probiotic skincare products?

11 A blue plaque in 6 Crescent Road, Sundridge Park, Bromley, commemorates which Russian prince, one of the foremost theorists of anarchism?

12 a) The romantic poem Ruslan and Ludmila was the first completed major work of which Russian writer?

b) Who turned it into an opera in 1842?

13 a) In which Winter Olympic sport has Britain won two gold medals, one silver medal and one bronze medal over the event's history?

b) Where were the silver and bronze won at the same games?

c) The gold was won at the first ever Winter Olympics, staged at Chamonix in which year?

ANSWERS 1 Perm 2 Rostov 3 Moscow Mule 4 Tomsk 5 St Petersburg 6 Kirov Ballet 7 Vladimir 8 Friedrich Engels 9 Astrakhan 10 Tula 11 Prince Peter Kropotkin 12 a) Alexander Pushkin b) Mikhail Glinka 13 a) Curling b) Sochi c) 1924. Hidden theme: Cities in Russia.

Team of researchers changes microbes in koalas’ guts in order to improve type of food they consume

Scientists believe they have found a new weapon in the battle to save endangered species: faecal transplants. They say that by transferring faeces from the gut of one animal to another they could boost the health and viability of endangered creatures. In particular, they believe the prospects of saving the koala could be boosted this way.

The idea of using faecal transplants as conservation weapons was highlighted this month at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in Atlanta, where scientists outlined experiments in which they used the technique to change microbes in the guts of koalas.

Microbes play a key role in digesting fibres in the animal’s diet of eucalyptus leaves – which come in two main varieties: manna gum and messmate.

“Messmate is clearly inferior to manna gum: it has less protein and more tannins,” said the project leader, Ben Moore of Western Sydney University.

However, some koalas eat only messmate and others only manna gum. Few eat both – and that is because manna-gum-eating koalas have different bacteria in their guts from those that ate messmate.

This raised the crucial question: could scientists change the microbes in a koala’s gut so that they could change the type of eucalyptus that the animal could consume? The answer was to carry out transplants of bacteria from the faeces of one set of koalas into the group that had different eucalyptus diets.

“We succeeded,” Moore told the Observer. The team found it was able to alter the koala’s gut bacteria from one type to the other.

The development is crucial because it should help the preservation not just of koalas – by aiding their ability to digest different types of eucalyptus – but should also help other endangered creatures. As the journal Nature reported, other researchers at the conference outlined work – again involving making changes in gut microbes – that could boost the fertility of southern white rhinoceros which do not reproduce well in captivity, a problem that is linked to their diets, it was found.

Billie Geena was worried that this would one day happen

It was Billie Geena's "biggest anxiety" about dining out - and, to her distress, it recently happened.

The food blogger from Sheffield has been on a strict diet for just under a year in a bid to help prevent the stomach ache and severe cramping she gets as a result of Irritable Bowel Syndrome[http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/how-banish-misery-irritable-bowel-7689088].

IBS affects around two in ten of us, and can play havoc with day-to-day life for the people living with it, meaning they often need to take special dietary measures[https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/biggest-digestion-gut-health-myths-12611985].

During a recent outing to Amigos Mexican Kitchen in Sheffield, Billie ordered a fillet of sea bass from the menu and asked that it contain no onions, garlic or milk.

The order was placed, the food arrived and Billie had a lovely evening.

To the 22-year-old's upset, it read "no onion no garlic no milk haha".

Tweet: Restaurant bill

Woman with Crohn's disease left humiliated after Zara store staff refuse to let her use their toilet[https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woman-crohns-disease-left-humiliated-12512502]

"The food was lovely and the service had been excellent," Billie tells The Sun.[https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6532223/diner-with-food-intolerance-slams-restaurant-after-staff-wrote-haha-on-bill/]

"I've only been on this stricter diet for less than a year and it’s been difficult adjusting. I suffer really bad with IBS and about a year ago I had to follow a Low Fodmap diet to find out what causes my flare-ups to be worse.

"I found that onions, garlic, milk and all sorts of different foods that are triggers for me to be ill.

"What happened brought back all the anxiety I’d had about going out for meals, and it’s really not on."

Nutritionist Nick Zanetti discusses a possible new cause for IBS-type symptoms and a common probiotic which may be used to relieve the condition

Girl, 7, 'allergic to summer' left panting "like a puppy" and unable to breathe freely by hot weather[https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/girl-7-allergic-summer-left-12620726]

Billie explained that the restaurant had since apologised.

Apparently the waitress had intended the message to be a private joke about the long list to the chef and had not thought it would appear on the bill.

While Billie doesn't hold a grudge, she does want her story to highlight "how upsetting this sort of thing can be for people.

She added that better hospitality training is crucial to ensure people like her are made to feel comfortable wherever they choose to eat out.

Restaurant boss Khalid Wani said, according to The Sun: "I apologised personally and spoke to the member of staff, who was given a verbal warning.

"Nobody should make fun of people with food allergies or intolerances.

"I'm satisfied it was not the waitress's intention to make fun of the customer but regardless of her intention this should never have appeared on the bill.

"We always try to give our customers as good an experience as possible and fulfil all their needs, and I'm very sorry about what happened on this occasion."

Sophie Rusetto feared acne would stop her dream of being an actress but now credits a new treatment with her clear skin

For years Sophie Rusetto struggled with severe facial and body acne that she says has impacted on both her professional and personal life.

Determined not to be imprisoned by her skin forever she took part in a trail of a new treatment and says it was the best decision she’d ever made for her skin.

The 27-year old from Glastonbury, in Somerset, had wanted to be an actress and feared her condition would damage her dreams.

Now though she says she is ready to realise her dreams.

Sophie said: " I developed acne when I was 16, but it wasn’t that bad, just typical teenage acne.

"I was put on the contraceptive pill Dianette by my doctor to try and control my acne. It kind of worked, I saw about a 30% improvement.

"I was on that for around three years. I was also trying everything for acne off the shelves at the chemist.

"My acne stayed under control until I was about 22 when it suddenly worsened, spreading to my back and my buttocks.

"I was so distraught about the state of my skin I developed Dermatillomania- a condition where a person feels compelled to pick at their skin.

"I couldn’t help but pick at my skin, often my face, which of course made my skin much worse as it helped the acne spread and intensify.

"My so-called coping mechanism had gone full circle.

If you're a teenager with acne don't worry - you'll have perfect skin when you're older[http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/youre-teenager-acne-dont-worry-8928291]

"I had also come off the pill and my hormones were all over the place.

"I decided to stop taking the pill because my skin wasn’t getting any better. I had been on it for several years and I simply didn’t feel comfortable being on it for so long just for cosmetic reasons."

She said the dermatillomania had started as a mild problem but the more insecure she felt about my skin, the worse it got.

Sophie said: "I was just starting to work as an actress, I had a lot of self-doubt and my confidence was very rocky.

"Picking at my skin helped me to cope; it was a release for my insecurities.

"I was very anxious that I didn’t look perfect and felt as though I was being judged more harshly by agents and castings because of my skin, which made me feel all the more self-conscious.

"I broke out in my worst acne outbreak ever about six months after I graduated from acting school. I’d just moved to London to try to find work. I went for casting after casting and was getting nowhere.

"At one point I got very low. I felt incredibly sad and angry whenever I saw myself in the mirror. I blamed my skin for not being where I wanted to be.

"It was eroding my confidence, a constant limiter to my progress. Every time I felt hopeful, my skin would break out and bring me down again."

Sophie said the acne also drastically affected her relationships and if she ever went on dates, she'd feel the need to wear masses of make-up.

And because of acne on my back and bottom she was very self-conscious about ever being intimate with a man or taking her clothes off with the light on.

She said: "As a result I didn’t really have many boyfriends for most of my early 20s.

"While my friends were dating lots of guys, I generally kept myself to myself and was quite awkward and uncomfortable when it came to men as I felt they were judging me by my skin.

How to get rid of acne scars fast - overnight treatments, home remedies and best products for marks[https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/how-rid-acne-scars-fast-12239111]

"I became semi-fanatical about finding a cure and was always on the Internet researching the condition.

"I tried changing my diet in lots of different ways, I tried both internal and external Chinese herbal remedies, I tried taking probiotics.

"I also tried the chemical route, a benzoyl peroxide gel, but it stung like mad, dried out my skin, making it very sore, and I was still left with acne.

"That put me off using anything chemical again.

"On my insistence I was referred to a dermatologist and given the option of antibiotics.

"I was given a leaflet about the antibiotics, again I did a little research online and I was concerned by what I was reading.

"Some of the reports about the potential side-effects were worrying to say the least.

"I heard about a new acne product from a friend who’s a model.

"She was trialling it as part of a consumer trial and was very excited about it, as it had really cleared her skin which had been a nightmare for her because she was losing work due to her acne.

"She’d been so desperate she’d been on a drug which had made her skin super dry, her eyes sore and her lips had cracked which was as bad for her appearance as the acne."

The product her friend used aimed to purify rather than simply trying to kill acne bacteria and improve skin texture as well as reduce acne.

Sophie said: "As soon as I started with the product I could tell my skin liked it. It didn’t sting, which was the first good sign.

"I began to notice over a period of three weeks that I was still getting spots but they felt different.

The best pictures of celebrities with no makeup including Rihanna and selfies from Gigi Hadid and Kylie Jenner[http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/style/3am-fashion-celebrity-beauty/10-gorgeous-bare-faced-celebs-8734445]

"They were smaller, drier and more like black heads than big red pussy spots.

"There was less underlying swelling and they didn’t hurt so much and they were more spaced out.

"There was also much less redness and soreness on the skin in between the spots and aft er another few weeks or so I had gone from having smaller spots to having fewer spots.

"I’d say I’ve seen about a 60% improvement in my skin and it’s only been five weeks, which is incredible. If I wasn’t still skin picking I think I’d have seen an even bigger improvement."

"Without make-up you can still see the old scars and I still have some spots but my skin is paler, calmer and generally much smoother.

"And on good days I can consider going out to face the world make-up free, which is a revelation.

"At castings I no longer see those looks of mild horror when I turn up.

"I feel people are focusing on my acting skills rather than on my skin. I can understand people’s concerns as I’m casting for roles on TV and so no matter how good you are at acting, appearance is so important in this industry.

"I’m hoping that with my clearer skin I’m going to start finding more success with TV roles as I know my acting skills are really good.”

Sophie has been using Sebopure from www.clarol.co.uk[http://www.clarol.co.uk/].

It is a long way between prairie ranchland where cattle graze and ocean waters where seaweed blooms, but scientists want to study whether red algae can be used as a sustainable livestock feed.

A paper published in the journal Nature Communications determined how exactly the human gut breaks down dietary fibres in a tasty dulse-like variety of seaweed. Scientists worked with the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan - a research centre that uses a light a million times brighter than the sun - to examine four enzymes that digest the seaweed sugars.

Wade Abbott, a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, said future study will aim to confirm whether the intestines of cows and other animals can convert algae into energy, too.

The research Abbott co-led with the University of Victoria's Alisdair Boraston honed in on a type of bacteria called B. uniformis NP1.

"It's a specialized member of our gut community and it has all the enzymes that are required to break up all the different chemical bonds that you find in the sugar," Abbott said Thursday.

"So it's able to unlock energy from seaweed cell wall material."

It's not known for sure whether the digestive tracts of other animals have those same helpful microbes, but Abbott said he suspects they do. He noted there is a herd of sheep that lives on a beach on an island in northern Scotland that munches solely on seaweed. The foods animals eat tend to determine which gut bacteria flourish, and changes can happen rapidly when something new is added to their diet.

"That's what remarkable about communities that colonize animal intestines," said Abbott. "They're so adaptive, they're so diverse."

