Chung’s Questions – Can soylent feed the world?

Chung is also a keen questioner. My response to his brief question (predictably) got out of hand, so I am posting it here.

He asks about soylent, a nutritional drink designed to replace the need to eat by containing all the calories and nutrients needed in a powder. Chung asks about the possible roles of soylent and smart foods in avoiding potential food crises and malnutrition…

 

So one aspect to consider is if we replace our normal western diets with solyent, would that use less resources, leading to better food security and a better ability to feed the world…

So the main ingredients seem to be: maltodextrin, produced form corn or wheat, rice protein, oat flour. Then there are lots of vitamins and minerals and some fish oil. I’m unclear as to exactly how much farmland/energy/water/CO₂ is involved in the making of these, but I would suggest it is probably less than the equivalent for meat. Growing the wheat, oats, and rice to make this is probably more efficient than an average diet, especially if done on a huge scale. However, if we just took the wheat, rice, and oats that are added to solylent and ate them normally we would probably get more nutritional benefit than just from the extracted powdered form. So probably, on balance, it is a more efficient way to feed us.

The second aspect is one of acute crises. Soylent could have an important role to play in warzones and disaster areas, and areas with widespread poverty and famine. Shipping in the powder to provide people with a stable, healthy, simple food source would be great. The powder also needs water, so clean water would have to be transported too.

A third question is over whether soylent is actually healthy – it has been designed to have everything we need… but we don’t necessarily know exactly what is required, especially long term, and even more for babies and children who are still developing. And there are lots of complex factors at work – foods are naturally very complex, with thousands of different compounds that interact. Take iron, for example… we know we need it, but if we take just an iron tablet, the body doesn’t absorb it very well. But if we eat a meal containing iron, fats, and vitamin C then significantly more will be absorbed by the body. So it’s possible that soylent is missing some important components that we don’t even know are required. Then again, there was a documentary about a girl who only ate crisps and coke, so the human body is pretty adaptable. Broadly though, I think soylent is probably a pretty good approximation of an ideal diet, and probably a lot better than many people’s normal diets. Where it really shines though, is for refugees.

 

 

Explaining to Ellen #2 – Animal Testing

So part two of my series of answers to questions that my friend Ellen has about science, whereby I start answering her question and then wander off at a tangent. You can read Part 1 here. The latest question she posed was this:

Does science actually use lots of mice and rats, or is this just a media lie? If it isn’t true what other animals get used? If it is why don’t we use other small rodents like hamsters? Is it to do with rats and mice being native to western countries where media shows science being done? If so why don’t scientists use squirrels? Do they use other animals in other countries?

 So to get to the first question, are lots of mice and rats being used for research? Around 3 million mice and rats are used per year in the UK for experiments, which seems like a lot. However, this country has a population of around 60 million people, which means only 0.05 animals per person. So if an individual lives 80 years, then only 4 animals will have been used for research during their entire life and 4 mice per person in a lifetime doesn’t seem that big. Rats and mice account for the vast majority of animals used for research in the UK, with the rest being made up mostly of fish. For comparison’s sake, Defra reports that there are around 200 million cows, pigs, sheep, and poultry in the UK.

Do We Use Hamsters

Hamsters are not used as widely as mice and rats for several reasons. Some species are no sociable and prefer to live alone, plus they are nocturnal which makes them harder to work with during the day, and many key scientific experiments are not as simple to do because we don’t have the ‘toolbox’ for them – for example, because the mouse genome is fully sequenced so we understand its genes much better. Mice can also make more babies – up to 100 in a year. However, hamsters do get a bit of a look-in; a widely-used cell type is the CHO cell (Chinese Hamster Ovary). These cells were originally extracted from a hamster and are now used for many experiments around the world and also production of protein-based drugs.

Why Don’t They Use Squirrels

Squirrels are generally more difficult to handle, they’re a lot more wild, and make bad pets. I suspect if you tried to keep them in a lab you’d end up getting bitten a lot.

Do They Use Other Animals in Other Countries

Other animals are used, but it is not country-specific necessarily. Animals for research are chosen because they have something in their genes or their physiology that is important and makes them a good choice. Some examples of different animals are:

• Blood transfusions were developed after testing in dogs.
• Tamoxifen was developed to combat breast cancer using mice.
• Nobel laureate Albert Sabin said of the mice and monkeys he used in his work: “there could have been no oral polio vaccine without the use of innumerable animals”.
• Vitamin C was discovered using Guinea pigs
• Antibodies used for important steps in research require the use of blood from sheep, goats, chickens, rats and so on.
• Rabbits were used to understand ectopic pregnancy – the commonest cause of maternal death worldwide.
• Zebrafish – which are conveniently see-through have been used to study heart function and cancer metastasis.

