A pragmatic guide towards a low-carbon lifestyle transition, from “How Bad are Bananas” by Mike Berners-Lee — The heat waves in Europe, accelerating forest fires, watching my garden and nature across the continent wither dry, and the absence of political will to transition to a low-carbon economy have prompted an unprecedented surge of eco-anxiety in me. But panic won’t help. What will? Let’s take deep breaths together…

All you need to know about this trendy fermented drink — Chances are you’ve heard of kombucha before and maybe have even had a taste of this strange drink, but what it really is and what benefits it holds still remain a mystery to you. This is why I scouted scientific reviews and wrote this. What is kombucha? Kombucha is a mildly sweet and…

As if you needed a reason for that chill — Diversity In the matter of gut microbiome ecology, scientists still don’t know precisely what is a healthy microbiota. Everyone has a different setup, some bacteria can be good markers or bad markers depending on the rest of the environment and their quantity. …

Aphids and Buchnera, a well-studied example to grasp life’s interconnectedness — I discovered this story in Ed Yong’s I Contain Multitudes, a wonderful book about the ubiquity and variety of forms taken by symbiosis in the living realm, which I recommend to any curious mind open to the holobiont idea: that life is an interweaving of organisms nested the ones into…

Bringing clarity to the beneficial microbes categories — There is a lot of confusion between the terms probiotics, fermented foods, and dietary microbes, and what they imply. Magazines, the internet, and product labels are mixed up. Even the probiotics and food industries seem to get disoriented at times. Here is a recap for better use of the terminology. 1. Probiotics …

Every drug gets to microbes first — The development of drugs from discovery to phase 1, phase 2, and phase 3 evaluates safety but never took into account the impact of the drugs on the microbiota as a possible side effect. What Martin Blaser and his research exposed in his famous book Missing Microbes was the inception…

What’s a species, what’s a strain, why it matters — In the probiotics sector, there is a consensus that products should label the microorganisms they contain down to the strain level. The International Probiotics Association (IPA) writes it clearly in its labelling infographic, as does the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP). However, a report by Lumina Intelligence…

Who’s knocking on the door to tomorrow? — Probiotic or Next-Generation Probiotic? Probiotics, according to the 2001 FAO/WHO definition, reinforced by ISAPP consensus statement in 2014, are “live microorganisms which, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit to the host”. Next-generation probiotics (NGP), on the other hand, were defined by O’Toole et al., in 2017 as “well-characterized probiotic strains which…

Taking into consideration not only weight loss outcomes, but aiming to create a virtuous cycle — There is another pandemic rumbling below the surface. The burden of obesity has tripled since 1975 and the last WHO figures, in 2016, showed 39% of adults were overweight and 13% obese globally. The Covid-19 lockdowns only made matters worse. There are genetic factors to obesity, but they only explain…