Seaweed would be a good alternative to grains in livestock feed that could help solve a lot of problems in agriculture, Abbott said.

A major challenge is balancing a booming population and appetite for meat with shrinking arable land and fresh water.

"Seaweed in that sense is actually remarkable because it grows in the ocean, so you're not competing with land required for human food," said Abbott.

"It doesn't require fresh water.

It doesn't require arable land. It's loaded with micronutrients. It has a rapid growth rate. The benefits of aquaculture go on and on."

If it turns out livestock can indeed digest seaweed, the cost of processing it at a large scale and transporting it inland remains a challenge. And it's not clear how to make it appetizing to farm critters, said Abbott. "They will eat it, but you have to research what the right mixture [is]."

Brubacher Drums is located halfway between St. Jacobs and Elmira and supplies barrels, drums and storage containers for residential and industrial use. Whether you are looking for plastic, steel, fibre or wood containers, from single units to larger truckload needs, Brubacher Drums offers both wholesale and retail options.

When it comes to food and wine, Brubacher Drums has many different options for storage and preparation techniques.

Today, many people are crafting their own wines for a fraction of the cost of buying it. You not only save money, but winemaking can also be a very satisfying hobby that you can share with others. Barrels have been used in the winemaking process for close to 3,000 years. Barrel fermentation is the process of letting grape juice sit in a wooden barrel, which allows the yeast to turn the sugar in the grapes into alcohol, and the juice is then converted into wine. The fermentation process occurs while the wine is soaking up the wood flavour, which imparts a distinctive, rich taste.

The fermentation of foods has been around for a very long time as a means to preserve food before refrigeration was available. Today, more and more people are rediscovering these old methods of preserving food, not only because the taste is terrific but also because it's a great way to get probiotics into your diet. Sauerkraut, for example, combines healthy, vitamin-rich cabbage with the probiotic benefits of the fermentation process.

Brubacher Drums is a family owned and operated business established by St. Jacobs resident Cleason Brubacher, and is currently operated by his son Murray. They also offer containers for rain water collection, docks and industrial containers for shipping or temporary storage.

Brubacher Drums is located at 855 Arthur Street South in Elmira and can be contacted at 519-664-2958. They are open Monday to Saturday.

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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe they have discovered a way to prevent cholera and treat early-stage cases using inexpensive probiotics, according to a study published Wednesday.

Cholera is a bacterial disease, typically spread by infected water, that causes extreme dehydration. In a study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine and led by MIT bioengineering professor James Collins, researchers discovered a mixture of natural and engineered bacteria that suppresses cholera bacteria.

The researchers first engineered a genetic circuit that detects a molecule produced by the microbe that causes cholera, turning on an enzyme that produces a red color. They tested the circuit in mice and were able to detect the red color when analyzing stool samples, Collins said.

Collins said the researchers developed the diagnostic tool a few years ago but wanted to engineer “something that could be a living therapeutic" as well.

“This was quite frustrating on our end as we faced a number of challenges," he said. “Serendipitously, we discovered that L. lactis on its own could suppress cholera."

L. lactis is a naturally occurring probiotic that, at first, researchers attempted to modify to treat the disease. Instead, they found that L. lactis on its own could kill the harmful bacteria because it produced lactic acid.

“Cholera really dislikes low-pH, or an acidic, environment," Collins said.

The researchers found that in mice the L. lactis could prevent infections from developing — and treat the mice if the disease is detected early enough, Collins said. The probiotic has not yet been tested on humans with cholera, but Collins said he is confident it will have the same results.

“It's marvelous, and it's something that could be in foodstuffs and thus could be relatively easily distributed and implemented," he said.

Collins said the findings could have implications for other diseases as well because scientists were previously unaware that bacterial infections could be vulnerable to naturally occurring probiotics. In the future, his team hopes to pursue natural remedies for skin and lung infections.

Cholera has caused deadly epidemics throughout the ages. While it's subsided in much of the world, it has persisted in some areas, with epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia in the past two decades and an outbreak in Haiti in 2010.

Laney Ruckstuhl can be reached at laney.ruckstuhl@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @laneyruckstuhl.

Credit: By Laney Ruckstuhl Globe Correspondent

Caption:

A municipal worker sprayed cholera antiseptics in a street in Sanaa, Yemen.

Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images

Neutered-form of disease causing bacteria compete for available nutrients and prevent deadly bugs causing harm

A drinkable cholera[https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/cholera] vaccine containing live bacteria, in the samemanner as a probiotic yoghurt drink, could potentially help save thousands of lives in disaster zones.

The disease kills millions each year and fast-acting strains can re-emerge with devastating results when a natural disaster or civil war destroys sanitation infrastructure.

Conventional vaccination approaches can take weeks to be effective becausethe immune system needs to acclimatise.

But the new approach could provide protection within 24 hours.

Read more

300,000 cases of cholera confirmed in Yemen but vaccines delayed

While it has yet to be tested in humans, the results in trials on rabbits suggest it has the potential to save lives.

“We think this is going to be a very good vaccine, and could induce immunity after a single dose,” the study’s lead investigator Professor Matthew Waldor from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard Medical School.

His teamtrackeddown a toothless relative of the cholera bacteria responsible for a major outbreak in Haiti[https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/Haiti] in 2010.

They further neutered the microbe, known as vibrio cholera, to prevent its ability to produce toxins in the gut or pick up new DNA from its fellow bacteria that could make it more deadly.

“We have many different engineering steps to make this an incredibly safe, genetically stable, live vaccine,” Professor Waldor added.

The study, published in the journal

Science Translational Medicine

today, found that rabbits infected with the cholera vaccine did not get sicka day after being vaccinated.

This is despite their immune systems not having had a chance to build a full picture to ward off future cholera invaders.

Testing this response in a cholera outbreak in a population of around 100,000 people, the study found a vaccine that worked this fast could prevent thousands of extra people being infected.

The Harvard team do not fully understand why it works this fast, but it could be the vaccine’s bacteria suppress the deadly strains competing for the same resources, or perhaps interfering with their toxin production.

The complex interactions of our gut bacteria and our health are already marketed in every day probiotic yoghurt drinks, which claim to load the body with “good bacteria” and the vaccine works similarly.

“It’s a living therapeutic that has good effects on health,” said Professor Waldor.

Read more

Gut microbes may reduce heart disease risk – new research shows

Eat your fibre or face the flesh-eating microbe cannibals

Scientific breakthrough unlocks secrets of microbes

The team are now looking to move towards human trials to test its safety, and are considering how this living colony of bacteria can have its shelf life extended to make it useful in disaster zones where it is needed.

Children and people who already unwell are particularly hard hit by the infection, which lodges the small intestine causing diarrhoea and vomiting that can lead to fatal dehydration and spreads the bacteria further.

In Yemen, currently in its third year of civil war, a child dies every ten minutes from cholera and a fresh warning of the disease’s resurgence[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-cholera-civil-war-saudi-arabia-houthis-health-epidemic-outbreak-who-a8274311.html] was issued as the rainy season begins and inadequate sewage systems overflow again.

The outbreak’s death toll exceeded one million last year and the is on track to be the worst in history[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-cholera-outbreak-worst-on-record-health-middle-east-a7973726.html].

IF a woman's exploits with diets were chronicled on an episode of "Sex and the City," the show's fictional scribe Carrie Bradshaw may come to the same conclusion that registered dietitian and cognitive behavioral therapist Dana James has: It's not food - it's you.

James' new book, "The Archetype Diet" (Avery), divides women into four different personality types: The comfort-eating "nurturer," the reward-oriented "wonder woman," the image-obsessed "femme fatale" and the can't-seem-to-put-on-any-weight "ethereal." Depending on her personality, James says, a woman tends to store fat in one of a variety of ways and has a particular eating behavior, and thus needs a unique diet catered to her.

"When you give a man a plan, he follows it.

A woman has the influence of her emotions, and this makes being consistent more challenging," says James, who divides her time between New York and Los Angeles and whose clients have included actress Margot Robbie and, she says, several Victoria's Secret models, none of whom she can name.

For Courtney Sansone, learning her dieting personality type was the first step toward tackling habits that weren't working for her.

Sansone, a 38-year-old client of James', found out she was a femme fatale, an archetype described in the book as someone who is "sensual, alluring, playful and passionate" and whose constant concern with her appearance means she tends to fluctuate between restrictive diets and bingeing, leading the body to have difficulty regulating insulin and estrogen levels.

James suggested a protein-based diet that is heavy in vegetables and low in carbs for Sansone, who had previously avoided meat in an effort to get rid of what she called "a little belly pooch." It worked. The New Jersey mother, who works in corporate retail, started eating meat again, cut back on cheese and limited carbs to a couple of times a week, while sticking to roughly the same exercise routine - and she finally saw her body shape change.

"I gained muscles in my arms, I have ab muscles, my butt is lifted," says Sansone, who first met with James six years ago.

Elka Gruenberg was found to be a different archetype - a nurturer - and the 35-year-old from Long Island City was also successful working with James. Gruenberg, who works as a bra-fitting specialist, says she would be so busy with clients that she'd put off eating healthy snacks and meals and resort to eating sweets at the end of the day when she finally had a minute to herself.

"As part of my job, I take care of the women I work with, and there's a lot of energy I give to them - so I hadn't really prioritized my energy," says Gruenberg.

James says nurturers such as Gruenberg tend to produce higher levels of insulin and estrogen, and store fat on hips and upper thighs, "which have more estrogen receptors than other parts of the body," she writes.

The nurturer diet is the most restrictive of all the archetypes: James recommends very limited carbs, since those can lead to further spikes in insulin. Instead, she advises nurturers to rely on healthy snacks between meals such as avocado, miso soup or pumpkin seeds and to avoid dairy. They should eat red meat sparingly, but consume plenty of protein such as chicken or fish to "decrease . . . hormone-induced hunger." After about a year of working with James, Gruenberg has lost about 35 pounds. A key change was her breakfast: Instead of eating granola or oatmeal, she now has a breakfast smoothie with a plantbased protein, frozen berries and almond milk.

Not all of the archetypes struggle with staying trim. The ethereal type tends to have trouble keeping on weight and is also extremely sensitive to everything around her, including different foods. James classified another client, Jenelle Manzi, a New York City Ballet dancer, as an ethereal. She was struggling with digestive issues. Per James' advice, she gave up gluten and dairy, introduced gut-balancing probiotic foods such as kimchi and allowed herself what James calls "grounding" carbs, such as quinoa.

Manzi says she feels much better.

"When you nourish your body with the foods your body likes and needs, everything starts to click into place," says Manzi, a 20something living on the Upper West Side. She adds that her body feels less inflamed.

For Linda Andon, whom James classifies as a wonder woman, the key to getting the body she wanted was all about letting go of her perfectionism.

She'd tried just about everything before working with James - even weighing her meal portions - but her attitude got in the way: She saw every tiny dieting misstep as a major failure.

"The minute [I] eat something that's not on the plan, [my] whole day is ruined. At dinner [I might] have a whole bottle of wine and french fries," says the 39-year-old, who splits her time between the Hamptons and New York City and busies herself with entertaining friends and family. "Everything has to be perfect, or it's a total wreck and I'm not doing it at all." James recommended she work on de-stressing, while limiting carbs and dairy to reduce inflammation and eating plenty of protein, including red meat once a week. Andon dropped 10 pounds in three months.

But as much as it might help to have a diet catered to one's late-night bingeing habits or tendency to comfort eat, once labels start getting thrown into the mix, some dietitians are wary.