Science has several Model Animals, animals which have proved useful and gained acceptance as a good species to use. These are animals that are easy to handle, and can be used for many different experiments. Mice, for example, are quick to grow and develop, can produce offspring quickly, can be easily handled and kept in cages. They’re also easy to feed, don’t take up masses of space and can be kept clean and healthy. This makes them handy from a practical point of view. But they are also very good for a scientific point of view. The entirety of their DNA has been sequenced, meaning we can understand a lot more about them. We have also discovered that 99% of our genes are shared with mice, making them excellent models for us. We even share the gene for tail development (which is obviously inactive in us!) In addition, we have very good tools for turning genes on or off in mice, which means we can test out the role of different genes and drugs in a controlled way.

71 of the Nobel Prizes for Medicine won in the last 103 years were awarded to scientists who used animals in their research. Animals are used to help understand how nature and our bodies work, develop new medicines, and ensure their safety.

Ethics, and how animals are protected.

Animals in research are highly valuable and scientists ensure they are protected as much as possible. Researchers are compelled to consider “the 3 Rs”, Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement: using non-animal methods if they are available, using no more animals than necessary, and ensuring the best conditions for the animals while they’re being kept.  A lot of thought goes into minimising the use of animals, such as sharing (eg I use the brain and my co-worker can use the lungs so we need half the number of mice), or using modern imaging techniques to test the same animals several times rather than having to kill and do surgery on multiple sets of animals. Much care is put into their living conditions too. For this I will quote the MRC’s information:

“The ‘mouse house’ is a refinement developed at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research. The transparent, red, plastic house enables the mice to perform natural behaviours such as nesting, hiding and climbing, which is important for their welfare. The house appears dark to the mice, yet the transparent walls mean that animal care staff can see the mice at all times and so are able to carry out their daily checks without disturbing them.”

To work with animals a scientist must hold a licence from the home office, which requires them to undergo training. All projects must be assessed for ethical approval, taking into account the 3 Rs before any work can take place and there are strict guidelines on what can be done – the benefit to human life must outweigh any suffering by animals. Animals are anaesthetised where possible to make sure they feel no pain and are treated as humanely as possible. Thousands of surprise inspections are carried out each year to make sure standards are maintained.

I have had personal experience working with mice like these (always under very close supervision, I should stress, and I don’t think I ever even touched the mice myself) The mouse house is not much different to how pets would be kept at home, and they had a team dedicated to looking after them, keeping them clean, warm, and  safe. The particular experiments I was involved in tested how their skin and hair grew, there was no pain, they just had a drug applied to them as they lived ‘normal’ life a pet might have. They were eventually killed painlessly (not by me) and their skin was taken for testing. I don’t believe these particular mice were suffering, or living a life worse than any pet mouse. [NOTE THAT THIS IS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY CURRENT WORK]

 Alternatives to animals

Around 90% of medical research is now being done using non-animal techniques; this includes using cells grown in a dish, computer models, and recent advanced tissue culture techniques. The most modern techniques being developed allow researchers to take cells from a patient and then carefully grow it in the lab. They are able to reproduce whole “organoids”, with a full range of the correct cells grown in the correct layers in 3D. There is indeed a lot of research being done to find ways of doing experiments without animals. Much work on breast cancer can now be done on cells grown in a lab, and these protocols were developed by comparing them with mouse-work.

Although these techniques can all give us good evidence, they are all still pretty far from a full body, which a bloodstream and a heart to transport the drug round the body; and a liver to process the drugs, and multiple other organs. Until we test the drug in a whole body we can’t check how these factors will affect things. And the best way we know to do that is using mice, which is why they are so commonly used.

A quick side note on cosmetics testing

Cosmetic testing on animals was banned in the UK in 1998, the EU outlawed animal testing in 2009, and from this year products tested on animals will not even be allowed to be imported. This is a war that has very much been won.

Conclusions

So yes, a large number of animals are used for scientific enquiry, and they are mostly mice. But these animals provide hugely important advances to our knowledge, enabling us to save lives, and the animals are kept to the highest ethical standards.

Explaining to Ellen #1 – Are chemicals bad?

This post is prompted by a couple of questions my good friend Ellen asked about science. She says she has more, so hopefully she likes my answer and will let me answer more of them here. So on to the first sub-question.

1. What is better to buy, face scrub with synthetic beads in or the ‘natural’ option with brown sugar.

The problem with the synthetic scrub is that it contains polyethylene particles – this is the most common plastic in the world, used for bags, bottles, and so on. It is not biodegradable, and obviously the beads you wash off your face down the drain are not recyclable. Recent evidence shows  that tiny particles of plastic are building up and as they build up in the food supply they absorb toxic chemicals they get concentrated in us and other predators in the food chain. In addition to this, plastics production is also a big use of oil, with attendant problems. On the other side is the natural alternative containing brown sugar. This is not all good, the sugar industry is big business, and a lot of land is taken up by sugar crops that could be used for more nutritious food. And obviously the sugar has to be imported, meaning carbon-miles.
So which is better? For this one I have to come down on the side of the ‘natural’. The accumulation of non-biodegradable plastic is the bigger danger. It is notable, however, that this is more of an ecological problem rather than a decision based on which is more healthy to you. Rubbing plastic on your face to exfoliate isn’t any less healthy than rubbing sugar on it.

