I am here for the random fascinating stuff people know.

If you tell people the wine is expensive, they'll tell you it's good. If you tell people the food is organic, they'll tell you it's tasty. If you tell people AI generated something, they'll tell you it's awful.

I love that we call these the "latin" names when we totally just make them up. It gives a gloss of erudition to scientists just having fun.

There is one -- count 'em, one! -- morel in my garden. What does one do with ONE morel?

Obesity rates are FINALLY leveling off in much of the developed world. Developing world, they're accellerating. If we're gonna export our food & food culture, let's export GLP-1s as well. (Top map is women, bottom is men.) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) isn't as well-known as SNAP, but it provides money for a list of nutritious foods for mothers and kids under 5. I am an American and I am appalled that, in my country, this program is on the chopping block.

Some of you hate BMI as a metric because it doesn't take muscle mass into account. "The Rock is obese!" you point out. Yeah, he is. And he is one of the 3% of men and 0% of women who are obese by BMI but not by fat mass. BMI is a great, cheap proxy for fatness. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

I think it's perfectly fine to offer full-fat milk in schools. Also low-fat and non-fat milk. It's chocolate milk that's the problem. www.foodpolitics.com/2026/05/whol...

Dietary exposures have 2+ potential estimands. Additive effects are effects of adding exposures to your diet including adding calories. Substitution effects are effects of swapping exposures for other foods, keeping calories constant. For most people adding calories is harmful, whatever the food.

Surprise, surprise! When people add 180 calories/day to their diet, even if it's mostly protein, they gain weight. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This is a great thread about a bad study claiming arts engagement slows aging. It asks a key question - if you're trying to figure out if a behavior affects health, first ask how you'd design a study to find out.

File under: Yet Another Thing GLP-1s Might Be Good For Macular degeneration of all things. www.medpagetoday.com/ophthalmolog...

I immediately went to the web site to get the recipe because this looks fabulous. Here it is: www.ranchogordo.com/blogs/recipe...

It's not just billionaires who try to influence politics for their best interest, the rest of us be damned. www.canarymedia.com/articles/sol...

For the record, I have not written anything in cursive in my entire adult life. This is despite being a writer.

Vegan cheese, and the rocky road to using expensive tech to displace animal foods. I'm pretty confident we'll get there with both meat and cheese, but I don't think it'll be soon. www.economist.com/interactive/...

I've spoken at Breakthrough Institute events (they pay my travel expenses when I do), and I'm going to push back here. Trolls? You can disagree with them, but they are serious about understanding energy & climate. Funding? Here's where they get their money.

The calculus on regulations like SNAP is always the same. Regs too loose, it's too easy to commit fraud. Regs too tight, it's too hard for people who qualify to get the benefit. You err on one side or the other, and I think basic human decency dictates that we err on the side of feeding people.

We keep fighting about whether carbs, fat, or protein make you eat less while we totally ignore the thing that really does affect how much you eat: energy density. Here, people eat WAY more on a keto diet than a low-fat, high-carb diet. practitioner.macklinmethod.com/wp-content/u...

Makary is apparently out www.wsj.com/health/healt...

there is no quiet part anymore

Write for us! We’re looking for people to write many more pieces for us at Works in Progress – including on the story behind superglue, why there’s no syphilis vaccine, how gas turbines became efficient, and many more in this post. If you or someone you know would be interested, please pitch us :)

What diet messages do people listen to? The ones that let them eat the foods they enjoy. That's why protein is having a moment - people love protein foods & are delighted to have a reason to eat more of them. In a new IFIC survey, 63% say protein makes a diet healthier. ific.org/media/nearly...

Today in This Looks Cool ...

This administration is finding every opportunity to make life worse for SNAP recipients and that's despicable. But if Michelle Obama had floated this particular idea, I think most people here would have been in favor. (It's a broken clock situation for sure.)

The Golden Age of farming! - Fertilizer prices up 50ish % - Diesel prices up 50ish % - Farm bankruptcies up 46% But prosperity is just around the corner

My work is hiring for an associate director of digital communications (ie, my supervisor). We’re a team of writers and editors looking for the same, along with PR/copywriting/CMS experience. Posting here: www.bard.edu/employment/d...

It's great when somebody tackles a problem people don't like to talk about (chub rub!) in a straightforward, unembarrassed, incredibly useful way. Brava.

Jack Aubrey would like a word

Why are Americans obese? Junk food prices shouldn’t get all the blame. wapo.st/4d2y1KA @TamarHaspel

Niceness gets a bad rap as kind of an insipid virtue. But the older I get - and the more vitriolic the world seems - the more it looks to me like nice is the single most important thing you can be.

NPR wants to hear from people impacted by changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. n.pr/4tl5Blf

The best, easiest metric for what @igi.bsky.social is calling "intellectual humility" but what I think of as just open-mindedness is ... mind changing. When was the last time you changed your mind on an issue of substance? If you can't think of one, well ...

Hard agree with Pete Wells that enjoying food is hugely important. Unfortunately, the mindful eating strategy - which focuses on enjoyment - has been tested for weight loss and doesn't work any better than any other diet. Which is to say, it doesn't work. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/d...

Blue Zones are bullshit. They started as a tenable idea -- hey, look at these places where people live longer! But then it turned out it was mostly pension fraud and lousy records. But by then it had become a grift and was Too Lucrative to Fail.

This take by @mjtoma.bsky.social misses a few things. 1. The biggest US crop, corn, is almost all hybrid, so you can't save seeds 3. Farmers can do math and choose patented seeds because yields are better 2. Non-patented seeds are available in every crop I know of newrepublic.com/article/2098...

Hi! I'm a farmer! This NYT article is sweet, saccharine bullshit. Farmers knew Trump was going to hurt our business. Because he already did a trade war in his 1st term. I even did a video on why so many farmers support Trump, WHILE knowing he'd hurt our farms.

STORIES FROM A WARMING WORLD, a live #storytelling event featuring @misibu.bsky.social filmmakers, photographer, activists, scholars… & me. :) Hear tales about what we share, what we cherish, what we’re losing & how we might move forward together. Boston. 5/13. Tickets sites.bu.edu/misi/event/s...

Gonna need to see the land use number on this one… But hooray for another W for the grasses (bamboo is a grass)!

Nutritional epidemiology ties people in knots trying to explain unexpected findings. People with healthy diets get *more* lung cancer? Must be the pesticides! We'll just ignore the study that shows *less* lung cancer in ag workers w/high pesticide exposure.. www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...

For the umpteenth time, it's not the how, it's the cow. Managed grazing generally doesn't increase soil carbon. Beef is not a climate solution! www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...

I stand corrected! Descriptions of brewing beer go back 3000 years. Beer itself, 13,000.

Beer, it seems, dates back at least 3000 years.

pluralism FTW!

Post your warning sign

Lots of people are talking about this study, this headline, this picture (!), and ultra-processed foods. It’s been my job for 25 years to understand nutrition. I think there are 5 - count ‘em, 5! - things that you need to know about UPFs and health. Here they are. 🧵 bsky.app/profile/cnn....

when they decided to do it, it was just a wild ass guess, but it panned out

Are we fat & sick because junk food is cheap and produce is expensive? A new study gave people $80/month to buy fruits, veg, and legumes. Only 30% of participants used 80% or more of the money. Health did not improve. We don't eat vegetables because we don't like them. wapo.st/4el67vN

Think about the caliber of the people who got confirmed to key positions, and then think about how bad Casey Means must be to get nixed.

I think glyphosate is the best broad-spectrum herbicide we have. I also think Bayer should not be protected from lawsuits. So this is good.