"When someone gets a label, [it can make her] insecure. Confidence levels drop, which plays a role in everything," says Kellilyn Fierras, a Boston-based nutritionist and instructor at EverybodyFights boxing gym. "Women are sick of labels." James says that's missing the point.

"This is to help women understand themselves better . . . It's like a horoscope," she says. "In fact, the ultimate goal is to de-label themselves. If people call it sexist, that's a reflection on them, not on the model."

Scale

* The Femme Fatale - Looking good is a big priority, but restricting your eating too much can backfire.

* The Wonder Woman - You're an all-or-nothing perfectionist, so when you have a diet slip-up, you tend to binge.

* The Ethereal - Staying slim is easy for you, but you're sensitive to everything - including many foods.

* The Nurturer - Eating healthy can be hard when you're constantly caring for everyone but yourself.

WHAT'S YOUR ARCHETYPE?

Take the quiz and find out what kind of eater you really are

1. People describe you as:

A. Loving, giving, kind and compassionate

B. Successful, smart, witty and dynamic

C. Attractive, sexy, sparkly and playful

D. Intuitive, sensitive, spiritual and creative

2. When you go out to a nice restaurant, you order:

A. Something a little carb-heavy, even though you know you shouldn't.

B. Whatever you want. After a long, hard day, you deserve it!

C. Not much; there's no room for a poochy belly in that dress!

D. A plate full of beans, rice and tortilla wraps - as your friends look on in envy.

3. The unhealthiest aspect of your relationship with food is:

A. You're a secret eater. You hide food from yourself only to "sneakily" eat it later in the day.

B. You're generally good during the day, but you can blow it at night.

C. You think about food and what it will do to your body 80 percent of the time.

D. You frequently forget to eat.

4. You tend to overeat when you're feeling:

A. Upset about something

B. Angry at someone, including yourself

C. Ugly and unattractive

D. Spacey and disconnected

5. If you break your diet, it's because:

A. You don't want people to think you're a diva for ordering something different.

B. You've had a tough day and want to tune out with food or alcohol.

C. You're frustrated with yourself. You aren't losing weight fast enough.

D. You're feeling hypersensitive to the world and need carbs to dull the sensitivity.

Mostly A's NURTURER You're warm and caring and will drop anything to help others. Like Oprah, you give and give, but sometimes you're left with no energy to take care of yourself.

Mostly B's WONDER WOMAN You're extremely motivated by success and achievement. Like Hillary Clinton, you strive to be the best at everything you do, but your perfectionism can be a big source of stress.

Mostly C's FEMME FATALE You're sensual, passionate and, like Kim Kardashian, will do whatever it takes to get a great selfie. But your vanity can lead you to diet erratically and unhealthily.

Mostly D's ETHEREAL You're whimsical and spiritual. Like the willowy Kate Moss, your weight isn't an issue, but you tend to be sensitive to many things, including certain foods that can cause you pain and discomfort.

June 13 (Reuters) -

* EVOLVE BIOSYSTEMS ANNOUNCES $40 MILLION SERIES C FINANCING TO EXPAND ITS FLAGSHIP INFANT PROBIOTIC PRODUCT EVIVO

* INFANT GUT MICROBIOME COMPANY EVOLVE BIOSYSTEMS SAYS $40 MILLION SERIES C ROUND OF FUNDING CO-LED BY BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION, HORIZONS VENTURES

* EVOLVE BIOSYSTEMS-GATES FOUNDATION&HORIZONS VENTURES ARE JOINED BY NEW INVESTORS JOHNSON & JOHNSON INNOVATION, JJDC INC, ARLA FOODS, OTHERS IN FUNDING Source text for Eikon:

Speakers include The Honorable Stephen Censky, United States Deputy Secretary of Agriculture; Steve Forbes, Chairman & Editor-In-Chief of Forbes Media; Bruce Taylor, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Taylor Farms; Dr. John P. Purcell, Global Vegetables R&D Lead, Monsanto; Neal Gutterson, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer, Corteva Agriscience; Dan Harburg, Venture Associate, Anterra Capital; Katie Forrest, Co-Founder, Epic Provisions; Mark Young, Chief Technology Officer, The Climate Corporation, among many others

SALINAS, CA (June 12, 2018) – Forbes today announced the speaker lineup for the 2018 Forbes AgTech Summit. The Summit has grown into the premier industry gathering focused on AgTech innovation and will again bring together over 600 global agriculture leaders and entrepreneurs to tackle some of the world’s most critical challenges by focusing on solutions that growers and processors can put to work in their fields and plants.

Held once again under the big tents on historic Main Street Salinas — where the Silicon and Salinas Valleys meet — the Summit will foster lively debate and generate rich networking opportunities while challenging minds to think bigger and bolder. This event will thoroughly explore the most important issues in AgTech including AI, big data, blockchain, crop protection, labor, microbiome, robotics, sustainability, vertical farming, water and a host of other topics. In addition, participants will have the opportunity to visit fields and processing plants where they’ll experience first-hand the technology innovations that are revolutionizing the global agricultural ecosystem.

The Forbes AgTech Summit will kick off the evening of June 26 with the invitation-only Western Growers Innovation Showcase Opening Dinner. The next morning, Wed. June 27, Summit participants who have pre-registered can enjoy exclusive tours of Taylor Farms, Monterey Materials Reclamation Facility, Mantis Ag Technology, Scheid Vineyards or Driscoll’s. The tours will conclude with an afternoon of field demos at Hartnell College’s Alisal Campus. The Innovation Showcase and the Plenary Sessions will follow under the summit’s signature white tents on Main Street Salinas, where The Honorable Stephen Censky, United States Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, will participate in the opening conversation with Steve Forbes.

The Innovation Showcase continues to expand and will feature 75 of the most exciting agtech startups offering a wide variety of solutions to the challenges of achieving higher crop yields and less food waste. Showcase presenters include AGERPoint, Crop X, Farmers Business Nework, moAsis, Produce Pay, Sample6, SWIIM and Trace Genomics.

Speakers include:

* Charlie Andersen, CEO, Augean Robotics

* Matt Barnard, Co-Founder & CEO, Plenty

* Todd Berg, Director, Product Management & Customer Success, HarvestMark Division of Trimble

* Sarah Bloch, Senior Scientist, Pivot Bio

* Kyle Bridgeforth, Fifth Generation Farmer

* Anna Caballero, Assembly Representative, State of California

* The Honorable Stephen Censky, United States Deputy Secretary of Agriculture

* Irving Fain, Co-Founder & CEO, Bowery Farming

* Steve Forbes, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, Forbes Media

* Katie Forrest, Co-Founder, Epic Provisions

* Pål Johan From, Head, Robotics & Control Group, Norwegian University of Life Sciences

* Curtis Garner, Senior Farm Analyst, Bowles Farming Company

* Hank Giclas, SVP, Western Growers

* The Honorable Joe Gunter, Mayor, City of Salinas

* Neal Gutterson, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer, Corteva Agriscience

* Dan Harburg, Venture Associate, Anterra Capital

* John Hartnett, Founder & CEO, SVG Partners

* Wayne Honeycutt, Ph.D., President & CEO, Soil Health Institute

* Scott Komar, SVP, Research & Development, Driscoll’s

* Willard Lewallen, Ph.D., Superintendent & President, Hartnell Community College District

* Paul Lightfoot, CEO, BrightFarms

* Suzanne Livingston, Food TrustTM Offering Director, IBM

* Vivek Nayak, Co-Founder, TerraClear

* Paul Noglows, Creator and Executive Producer, Forbes AgTech Summit

* Megan Nunes, Founder & CEO, Vinsight

* Mark Oshima, Co-Founder & Chief Marketing Officer, AeroFarms

* Poornima Parameswaran, Co-Founder & President, Trace Genomics

* Shami Patel, CEO, LumiGro

* John Purcell, Global Vegetables R&D Lead, Hawaii Business Lead, VP and Distinguished Science Fellow, Monsanto Company

* Josh Ruiz, VP of Ag Operations, Church Brothers

* Daniella Dimitrova Russo, Founder & CEO, Think Beyond Plastic

* Leo Sanchez, CEO, Lazy Millennial Farms

* Steve Saunders, Founder, Owner & Managing Director, Plus Group

* Tyler Scheid, Project Manager, Scheid Vineyards

* Bruce Taylor, Founder & CEO, Taylor Farms

* Kip Tom, CEO, Tom Farms

* Rob Trice, Founder, The Mixing Bowl

* Carl Vause, CEO, Soft Robotics

* Matt Watson, Director of Technical Development, Mantis Ag Technology

* Mark Young, Chief Technology Officer, The Climate Corporation

The City of Salinas is the Host Partner. Western Growers is the Innovation Showcase Sponsor. Monsanto is the Presenting Sponsor. Corteva Agriscience, and Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) are Partner Sponsors. Salinas Business Leaders include Driscoll’s, Hartnell College, HarvestMark – Trimble, Intel Corporation, Mantis Ag Technology, Motivo, Rabobank, N.A, Taylor Farms, Wells Fargo and Yamaha Motor Ventures. Scheid Family Wines is the Official Wine Partner. Monterey County Convention & Visitors Bureau is the Official Travel Partner. Better Food Ventures and The Mixing Bowl are Program Partners. The Founding Partner of the Forbes AgTech Summit is SVG Partners and its Thrive Accelerator.

The Forbes AgTech franchise continues to grow and will be bringing the Forbes AgTech Summit to Indianapolis September 26 and 27, 2018. Indiana Economic Development Corporation and AgriNovus Indiana will be Host Partners for the event.

For more information, please visit https://www.forbes.com/forbes-live/event/agtech-summit-2018/ [https://www.forbes.com/forbes-live/event/agtech-summit-2018/]

Follow the conversation on Twitter via #ForbesAgTech.

About Forbes Media

Forbes Media is a global media, branding and technology company, with a focus on news and information about business, investing, technology, entrepreneurship, leadership and affluent lifestyles. The company publishes Forbes and Forbes Asia magazines, as well as Forbes.com. The Forbes brand today reaches more than 117 million people worldwide with its business message each month through its magazines and 40 licensed local editions covering more than 70 countries, Forbes.com, TV, conferences, research, social and mobile platforms. Forbes Media’s brand extensions include conferences, real estate, education, financial services and technology license agreements.

Media Contacts

Forbes: Laura Brusca at lbrusca@forbes.com [mailto:lbrusca@forbes.com]

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EDMONTON—The University of Alberta hospital is hoping you give a … poop.

Fecal transplants are becoming increasingly common as a treatment option for recurrent Clostridium difficile, a serious bacterial infection that causes diarrhea, but the hospital is looking for more donors.

It's a tougher job than you'd think.

Breanna McSweeney, a U of A medical student who works with associate professor and physician Dr. Dina Kao in the gastroenterology division, said 97 per cent of people who apply to donate are screened out for reasons such as autoimmunity or a family history of colon cancer.

“The screening process is pretty tough to pass,” she said. “You are given a similar questionnaire as blood donations and you have to do a blood and stool test. A lot of times, people are disqualified.”

Fecal microbiota transplantation, or a fecal transplant, is done by taking stool matter from a donor and putting it in a sick patient's colon via a colonoscopy, or a pill, in hopes that this healthy microbiota (bacteria and other micro-organisms) will make the patient's system balanced again.

Only seven donors provide stool for C. difficile treatment in Edmonton at the University of Alberta hospital. Donors are not necessarily eligible for life, since use of antibiotics means a three-month moratorium on donation. And picking up a benign organism can mean a ban from donation, even if the donor isn't sick.

Fecal transplants have been done in Alberta since 2012.

Currently, the enema version of the procedure is approved by Health Canada, but Kao is researching the use of a pill form of the treatment.