2. What is the difference between soy milk with added vitamins vs cow’s milk with ‘real’ vitamins.

Synthetic and natural vitamins are completely chemically identical, there is absolutely no difference between the two and your body can use them exactly the same. For example, a recent study showed vitamin D pills could help keep people healthy, especially if they lived in less-sunny places where the body can struggle to get enough natural vitamin D on its own, and later discussed that people might need to take in more than a certain threshold amount to be healthy. Eating a balanced, healthy diet full of veggies is the best way to get vitamins though – the complicated mix of chemicals found in, say, a carrot are likely to work together so your body gets maximum benefit from the vitamins, and fibre, and so on.  Drinking soy milk with added vitamins is certainly not bad for you, especially if you’re eating a healthy balanced diet.

3. Are natural flavours and colours  in percy pigs safer than man made ones in haribo?

Simply put, anything added to food has to be tested for safety and there is no evidence to show that these additives will do us any harm, or indeed provide any special benefits. There is a myth that says giving kids sugary sweets with colourings will make them hyper, with every kids party as evidence. However, this has been tested scientifically and the presence or absence of additives doesn’t have very strong support at all. In fact, the children are probably hyper due to the fact they are spending in a party atmosphere, time running round with friends, with balloons and games and so on. Kids don’t need sweets to be hyper.

E numbers
This is a good prompt to talk about E numbers, which I feel are much misunderstood. Rather than being a signifier of horrible toxins, E numbers are actually just a system for organising stuff we eat and make sure everything is safe and well recorded. If an ingredient has an E number it means that it has passed safety testing… If something has an E number it has in fact proved itself to be safe. In addition, E numbers are not necessarily ‘unnatural’.

Examples of E numbers are:

• E101 – Vitamin B2
• E120 – Cochineal, the natural red food colouring
• E164 – Saffron
• E212 – Potassium Benzoate, beloved by evil shopkeepers
• E270 – Lactic acid, naturally produced by our muscles
• E290 – Carbon dioxide, which we breathe out constatly

And this is just some of the 100s and 200s… Hopefully you can see that the presence of the dreaded “E Numbers” isn’t a sign of horribly toxic food.

So what chemicals should we be trying to eat and use?

If there was one general point I could make it is that everything is chemicals. The water we drink is a chemical; the oxygen we breathe is a chemical; the food we eat is composed of thousands of chemicals.

Coke and OJ

And things we might see as ‘healthy and natural’ may not be any better than things seen as synthetic. There is a famous experiment of putting a penny in coke and taking it out to find it is cleaned and shiny. This is due to acidity of the coke dissolving the dulled outer surface. Makes coke sound bad right? You’d probably be better off with a fresh glass of orange juice then? Unfortunately,  fresh, healthy, natural orange juice is just as acidic and will do exactly the same thing. Similarly, coke is also known to be unhealthily full of sugar – but OJ has almost as much. Of course this is not to say orange juice is bad for you – it contains plenty of vitamins, for example. Really, the message is that just because something is natural does not make it good, and just because something is unnatural does not make it bad. Everything should be judged on its own merits. A glass of juice with breakfast is a fine way to start the day, and an occasional can of coke will not kill you. Everything in moderation.

Sugar vs Sweeteners

Often, decisions about what chemicals are best to use are difficult. There is a large amount of evidence to show that people eat too much sugar (and I say this with an open packet of Munchies beside me). So perhaps we should switch to artificial sweeteners to give us that same sweetness without the calories? On the other hand, there has been worry about the potential negative health effect, but there is little evidence to show that sweeteners have these health effects. On the other hand, it is not necessarily clear that replacing sugary drinks with artificially sweetened low calorie ones actually helps people lose weight.

Artificial Preservatives

Another hot topic is preservatives. There are a lot of negative ideas about preservatives, but these do not stack up to much. A few years ago a type of chemical preservative called ‘parabens’ were linked in the media to breast cancer after a study in The Journal of Applied Toxiciology. The only problem was that the authors never linked parabens to causing cancer. In fact, your body very effectively and quickly breaks down parabens. Even if they were dangerous, they are used in tiny amounts, much too low to cause serious effects. In addition, a world without preservatives would be very difficult; food would spoil and make-up would accumulate dangerous levels of bacteria and fungi. Parabens are a cheap and effective way to keep things from spoiling. And for an ironic twist: parabens are actually made naturally by plants such as blueberries which have been feted as a ‘superfood’ (though there is no such thing).

These are not really questions of science, exactly, but ones of politics, of ethics, of personal choice and of public policy. All science can do is provide evidence to help make decisions, and the more we know the better those decisions can be. So to sum up, what is best? Really there is no hard and fast rule, it is up for individuals to decide on a case by case basis. I probably do want to have artificial preservatives in my food, but artificial beads in my facewash are not good. Not necessarily a simple and satisfactory answer, but that reflects life.

Tony