In addition to battling C. difficile, fecal transplants are being looked at to treat depression and obesity. Right now, Kao's lab is conducting a clinical trial on fecal transplant treatments for patients with Crohn's disease.

Depending on stool size, one donation can be used for one to three treatments. Mixing of samples is not allowed in Canada.

Study finds altruism is a motivating factor

McSweeney is the lead author on a study awaiting publication that found 77 per cent of people would donate stool for altruistic reasons. The survey got opinions from 802 people in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Of the respondents, 42 per cent said they would donate for purely altruistic reasons, while 35 per cent said they'd donate for altruistic reasons with a small economic compensation.

Donors in Edmonton receive approximately $5 per sample, while in the U.S., donors receive around $40.

The survey found blood donors are more likely to be willing to give fecal donations.

“This is very new, so there's not the same regulations,” McSweeney said.

To learn more about becoming a donor, call Kao's office at 780-492-8307.

Catherine Griwkowsky is an Edmonton-based reporter. Email her at cgriwkowsky@torstar.ca[mailto:cgriwkowsky@torstar.ca] or follow her on Twitter: @CGriwkowsky

Since the age of 16, my daughter, now 40, has been prescribed the antibiotic erythromycin for acne. She doesn't take it all the time, just when she has a severe flare-up — about every three months. Her doctor seems to think it's OK to continue prescribing this long term, but will it affect her health?

She's read about Roaccutane but is concerned about the potential side-effects, having heard that it can lead to mental health problems.

Daphne Bateman, by email.

taking antibiotics for 24 years, even in episodes — rather than constantly —does raise concerns about the effect on the microbiome, the bacteria within the large intestine upon which we depend for good health, so I am sympathetic to your anxiety.

Antibiotics are not targeted — they destroy not just the bad, i.e. acne-causing, bacteria but beneficial ones, too.

And there are concerns that this can lead to changes in the microbiome that may affect the immune system and lead to an increase in infections, for example.

(Although I should stress there is nothing formally documented about erythromycin causing this, the concern is speculative.)

However erythromycin is known to cause gastro-intestinal side-effects, particularly diarrhoea and abdominal pain.

In your longer letter, you say your daughter has had IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) that began at roughly the same time she was first prescribed this antibiotic — and I do wonder if this is related.

Acne is the most common skin condition we see as GPs, affecting more than 80 per cent of adolescents due to hormonal changes that cause the sebaceous (oil-secreting) glands in the skin to enlarge.

The condition normally resolves itself by the age of 30, but post-adolescent acne does commonly occur, predominantly affecting women.

Based on my experience, there is nothing to be gained for your daughter at this stage from gels or lotions, or from a change to a different type of antibiotic, but I do think it would be wise for her to consider isotretinoin (Roaccutane), despite her misgivings.

This drug is the only medication that can permanently alter the natural course of acne.

It works by counteracting the factors that cause the spots: it shrinks the sebaceous glands and limits the amount of oil that the glands secrete. This deprives the bacterium (Cutibacterium acnes) which causes the red, inflamed skin, of food.

According to nhs figures, four out of five people who take isotretinoin have clear skin after one course of the drug — with a typical course lasting between four and six months.

The concerns that your daughter expresses about taking it, however, are not without foundation, and for this reason GPs are not permitted to prescribe isotretinoin — it has to be prescribed by a dermatologist who then retains the patient under their care.

The drug is associated with multiple side-effects which include dryness of the skin, cracked lips, itching, nosebleeds, muscle ache, and dry, gritty eyes.

These can be eased to a large extent by emollients and skin care and usually resolve once the medication ceases.

It should not be taken by women who might conceive, because of risks to the baby. The concern about depression and suicide is controversial, and the relationship between isotretinoin and mood disorder remains uncertain.

Nevertheless, the key point is that patients being treated with this drug remain under informed, expert supervision.

I would advise that your daughter discusses referral to a dermatologist to be assessed for further acne treatment rather than continue with erythromycin.

At the very least, an informed discussion about the merits and otherwise of isotretinoin should take place.

my three-wheel mobility scooter capsized on top of me while turning into a kerb and trapped me underneath last July. I suffered abrasions and soft tissue injury to my right forearm, and other injuries, for which I have been taking eight tablets of paracetamol a day.

I now have problems walking even short distances or standing. The pain is increasing and even with paracetamol is developing into a ring of fire around my lower back. Aged 84, I feel life is no longer worth living. It appears there is no operation which would bring relief, unless you know better?

Commodore Philip Pearce-Smith, Holbury, Southampton.

almost a year after the accident, you remain disabled by symptoms. What is lacking is a diagnosis to account for this disastrous outcome.

My concern is that you may have suffered an injury to your lower spine, and it may be that at the time this was not recognised, the focus being drawn to your other injuries. So it is not possible to make an accurate assessment of what might have happened without knowing more detail of your previous history.

I must assume that the use of a mobility scooter was dictated by a former disability, presumably owing to earlier health problems.

These might have included degenerative disease of the lumbar spine such as osteoarthritis, or degenerative disc disease which leads to deterioration of the shock-absorbing discs between the lumbar vertebrae.

This can lead to inflammation and pressure on nearby nerves, leading to pain and some impairment of mobility.

In either case, a fall in the circumstances you describe could have exacerbated the problem. The other possibility is that the fall caused a fracture to one of the vertebral bones of the spine.

What is vital, I think, is that some form of scan of your spine is done — ideally, by MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). Once you have an accurate diagnosis, plans for corrective treatment to alleviate your pain can be put in place.

The possibilities could include a steroid injection, physiotherapy or indeed a referral to a spinal surgeon. All of this is speculative until you have a diagnosis, so I urge you to visit your GP, and please don't lose hope.

As a GP, there is an obligation to rely on treatments with a firm evidence base behind them: it helps us ensure we use the treatments that are proven to work.

But many doctors have within their proverbial medicine bag softer remedies, such as aromatherapy. The practitioners and their clients are convinced these remedies work and have come to rely on them — yet their effectiveness is proven only by anecdote.

The big one is homeopathy, with at least 400 GPs prescribing homeopathic treatment, even though there has never been any evidence to confirm that homeopathic remedies are any more effective than placebos.Homeopathy is based upon the conviction that 'like cures like'. So they use substances derived from plants, animals or minerals, that can produce symptoms similar to those from which the patient suffers.

The substance is put through multiple dilutions combined with succussions (shakings) which are believed to render it increasingly powerful — even though the dilution is so great that there may not be a single molecule of the active substance still present in doses of the treatment.

Following NHS guidelines last December ordering doctors to cease prescribing homeopathy on the NHS, the British Homeopathic Association went to court to argue that the treatments can produce 'amazing outcomes', but a judge has now dismissed this claim.

Many will be disappointed at the rejection of their strongly held beliefs, but we now live in a world of objective science and strictly controlled decision-making in medicine.

With ever-increasing costs of healthcare outstripping resources, and with the continuing commitment to free healthcare at the point of delivery, the intentions of politicians, doctors and the public must be ever more stringent in seeking value for money in treatment. And if that means no more homeopathy on prescription, then so be it.

© Daily Mail

Gut bacteria may be a cause of arthritis in obese patients, suggests new research from the University of Rochester Medical Center in the U.S.

Scientists found mice fed a high-fat diet for three months became obese and had more harmful bacteria in their guts compared with lean mice; this caused inflammation throughout their bodies and arthritic changes.

When the obese mice were given a prebiotic, which 'feeds' the good bacteria, this seemed to reverse the arthritis, according to the journal JCI Insight. The plan is to now investigate this effect in humans.

© Daily Mail

Why are they in the news?

BECAUSE they are, apparently, 'the future of fast food'.

Really? Who says so?

LEON, of course. You may have noticed the High Street food chain's 49 stores up and down the country are making a lot of noise about them with big window displays, amid endless talk we should all consider vegan substitutes in our diet.

Isn't a meatless meatball a contradiction in terms?

LET'S not be pedantic. The idea is that they taste meaty but are actually made of wheat protein.

Anything else to get my teeth into?

YOU'LL find some accompanying aubergine, black olives, tomato sauce (with vegan garlic aioli), rice, lemon juice, onion, soybean, all in a little box costing £4.95.

How does that compare with Leon's Moroccan Meatballs?

POSITIVELY if you're on the porky side and watching your weight. The vegan option has 566 calories, compared with 778 for the real thing, and there's a big difference in price. You're looking at £6.95 for meatballs with actual meat in them.

Is Leon part of a greater vegan conspiracy?

THAT wouldn't be fair. It claims to be a dedicated follower of foodie fashion and is moving towards an ever-more expansive meat-free menu because, it claims, that's what people want. 'A plant-based diet is better for you and less calorific,' says a spokeswoman. 'There's also a far greater consciousness about gut health.'

Gut health?

Oh, yes. One of the pioneers of this was an Austrian called Dr Franz Mayr (1875-1965), who believed that what goes on in the gut stays in the gut. So be very careful what you eat. Today, people pay a lot of money for a week or two in the Mayr clinic, where you hardly eat anything at all.

People hardly eating anything won't be good for Leon's balance sheet will it?

NO, but the Leon plant burger (492 calories), made of edamame and lemongrass, is proving popular, along with the vegan falafel wrap and the Brazilian black bean stew, which is gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan.

Does all this mean I'll soon be able to get a vegan burger at McDonald's?

IT can only be a matter of time. Its chickpea burger is already on the menu — but McDonald's is unlikely to call it the 'future of fast food'.

Mark Palmer

© Daily Mail

In 2011, Kristin Volkman started to feel bad. At first, she just felt kind of bad — an upset stomach here, some lung pain there. It was a little odd because she was in her early 20s and otherwise healthy, but it wasn’t alarming. Maybe it was indigestion? Or the start of a cold? But the symptoms stuck around — and they got worse. Soon, her GI pain was severe and, more than once, her lung pain landed her in the ER. She saw doctor after doctor, hunting for a diagnosis, eventually seeing 15 MDs in all. None of them had answers or, more importantly, effective strategies for feeling better. “At first, each new doctor offered hope that they knew what to do with me,” says Volkman, now 27. “But then it was always the same story: ‘We don’t really know what’s wrong. We can treat symptoms, but we don’t know what is causing them.’ ” She braced herself for a future of feeling crummy. Then a friend recommended Dr. Gregory Plotnikoff .

An internist and pediatrician by training, and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School by way of his interest in alleviating human suffering, Plotnikoff consults with people who have complex, chronic illnesses. He’s made it his life’s mission to bring hope to people who experience physical suffering. He’s like the Dr. House of the Twin Cities, solving medical mysteries that confound other professionals — though where the fictional House traded in sarcasm and verbal abuse, Plotnikoff ’s currency is deep kindness, vast knowledge, and an almost otherworldly ability to listen. Initial appointments with him are a minimum of two hours, and usually run closer to three or four. He spends the vast majority of that time simply listening. Time for care Plotnikoff didn’t always have the luxury of spending several hours with patients. After finishing his medical training at the University of Minnesota, he helped establish the U’s Center for Spirituality and Healing, where he served as its first medical director. From there, he went to Japan, where he taught Greek, Latin, bioethics and traditional herbal medicine to Japanese medical students. When he returned to Minnesota, he began practicing as an integrative medicine physician at the Penny George Institute for Health and Healing, where his desire to dig deeply into patients’ histories ran counter to the 10 to 15 minute doctor’s visits mandated by the conventional medical system. He eventually got permission to spend an hour with patients during their initial visit, but he was still compensated based on the old model. Combined with the time spent after-hours doing reviews of medical literature (to find clues for patients with complex problems) and the hours of charting, and he quickly realized that forcing a healthcare model that emphasized listening into a medical system that prioritized efficiency wasn’t sustainable. So two years ago he founded Minnesota Personalized Medicine, where “we’re intentionally inefficient,” he says of the hours he devotes to each patient. The clinic’s mission is to help patients, like Volkman, with symptoms that have stumped other clinicians . “We’re here to be of service to those who, despite great effort, have not had their health goals met,” says Plotnikoff. “In a town with a lot of great practitioners, that’s where I add value. There was no need to duplicate other practitioners’ efforts.” Patients from across the country have visited the clinic; his waiting list can range from three to six months. The way he and his staff talk about health and healing also sets the clinic apart from other practices. He’s as rigid about the use of language as he is expansive about holding time and space for patients. “We avoid all violent language,” he says. “And we don’t ‘take a history.’ We help ‘foster history.’ We ‘gather supplements,’ we don’t ‘prescribe supplements.’ ” The difference is a matter of co-communication versus a top-down, do-as-I-say approach. It’s a vernacular that encourages working together rather than passively accepting advice. To the observer, these distinctions might seem like six of one, half a dozen of the other. But “so often people who have these chronic or poorly understood conditions, they feel dismissed,” says Dr. Henry Emmons, Twin Cities-based psychiatrist and author of “The Chemistry of Calm.” “They’re often told that their symptoms are ‘just in their heads.’ They feel as if their suffering is not really understood. But when they feel listened to and understood in a deeper way? That gives them a great sense of hope. Just being taken seriously is a huge thing.” What sets the clinic apart culturally is notable, but so is the keen medical mind that Plotnikoff brings to each visit. Which is to say, it is not just the listening and the language that make the difference. “He’s helping analyze genetic profiles, which is still pretty unusual for health professionals to have the skill to do that,” says Emmons. “And he combines that with a knowledge of functional medicine and with a good understanding of gut health — and just to be able to pull all those threads together and really honor a person’s story and inner life, that’s a unique combination.” For some potential patients, however, cost may be a barrier. It is not inexpensive to visit the clinic, which, as a consultative care practice, does not take insurance. And even if money is no object, it’s still worth considering whether a particular ailment is a right fit for the clinic. Plotnikoff and his team specialize in helping people with complex and mysterious illnesses, and they frequently consider lifestyle and environmental changes that can ease symptoms. If you’ve come down with the flu, or you’ve sprained your ankle, you’re going to be best served elsewhere. Piecing together clues Visits to Minnesota Personalized Medicine involve more than just talking and listening. The space has a lab for drawing blood and running other tests, though like everything else at the clinic, it’s unusual. The chair where patients sit to have blood drawn faces a large window with a view of Loring Park. “When I first saw Dr. Plotnikoff, we did a lot of testing,” says Volkman. “And he was very thorough with my history.” He pieced together the clues of her symptoms and her history and finally gave Volkman what the 15 previous doctors could not: a diagnosis (mast cell activation disorder) and a plan for feeling better (including drugs, alternative medicine, and changes in diet and lifestyle). And, for the first time in a long time, she does feel better. “Since treatment, I’ve had no lung pain and my GI symptoms are improving immensely,” says Volkman. “A lot of things that other people would just do used to be twice as hard for me, but now I’m less tired and can think clearer. I can engage better with people.” “He’s given me hope for my health,” she says. “Doing this work is why I’m on the planet,” says Plotnikoff, who also researches and writes extensively as a way to expand the body of knowledge available to all practitioners and help even more people with complex conditions. What makes him so good at his job? Why did he become the local Sherlock Holmes of medical mysteries? He credits a lesson he learned as an undergraduate at Carleton College. “One day my favorite biology professor said to me, ‘Greg, you got here because you’re always able to give the right answer. But the real rewards in life come from asking the right questions.’”

The amateur prognosticators weigh in on Jan. 1. Really, the best predictions come in June: You're halfway through the year, how wrong could you be? You've had a six-month runway to get your wheels up and soar confidently into the future. Herewith are my top eight predictions for what the Tampa Bay food scene has in store.

* * *

STRAW WARS

We've already seen it, a brewing brouhaha about drinking straws. This is the year consumers really start to consider the consequences of all that plastic that ends up in landfills, or worse, in our oceans and the bellies of sea creatures. Not far off will be a serious reexamination of plastic cutlery, Styrofoam to-go containers, single-use grocery bags and bottled water. Ask any millennial: Reusable stainless steel straws and water bottles are the accessory of choice.

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GUT-FRIENDLY FOODS

Americans have been late to the probiotic game - we were scared of the sound of live cultures, weren't big advocates of all things fermented. The gut biome has captured our attention, and with it all the things we can do to encourage the good micro-organisms and discourage the bad. Look for more kimchi, kefir, miso, sauerkraut, kombucha, apple-cider vinegar and tempeh. It's all in the name of seeking out things like lactobacillus acidophilus, streptococcus thermophilus, saccharomyces boulardii and a whole lot of unpronounceables to improve digestion and strengthen your immune system.

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BE GONE, BOOZE

Sophisticated mixers (housemade tinctures and tonics, fresh juices, artisanal teas, botanical mixes, etc.) have been employed in the growing repertoire of craft cocktails. Mixologists and consumers have begun to think about using those same building blocks in non-alcoholic "mocktails," part of a more health-conscious approach to quaffables. (Oh, but spiked seltzer is another trend - 3 Daughters Brewing just started canning theirs.)

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FAKE MEAT

Impossible Burgers have started showing up in area restaurants, and Beyond Meat patties are available in some grocery stores. These are not bean burgers, nor grain burgers, but scientifically engineered plant-based proteins that required millions of dollars of tech-food start-up money. Heme (pronounced HEEM), an iron-containing compound, is responsible for giving these new products their essential meatiness. The target market? Maybe not vegans (most vegans aren't looking for a non-meat burger that bleeds just like the real thing), but the rest of us who may choose to eschew red meat a couple days a week for health or environmental reasons. In a similar vein, tofu, tempeh, quinoa and other plant-based proteins have gone mainstream in many restaurant kitchens.

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THE NEXT SRIRACHA

Some folks are still stunned at the speed with which sriracha (you know, the chile sauce with the rooster on the label) has gone mainstream, in many contexts nudging out ketchup at the table. It is predicted that the Korean chile paste gochujang is spreading with similar speed through restaurant kitchens, but for home chefs I'm forecasting a tube of harissa in the refrigerator has just as many last-second pick-me-up applications, from a quick chicken rub to an aioli razzle-dazzle.

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NO WASTE MOVEMENT

Tampa Bay chefs embraced the snout-to-tail cooking movement, then the trash fish movement (celebrating bycatch and lesser-known seafood species). The trend is clearly toward using the whole animal and minimizing waste. Consumers are getting into the swing of things, requesting lesser known cuts of meat (move over, ribeye and New York strip, it's time for the bavette, the merlot cut and the Vegas strip steak to shine), and chefs have turned their attentions to "root-to-stem" cooking, finding ways to use a whole plant (don't toss those carrot tops, honest).

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POT FOOD

This doesn't mean crock pot, or one pot meals. With 29 states legalizing medical marijuana and eight states with legal recreational marijuana, stay tuned for a tidal wave of foods augmented with THC and CDB, properties found in marijuana. You'll find it in beef jerky to snack bars. And some high-end chefs around the country are putting on marijuana and food pairings and cannabis-infused multi-course tasting dinners. Maybe not around the corner in Florida, but if medical marijuana advocate Joe Redner has his way....

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LESS FUSION CONFUSION

We are at the end of the era of Asian fusion restaurants that execute a mash-up of Thai, Japanese and Chinese. Diners are increasingly sophisticated, demanding greater verisimilitude and even more specificity: look for the rise of things like regional Chinese (hey, it's a big country) and regional Mexican.

Research found some patients had lower E coli levels after being given cocktail of ‘phages’

Viruses that invade bacteria but leave human cells alone could help scientists find ways around the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, researchers have said.

A study has showed that a cocktail of bacteriophages, or “phages”, resulted in no side effects when given to individuals with gastrointestinal problems and did not appear to greatly disrupt the diversity of microbes in the gut – the so-called gut microbiota[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/26/the-human-microbiome-why-our-microbes-could-be-key-to-our-health]. But they did reduce levels of one marker of inflammation and certain problematic species of bacteria.

“[Phages] are a wonderful alternative to antibiotics,” said nutrition blogger and scientific consultant Dr Taylor Wallace of George Mason University, Virginia, who is presenting the results of the study at the American Society for Nutrition annual meeting in Boston. “These are selective, you don’t have any problem with bacterial resistance … and they are safe.”

Experts say microbial resistance to antibiotics, largely fuelled by overuse and misuse of the drugs, has left the world facing “ a dreadful post-antibiotic apocalypse[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/13/antibiotic-resistance-could-spell-end-of-modern-medicine-says-chief-medic] ” as such treatments become ineffective.

The new research, funded by probiotic company Deerland Enzymes, split 32 participants, all of whom reported recurring gastrointestinal problems but were otherwise healthy, into two groups. One group was given a placebo capsule for four weeks, the other group was given a capsule from the company[https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03269617] containing four phage strains expected to attack E coli. Neither the participants nor the researchers knew which capsules were given to whom during the trial.

After four weeks both groups stopped taking their capsules and, two weeks later, had their capsules swapped to the opposite type, which were then taken for a further four weeks.

The findings revealed that there were no side effects from taking the phages, but that the cocktail did appear to have some impact, including a drop in levels of a protein linked to inflammation and allergic response, and a drop in certain bacterial species that can cause problems, including Clostridium perfringens[https://www.gov.uk/guidance/clostridium-perfringens]. “We saw some increases in beneficial bacteria,” added Wallace.

However, the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, only looked at short-term use of phages and did not check whether E coli was behind the gut problems to start with.

What’s more, only some participants had experienced a drop in E coli – possibly, said Wallace, because they had had higher levels to begin with. And while some participants felt better and appeared to be able to tell when they had taken the phages, others noted no improvement.

Wallace said the findings highlighted how phages could be used to adjust the body’s communities of microbes to boost health, and offered an alternative to antibiotics in tackling potentially harmful bacteria.

Martha Clokie, professor of microbiology at the University of Leicester, welcomed the study, pointing out that while phages are commonplace in our bodies – and are currently used in food production, as well as medical treatments in some countries such as Georgia – clinical trials into their safety as therapeutics are necessary.

Clokie says phages could be valuable since they can be used to target particular bacteria that have caused infection or have knocked the body’s community of microbes out of kilter – a situation known as dysbiosis[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/25/gut-reaction-surprising-power-of-microbes]. Antibiotics by contrast often wipe out both “good” and “bad” microbes, which can cause problems. “Phages are very specific manipulators, they can take out certain species which can then allow the other ones, which are beneficial, to grow,” said Clokie.

Aras Kadioglu, professor of bacterial pathogenesis at the University of Liverpool, was also cautiously optimistic, although he noted the study had yet to be published. “The use of phages to correctly “balance” a disturbed gut microbiota [flora] following infection and or antibiotic treatment, for example, is really quite exciting,” he said.

Bacteriophages, Clokie adds, have been known about for more than a century. “Phages were used before we discovered antibiotics,” she said, adding their ability to target particular microbes was initially seen as a disadvantage. “Actually there are many aspects of disease where that specificity is now useful to us.”

By Carl Zimmer

Why do children look like their parents and siblings, but still differ from one another? This problem, sitting right at the heart of biology, was solved in part by Gregor Mendel and his early-20th-century heirs. Still, we had to wait until the advent of DNA sequencing in the 1970s before we could penetrate these mysteries in detailed, mechanistic ways.

Carl Zimmer's new book, "She Has Her Mother's Laugh," lays out what we have learned. His approach is dangerously encyclopedic - my copy of the book weighs several pounds - because he chooses (rightly, in my view) to combine the history of the field with a detailed account of current developments. It's an ambitious undertaking, one that requires a light authorial touch to avoid a result that is dense, and turgid, and boring. Zimmer, a prominent science journalist who writes regularly for the New York Times, does a good job of avoiding the encyclopedia trap, larding his account with plenty of colorful stories. At times, however, he does get mired in overly long stories while trying to give the book a folksy feel, as in the analysis of his own pedigree and genome, matters likely to interest other Zimmers more than the reader.

On the other hand, Zimmer is not just a journalist but a co-author of a highly regarded textbook on evolutionary biology, meaning that he really understands what he is writing about. The strength of the book, then, is its combination of accuracy, journalistic clarity and scientific authority.

And there's plenty of science. Mendel and Charles Darwin appear, of course; the dark history of eugenics stalks the pages; our new ability to explore the tree of life by comparing DNA sequences gets airplay; the hunt for genetic errors that cause disease occupies several chapters; CRISPR and other cutting-edge technologies that can (and will) allow us to edit out these errors are carefully explained; the story of human migration throughout the world is reconstructed using our DNA; and Neanderthals - who, via ancient hybridization with our ancestors, contributed about 2 percent of the genomes of modern non-Africans - get some headlines of their own.

The book really takes off when it hews to Zimmer's main theme: that heredity extends far beyond the kind of vertical parent-to-offspring transmission of DNA we normally think of as "genetics." As Zimmer notes, "We cannot understand the natural world with a simplistic notion of genetic heredity." And so we enter the world of developmental biology, learning how a single fertilized egg can produce more than 200 different cell types in the adult body, all containing exactly the same genes but using them differently. And each cell, after acquiring its identity, passes on its unique traits when it divides. We learn how the external environment can produce an unconventional form of heredity, as when rats learn to fear certain odors experimentally associated with an electric shock - a fear that can be inherited by offspring who never experienced the shocks. (As Zimmer correctly observes, these environmentally induced traits always disappear after a few generations, so they can't be the basis for long-term "non-Darwinian" evolution.)

Other fascinating but unconventional forms of inheritance include the "horizontal" transmission of genes between wildly different species (aphid DNA, for instance, contains genes purloined from fungi) and the inheritance of the bacterial "microbiome" between people through contact or birth, conferring similar groups of bacteria on related people. (Zimmer notes that he carries 53 species of bacteria in his navel alone.) We're only now beginning to learn how important these microbial fellow travelers are for our health.

To me, the most engrossing part of the book describes human "chimeras": people whose bodies contain different genomes. This can, for example, result from the movement of cells back and forth across the placenta, so that a mother can be colonized by groups of cells derived from offspring born decades previously. Conversely, a child can harbor cells from its mother. Cells can also move between twins in utero - or even, via the mother, between offspring from different pregnancies. One study showed that 13 percent of young girls had Y-chromosome-carrying (i.e., male) cells in their blood, their source being older brothers whose cells had colonized Mom and then moved back through the placenta to inhabit Little Sister.

But it gets even more twisted: Occasionally a chimeric individual is formed when the embryos of two fraternal twins fuse early in development. Such chimeras can have major portions of their bodies carrying different genomes, some cells derived from Twin A and others from Twin B. This has produced bizarre paternity tests apparently showing that a woman is not the mother of her own child. This happens when chimerism results in a woman's blood cells being derived from Twin A (blood cells are used to determine the mother's genetic identity), while her reproductive cells - the ones that produced the egg that became Junior - are derived from Twin B. Such genetic facts seem almost alien.

Admittedly, most of us are not genetic chimeras, but this tale illustrates two things: the weirdness of heredity - it's much more than whether you inherited your uncle's blue eyes - and the power of modern science and technology to unravel these genetic puzzles. The message here is an important one: Chimeras notwithstanding, genetic technologies have well and truly arrived and are poised to have a huge impact on our lives. Genetically modified crops are burgeoning. What does that mean for us and for the environment? The Human Genome Project - that complete catalogue of the more than 3 billion A's, T's, G's and C's that constitute our genome - cost around $3 billion in the 1990s. Today, it will run you just $1,000 to sequence your entire genome; for the price of a year's worth of coffee at Starbucks, you can take a voyage of discovery into your genetic heart, learning who you are and where you came from. And soon we'll be able to manipulate a fertilized human egg, changing any genes we want - not just those causing disease but those altering behavior, appearance and intelligence.

We need to know about these developments. Can I load the Mendelian dice when I have a child, ensuring that it really does get Uncle Frank's blue eyes? Should we allow people to create "designer babies" with higher IQs? How likely am I to get the cancer that killed my grandmother? And if I do get it, what can I do to get rid of it?

Zimmer's book is an excellent way to get up to speed in these areas, but be aware that there are a couple of recent competitors that give much the same information. These include Siddhartha Mukherjee's superbly written chronology "The Gene: An Intimate History," and James Watson's lavishly illustrated (and largely first-hand) account, "DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution." Read at least one of the three, because this is important stuff: If the science doesn't matter to you now, it will soon.

Jerry A. Coyne is professor emeritus in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago. He is the author of "Speciation" (with H. Allen Orr), "Why Evolution Is True" and "Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible."

We all need a bit of time out, but for more and more of us a weekend away isn’t just about posh breakfasts and sightseeing opportunities. It has to have significant restorative effects, too.

Wellness travel [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/hotels/articles/the-worlds-most-amazing-spa-breaks/] – from yoga retreats[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/spas/best-yoga-holidays-in-the-world/] to military-style boot camps to whip us into shape for summer – is the industry’s fastest growing sector, according to Lonely Planet, and a host of exciting wellness retreats, with a focus on mental and physical health, have popped up to cater to rising demand. So whether you fancy a reading retreat in Wales, paddle-boarding in the Scottish lakes or surfing in Cornwall, there’s something for everyone. Here are our favourites for 2018...

London and the South

Fitness retreat at The Rosewood, London

Step through the arches of Holborn’s Rosewood hotel and, after being whisked up to your suite, you wouldn’t know you’re in the heart of the Zone 2 bustle until P T Harry Jameson takes you out on a guided sightseeing run. Mornings start at 7.30am with meditation or personal training, before a healthy, filling breakfast – washed down with a detox juice. Gentle yoga and spa time are scheduled in, too. It doesn’t end when you check out; the retreat includes five weeks of personal training aftercare.

Dates in August and November; prices start from £2,399 for a two-night stay including meal, training sessions and spa treatment; rosewoodhotels.com/london[http://rosewoodhotels.com/london]

Tulayoga at Hotel Café Royal, London

Jessica Salter stretched herself…

I know little about Tulayoga[http://www.tulayoga.com/], beyond the fact that Sienna Miller and Helena Bonham-Carter rave about it – and that the Hotel Café Royal has booked one of its creators, Louka Leppard, to run several residencies to enhance its wellness offerings (which include the luxurious Akasha spa, and 60ft pool).

Leppard welcomes me into his candlelit treatment room and invites me to lie down on a bed on the floor, while explaining that Tulayoga is a mixture of yoga, meditation and... acrobatics. We start with an hour and a half of Tulamassage, which Leppard performs in time to soft background music, pulling my limbs in all directions, worrying knots in my shoulders.

Only then am I ready for my yogic instruction. I’m told to close my eyes, and relax. Easier said than done when you’ve no idea what’s coming next. “I feel a lot of fear in you,” Leppard, who is lying on the mat behind me, says. Which is before he tells me to hold on to his ankles and sit down on his feet, which are in the air. And then he lifts me up. It’s the most bonkers thing I’ve ever experienced – two grown-ups essentially playing aeroplanes – but is also incredibly relaxing.

As I finally settle into the pose, letting all my weight rest on Leppard, he uses his feet to twist my back and I get the most unbelievable stretch across my shoulders. We continue in this weird dance for half an hour or so – with Leppard humming along to the music. I feel graceful and balletic – God knows what it actually looks like. He winds the session down by landing me back on the mat with a graceful plop. Wrapped in my bathrobe, I drift off to my suite to complete the back-to-earth process (lying on my bed, blackout blinds drawn) in what has been an odd, but deeply calming two hours.

From £1,310 per night from July 22-26 for a grand junior suite and two hours Tulayoga; hotelcaferoyal.com[http://hotelcaferoyal.com]

Tennis camp at Wickwoods, West Sussex

Want to brush up on your tennis skills ahead of Wimbledon? Check in for a tennis retreat at Wickwoods, set in 22 acres of manicured gardens inside the South Downs National Park[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/england/east-sussex/south-downs/hotels/], where you can sharpen up your game under a programme led by tennis director Mark Weaver. Children’s tuition is also available, if you fancy training up the next Andy Murray.

From £344 per night, including meals and a spa treatment, with tennis tuition extra; wickwoods.co.uk[http://wickwoods.co.uk]

Santosha yoga retreat, Tonbridge, Kent

With Indian silks draped from ceilings, futon beds and gongs, the Edwardian country house that hosts this Santosha yoga retreat has had something of a makeover to offer its guests an introduction to ashtanga yoga. The weekend is packed with meditation and talks on yoga philosophies. In their free time, guests can explore the countryside, or snuggle up by a log burning stove.

Two nights’ stay, June 22-24, with meals and yoga, £240; bookyogaretreats.com[http://bookyogaretreats.com]

2018's biggest fitness trends, tried and tested[https://cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk/29ac51f9-99c7-4d5a-957f-77679d5bb1c3.html] Surfing and yoga, Mawgan Porth, Cornwall

Even those who hate camping will find themselves seduced by luxury yurts with double beds, crisp linen and a chef to cook up breakfast, lunch and dinner. Mornings start with guided meditation and vinyasa yoga, then it’s down to the beach for a surf lesson from pro surfer Alan Stokes. There’s a restorative yoga session before bed.

Dates in June and September; from £595 for a three-night stay, including meals and lessons; wildandfreeadventures.co.uk [http://wildandfreeadventures.co.uk]

Matt Roberts at Lime Wood, Lyndhurst, Hampshire

Matt Roberts [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/matt-robert-fitness-plan/] has trained David Cameron and Naomi Campbell; now he’s taking his method to this luxury boutique hotel. Expect five hours of training per day, including circuits, high intensity work and boxing, as well as yoga and Pilates. There’s a beautiful spa and hydrotherapy pools, as well as three-course meals in the evening.

From £995 per person, based on two sharing; mattroberts.co.uk/retreats/lime-wood/[http://mattroberts.co.uk/retreats/lime-wood/]

Nordic walking at Ockenden manor, Cuckfield, West Sussex

Madeleine Howell pulled on her walking boots…

“Who needs Tuscany?” my sister sighs as we drink in views of the lush green vines of the Bolney Wine Estate in Sussex, bathed in golden afternoon light.

This is wellness just how I like it: indulgent, rather than punishing. It’s rare that I get Nikki to myself these days without my nephews to entertain, and sibling bonding time was overdue.

The idea of a Nordic walking retreat appealed, since it’s also a sociable way to exercise – it’s essentially walking across country with the aid of long poles resembling ski sticks.

Our trusty poles propel us on our way, and I am surprised by our speedMadeleine HowellAt the weekend you’ll usually find me practising yoga, which can be solitary – but the spa at Ockenden Manor promised the style of mild, outdoorsy exertion and restorative relaxation I was after.

At first, Nikki and I clown around and over-egg the use of our poles with comic striding, but as we relax into the hike our shoulders relax, too (Nordic walking is an upper-body as much as a lower-body workout). The exercise, which evolved from cross-country skiing, soon becomes intuitive.

There is nothing to stop us from gossiping as we stroll through the glorious countryside, safe in the knowledge that we are burning 46 per cent more calories than regular walking. Bradley Jurkowski, our guide, tutors us in technique, and points out landmarks along the way (The Bolney Stage is the most picturesque pub I’ve ever stumbled across, and Cuckfield is a delightful village. Other nearby attractions include the Bluebell Railway and Borde Hill Garden).

Our trusty poles propel us on our way, and I am surprised by our speed. We enjoy a two-hour walk, at the end of which we feel energised, but thirsty: happily, a glass of sparkling Bolney Estate rosé is waiting at the vineyard, as is a taxi to ferry us back to the spa, where we soothe our muscles in the pool, explore the spa facilities (don’t miss the rain shower and the rooftop garden) and enjoy a relaxing foot soak and massage.

The full weekend package includes a longer 10-mile walk along the South Downs Way, and a picnic lunch on Ditchling Beacon.

Single occupancy starts from £439 for two nights mid-week; double occupancy starts from £645 for two nights mid-week accommodation, including meals, guided walk and spa treatment; hshotels.co.uk/ockenden-manor[http://hshotels.co.uk/ockenden-manor]

Digital detox at Chewton Glen, New Milton, Hampshire

Hand in your smartphone and enjoy the beauty of the surrounding forest from the top of your tree house, where you can spend the weekend drinking in the view from your private hot tub. If you descend to ground level, the package includes guided activities from Nordic walking to yoga, along with facials and meditation.

From £2,056 for a two-night stay; chewtonglen.com[http://chewtonglen.com]

Mum and baby wellness retreat, Winchfield, Hampshire

Think your days of fancy hotels are over once you’ve had a baby? Think again. Nannies are on hand at the Four Seasons, allowing parents to indulge in fitness classes, spa sessions and chill-out time. All baby kit is provided, along with the little one’s meals.

June 10-11, Sept 17-18; from £495 per mum and baby; andbreathepostnatal.com[http://andbreathepostnatal.com]

East and the Midlands

Healthy gut retreat, Malvern, Worcestshire

Gut health is currently big news, with scientists finding links between sleep, mood, weight and energy. This retreat aims to reset your gut bacteria through a menu of vegetarian, prebiotic and probiotic seasonal foods and drinks naturally laced with good bacteria. The back-to-nature accommodation is suitably eco, too.

July 20-25; from £1,721 per person for two sharing, including meals; theclovermill.com/microbiome [http://theclovermill.com/microbiome]

How to make 2018 the year of better mental health[https://cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk/65254b75-ae2a-4fb2-8c4c-98e3ba5f9e5d.html]Mindfulness retreat, Thornham Magna, Suffolk

The Now Project offers weekends for newcomers to mindfulness. Set in the woods, the retreat teaches mindfulness techniques with tips to help continue at home. There are bunk beds in log cabins, or tents in summer.

June-Nov; from £240 including two nights’ accommodation and meals; lovelifelivenow.com[http://lovelifelivenow.com]

Pilates retreat, West Lexham, Norfolk

Hone your Pilates skills on a four-night retreat with ex-dancer Lucy Mills. The break includes nutrition workshops, free time to explore the beautiful surroundings, and plant-based meals. The retreat is alcohol-free, until the champagne corks pop on the last night.

June 18-22; £1,439 per person; youridealfit.com/retreats[http://youridealfit.com/retreats]

The North

Women-only fitness, Buttermere, Cumbria

This women’s-only boot camp in the Lakes combines the luxury of staying in Hassness Country House in Buttermere with grown-up outdoor activities like Nordic walking, kayaking and swimming, circuit training and aerobics along with yoga and Pilates, too. Plus, they promise cake.

£585 including seven nights’ accommodation and meals and activities; ramblersholidays.co.uk[http://ramblersholidays.co.uk]

Equestrian escape, Duddon, Cheshire

Boudicca Fox-Leonard had an equine adventure…

“It’s not unusual for guests to be nervous at the start of their break,” Sarah Caplan, Equestrian Escapes’ founder, reassures me. “By the end of the weekend, they’re transformed.”

Sadly, I don’t have that long. I’m at Equestrian Escapes[http://www.equestrian-escapes.com/horse-riding-holidays-UK-Wiltshire/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz6zxrPfB2wIVVD8bCh1UVQ5PEAAYASAAEgKrOPD_BwE] ’ Cheshire HQ for a day-long taster of one of their popular wellness breaks. With destinations including Wiltshire, Brecon and Yorkshire, they cater for everyone: young, old, beginners and experts – all of them looking to saddle up and explore bridleways and fields.

Caplan is a BHS instructor herself, and the company prides itself on its expert tuition. My instructor today, Chris, is hands-down the best teacher I’ve ever had, knowing just how far to push without breaking me. I feel like I'm metaphorically patting my head and rubbing my belly to be able to control my lovely patient horse, Red. Occasionally falling out of rhythm with a terrific judder, but Chris counsels me to keep going and re-find it. I finish my lesson sweaty and smiling, my rise and trot revitalised, and fully confident that I’ll be feeling it in my thighs tomorrow.

The mood-lifting effect of being with horses is well noted and it is this, coupled with the fitness aspect, that Caplan believes makes horse-riding a perfect wellness break. To promote being fit to ride, she has teamed up with leggings brand Yoga Pants[https://www.yoga-pants.co.uk/], which she wears in place of jodhpurs. “The stronger your core is the more correctly and effectively you use your leg, seat and hand aids to communicate with your horse, and the better he will perform,” she says. “Try holding a few key positions, like the boat, half-boat, or warrior for a few seconds a day to build the strength.”

I promise I will, but instead retire to the country house hotel next door to the stables (guests can stay here, in a B&B or at a nearby spa hotel) for lunch on the terrace with a frosty glass of white wine. The Cheshire fields roll out in front of me. I won’t be on the afternoon hack this time, but I’ll be back in the saddle soon.

A two-night stay with four riding opportunities costs from £325pp; equestrian-escapes.com [http://equestrian-escapes.com]

Guided walking, Derwent Water, Cumbria

With the right weather and the right picnic there can be no nicer spot in the world to go walking than the Lake District. Choose between gentle rambles or more challenging hikes up the famous peaks of Scafell Pike, Blencathra and Helvellyn. Just remember to pack a map and a slice of Kendal mint cake.

Prices from £339 per night, including meals and guided walks; hfholidays.co.uk[http://hfholidays.co.uk]

Couples retreat, Gilpin, Cumbria

Mini-moons are all the rage for newly-weds, including Harry and Meghan. Gilpin in Windermere has a romantic offering in its spa lodges, where you’re met with champagne on arrival and private hot tubs with views over the gardens and hills of the Lake District. Expect an itinerary of treatments and guided walks in Windermere, all topped off with cream teas.

Three-night summer midweek break, £2,360; thegilpin.co.uk

Golf Academy at Rudding Park, Harrogate, Yorkshire

Tomé Morrissy-Swan sorted his swing out…

Is anywhere more fitting than Harrogate for a first spa experience? The two are virtually synonymous. Its first well with supposed medicinal powers was discovered in 1571, and people have flocked to the picturesque Yorkshire town in search of its restorative powers ever since. Once a visit might have entailed a dunk in a sulphurous well; today, pedicures and saunas are served.

Rudding Park is more than a spa: it’s a luxurious hotel, two marvellous restaurants and a top golf course (the real reason I went, I’ll admit). It’s the perfect place for a romantic getaway – my en suite had a sauna and a giant bathtub facing a television; champagne was readily available; and there was even a pillow menu. All wasted: I was alone.

Despite my newbie status I plunge myself into spa life with aplomb: hydrotherapy infinity pool, sauna, herbal bath steam room, foot spa – I try everything. Downstairs is the excellent Horto, the only place I know where you can indulge in fine modern dining in your bathrobe. Amen to that.

For the restless, the adjacent golf course is a tough but rewarding parkland. The 14th hole rivals Augusta for flowery beauty, bright purple rhododendrons replacing the famed pink azaleas of Georgia. Complete novices to experienced, er, swingers with more time to spare than me can check into Rudding Park’s Golf Residency, meet their professional tutor, and embark upon a five-day programme that uses video analysis to work on improving techniques and decreasing handicaps – or establishing one. Days finish at 1pm, with time to use the hotel’s spa facilities including the pool, juniper log sauna and bucket shower, or more golfing for keen beans.

Golf residency is £305pp per night based on two sharing for two nights; ruddingpark.co.uk[http://ruddingpark.co.uk]

Silent yoga retreat, The Tree, Rosedale Abbey, North Yorkshire

Between children yelling, phones pinging and endless work meetings, you might be craving a little calm. If so, you are in luck. The silent yoga weekend retreat at The Tree, in the heart of the North York Moors National Park, includes yoga, meditation, mantra, pranayama (breathing practise) and relaxation – there are spa treatments available as well as use of the hot tub and sauna. Mobile phones aren’t totally banned – you are allowed to use them in your bedrooms – although there’s no reception in Rosedale, just a payphone in the hall. How retro.

£295 per person, based on two people sharing a twin room (£75 supplement for single rooms); thetree.earth[http://thetree.earth]

Scotland

Luxury running weekend, Aberdeenshire

Running The Highlands curates three guided runs on off-road trails through the Cairngorms National Park, with length varying according to ability. There’s a Pilates session to stretch out stiff legs and full use of the luxury country house hotel’s gym, swimming pool, sauna and spa. Having burnt off the calories during the day, you will be justified in tucking into the hotel’s award-winning restaurant fare.

Retreat Sept 7-9; two full-board nights costs £375pp based on two sharing; runningthehighlands.com [http://runningthehighlands.com]

Summer fitness kit: everything you need to get fit in the sun[https://cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk/2920e7ad-895b-49de-b1e4-65f04d6ebb65.html]Canadian canoeing, Inverlochy, Highlands

Craft your own white-knuckle itinerary at Inverlochy Castle, nestled on the edge of the stunning Loch Oich. The hotel can arrange for Canadian canoes, kayaks, sailing, windsurfing, white-water rafting or cycling trips, and after a day in the wilderness, come home to a feast designed by celebrity chefs Albert and Michel Roux Jr before retiring to a bedroom with views of the estate and loch; the Gate Lodge looks over Ben Nevis.

Rooms from £490, with activities as extra; inverlochycastlehotel.com[http://inverlochycastlehotel.com]

Paddleboarding  &  foraging, Cairngorms, Aberdeenshire

Tom Ough took to the water…

If mindfulness is immersion in the moment, here is its epitome: sudden immersion in a river. I am stand-up paddleboarding in the Cairngorms, trying to make a sharp turn, when, inevitably, I lose my balance. In golden Scottish sunshine, I lurch from side to side like a drunkard on a rope bridge, before crashing gracelessly into the Tay. And what do you know? In that instant, floundering and gasping, my mind is empty of cares and worries, at least apart from the obvious matter of trying not to drown.

We are gliding through the scenery, stopping now and then to pick herbs and wildflowersTom OughWhen we go on holiday, we want a physical change of scene – and sure, south London and the Cairngorms are not easily mixed up – but we want a mental one, too. So, on the run from Having to Do Stuff (aka “work”), I’d signed up for more: paddleboarding, foraging, and making gin with the fruits of that forage.

Rattling up to Scotland on the sleeper train, I meet Chris the distiller and Barry the paddleboarding coach at Dalwhinnie station. If the conductor sees you preparing to get off at Dalwhinnie, he might remark on it being a busy week for the station. Ask him why and he’ll say that someone got off there not four days ago.

Barry and Chris take me to the river, which meanders through the heart of a rolling valley that must have once been a glacier bed. The sky is blue, the hills various hues of emerald, and the water, I learn from tumbling into it, has a golden peaty tinge. Stand-up paddleboarding, in which you stand upright on your board and propel yourself by drawing a long paddle through the water, is easy to master. Soon we are gliding through the scenery, stopping now and then to pick herbs and wildflowers. Later, having returned to Strathmashie, a former hunting lodge that houses the award-winning Daffy’s distillery as well as guests, Chris and I use our pickings to make a bottle of gin. I hope that people continue not to come to Dalwhinnie, because I want it to remain unspoilt by the likes of me. Don’t tell anyone that the Cairngorms are idyllic.

Accommodation from £80 per night; paddleboarding, foraging and gin making £210; strathmashie.com[http://strathmashie.com]

Revive yoga weekend, Edinburgh

Wake up in a Victorian villa and get straight into downward dog for 90 minutes’ vinyasa flow before filling up on a healthy brunch. Along with six hours of yoga over the weekend (there’s relaxing yin yoga in the afternoons) there are talks on a variety of topics, from how to make detox body treatments to nutrition and how best to eat for performance. Speaking of food, it’s plentiful – there’s even afternoon tea squeezed in between lunch and a three-course dinner.

Selected dates; £395 per person for a two-night stay; reviveyogabreaks.com[http://reviveyogabreaks.com]

Wales

Reading retreat, The School of Life, Llanbister, Radnorshire

Burpees just not your thing? In which case, how about a three-night reading retreat at The School of Life’s stylish Life House? Set in an isolated Welsh valley and designed by the architect John Pawson, the house is intended as a place for calm and reflection, with huge picture windows that look out over rolling hills. When you haven’t got your nose in a book, there are walks “curated” by artist Hamish Fulton.

Rooms, £450 for a three-night stay, which includes The School of Life Library, worth £95; info@living-architecture.co.uk[http://info@living-architecture.co.uk]

10 amazing wellness holidays for solo travellers[https://cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk/820f1129-d615-45cc-9790-1192c345879e.html]Wild swimming camp, Isle of Anglesey

There’s something incredibly carefree about pulling on your bathers and just jumping into a lake. But if you haven’t done it before, it can feel intimidating – so book in with a trained guide who leads swims around some of North Wales’ most beautiful wild swimming locations, with a base at a stylish, secluded country house on the Isle of Anglesey.

£425 per person, based on two sharing; thezestlife.co.uk[http://thezestlife.co.uk]

Northern Ireland

Sleep retreat, Slieve Donard Resort and Spa, County Down

After a day of walking and climbing in the Mountains of Mourne or the Tollymore Forest Park, head up to the spa’s wellness centre overlooking the Irish Sea and indulge in a sleep ritual. In a candlelit room, tucked up on a massage bed, the therapist takes you through visualisation and guided breathing techniques before using ESPA products in a deep tissue massage with hot stones.

£210 per person for one night’s stay and a treatment; hastingshotels.com [http://hastingshotels.com]

GRAPHICS: JUN 8TH

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SUICIDE, HARTSTEIN, CDC, SPADE, BOURDAIN, WARNING SIGNS

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GRAPHICS: CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK CITY

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GRAPHICS: THIS SEGMENT IS SPONSORED BY KING'S HAWAIIAN

NE-YO, "GOOD MAN", REXHA, PARTYNEXTDOOR, WONDER

MICHAEL STRAHAN (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Alright. Thank you so much, Rob. We are here now with the man. He is a three-time Grammy winner. His name is Ne-Yo.

GRAPHICS: NE-YO LIVE!

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

Yeah, yeah.

MICHAEL STRAHAN (ABC NEWS)

(OC) (inaudible) the hit song "Push Back." And then, so, and so, it's great to have you here...

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

Thank you.

MICHAEL STRAHAN (ABC NEWS)

(OC) ...kicking off our Party in the Park on this Friday morning and you've been in the business 20 years now.

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

Woo, yeah.

MICHAEL STRAHAN (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Yeah, it goes fast.

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

Been a little while.

MICHAEL STRAHAN (ABC NEWS)

(VO) And Ne-Yo, is it inspired from one of my favorite movies "The Matrix"?

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

Yeah, yeah. That, that's where the name came from. It was, it was a joke initially. A, a friend of mine said something, like, "You like the Ne-Yo of the music industry," because I used to pride myself on being able to do that other people can't do. Yeah. So, yeah, initially it was a joke. I didn't like it, but like any nickname...

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) It's stuck.

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

...it stuck.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Alright, and...

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

I'm Ne-Yo.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

'Good Man" drops today, Ne-Yo.

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

Yes.

MICHAEL STRAHAN (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Yeah (inaudible).

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

Yes. Today.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) After you took a two-year break, you're back. What does it mean to be performing in front of your fans finally after these two years?

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

Man, it, it, it means the world. It really and truly does. I'm, I missed y'all while I was gone. I can't lie. I really did. Happy to be back.

MICHAEL STRAHAN (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Well, they missed you too, obviously. Everybody is excited. Woke up early to come out and support you, man.

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

(OC) Yeah, that's love. That is love.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) But your new album includes so many different collaborations, Bebe Rexha, you also have Partynextdoor. In the future, a future album, who's a dream collaboration for you?

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

Ooh, dream collaboration. Okay. So, so, I have, I have five kings. Five artists that inspire me to the point to where I am now, five artists that if I could mail together to make one artist, I, I aspire to be that artist. Prince, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Marvin Gaye.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Amazing.

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

Only one of them's still alive. Stevie Wonder. So, that is my dream collaboration.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Oh, wow. That would be incredible.

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

(OC) Me and Stevie Wonder, we gotta get together and do something, yeah.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Stevie Wonder, my, that's a good one.

MICHAEL STRAHAN (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Stevie's out there listening, man.

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

Stevie, holler at your boy. Come on. Let, let's make it happen. Let's make it happen.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Alright. Well, you know who else is listening? Everyone. We have Ne-Yo with "Good Man" which hit number one on adult r&b charts so, Ne-Yo, take it away.

NE-YO PERFORMS "GOOD MAN"

COMMERCIAL BREAK

GRAPHICS: JUN 8TH

GRAPHICS: GOOD MORNING AMERICA

TRUMP, NORTH KOREA, POMPEO, G7 SUMMIT

TRUMP, SUMMIT, KIM

TRUMP, GIULIANI, DANIELS

GRAPHICS: FIRST LADY FIRES BACK

GRAPHICS: REFUTES GIULIANI'S REMARK ON STORMY DANIELS

CO1NTENT: KAEPERNICK, TRUMP

CHINA, US CONSULATE

EXCESSIVE FORCE, JOHNSON

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BOUTTE

JAMES, NBA FINALS

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GRAPHICS: PRESIDENT TRUMP AND KIM JONG-UN: COUNTDOWN TO THE SUMMIT

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BOURDAIN, SUICIDE,

G7 SUMMIT, CANADA, TARIFFS, SINGAPORE, SUMMIT, KIM

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SUICIDE, HARTSTEIN, CDC, SPADE, BOURDAIN, WARNING SIGNS

RODRIGUEZ, LOPEZ, IHOP, IHOB, COUNTRY TIME, LEGAL-ADE

CLARKSON, DIET, WEIGHT LOSS, AUTO-IMMUNE DISEASE

SKIN, PROBIOTICS, BACTERIA, STRAINS, PROTEIN, POWDER

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) And now to our beauty from the inside out series.

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AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(VO) I'm here with dermatologist and author of "The Beauty of Dirty Skin," Dr. Whitney Bowe who says it's not what you put on your face, it's what you put in your body.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) So, this morning we're talking probiotics and protein powders to get that flawless complexion. So, it's a, it's a, it's a very interesting way to think about it, when, you are what you eat, basically.

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

Right, most people think about probiotics in the context of gut health and digestion, but promising new studies show that they might also pay a role not only in our overall health, but in the health of our skin. So, the way I think about it, it's all about the balance of bacteria in our guts. So, really you want to maintain this delicate balance because if one bug starts to overgrow and dominate, that can cause problems. Now our diet, the supplements we take, they can all affect this delicate balance and our goal, Amy, is to boost the number and diversity of bacteria...

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Okay.

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

(VO) ...and starve those bacteria that might be starting to take over.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(VO) Alright, so what do you look for when buying probiotics? There's a lot on the market.

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

Not all probiotics are created equal. Different strains serve different purposes and some probiotics are simply more effective based on the way that they're formulated. So, based on my research, based on my knowledge, there's some key elements to consider. So, first has to do with diversity. So, I always say the more strains, the better.

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GRAPHICS: DR. BOWE'S PROBIOTIC ADVICE: CAPSULES THAT CONTAIN AT LEAST 10 STRAINS

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

I tell people to look for strains, probiotics, that contain more than ten strains.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Okay.

GRAPHICS: "DELAYED RELEASE" FOR BEST RESULTS

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

But the other thing to keep in mind is delivery. So, these probiotics, they need to survive all the way down to the small intestine, which is where they need to go to work their magic. But where do they have to stop first? They have to stop in the, in the stomach. So, imagine that this beaker has our stomach gastric juices and our enzymes. Now, typical probiotics that are unprotected, they're gonna get in there, they're gonna break down, they're not gonna survive.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Right.

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

They're not gonna make it to the small intestine where they need to go. So, I tell patients look for the words "delayed release capsule"...

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Okay.

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

...on the label.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Alright. That's very good. Another thing that you talk about, protein powders.

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

Protein powders.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(VO) What are their advantages and, and what should we look for?

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

Well, a lot of my patients are just not getting enough protein in their diet and you need protein for healthy skin hair and nails, right? Now, ideally you're getting it from food but if you know you're not getting enough from food, these protein powders are super convenient because you can literally just take a scoop, you thrown it in a shaker bottle, you can add up, you know, add water, you can add milk, you can put it in a smoothie, shake it up.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) That smells nice, all the chocolate.

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

...head out the door, it's real easy. But, see, the catch is, Amy, is that the majority of these powders are made with something called whey, W-H-E-Y.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Right.

GRAPHICS: PRONE TO ACNE? DITCH "WHEY" BASED

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

It's a milk protein and small studies have linked it with acne and inflammation of the skin.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Okay. So, you gotta be careful what's in these protein...

DR. WHITNEY BOWE (DERMATOLOGIST)

(OC) I say toss the whey and go for the plant-based protein powders.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(VO) Great advice. Dr. Whitney Bowe, thank you and Ne-Yo is next.

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LARA SPENCER (ABC NEWS)

(OC) So we are back right now with Ne-Yo. Here he is with his Grammy Award-winning song, "Miss Independent."

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AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) And we want to thank Ne-Yo for an incredible block party here in the park.

NE-YO (RECORDING ARTIST)

(OC) Thank you for having me.

AMY ROBACH (ABC NEWS)

(OC) And he is performing more on our website, goodmorningamerica.com.

MICHAEL STRAHAN (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Have a great weekend, everybody.

LARA SPENCER (ABC NEWS)

(OC) TGIF.

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(OC) Alright, it's the summer block party here on "GMA" with our sponsor, of course, King's Hawaiian, and we've been getting so many pictures of your neighborhood barbecues. Keep sending them for your chance to win $25,000 for your ultimate Labor Day block party. And if, hey, look, if you're grilling this weekend, it's gonna be nice here to do it.

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ROB MARCIANO (ABC NEWS)

(OC) Here's some great tips from King's Hawaiian. Always light your grill 45 minutes ahead of time before cooking. It ensures the perfect temperature and if you start too soon, you're gonna burn the outsides of your, your proteins, so, you don't always want to do that. For more on how you can win the ultimate block party go to goodmorningamerica.com/blockparty. Michael, (inaudible) back over to you.