This Ancient Grain Could Help Transform Children’s Gut Health

By Cornell U., August 7, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/this-ancient-grain-could-help-transform-childrens-gut-health/

A biofortified pearl millet containing substantially more iron and zinc produced measurable changes in toddlers’ developing gut microbiomes.

 Credit: Shutterstock

Iron-rich pearl millet may improve toddler nutrition without disrupting the developing gut microbiome.

Each day, hundreds of toddlers in Mumbai’s urban slums ate porridge, soft curry, or freshly baked foods prepared for young children. Some meals contained ordinary pearl millet, an ancient grain widely eaten in India. Others used a specially bred millet with almost three times as much iron and more zinc than conventional grain. The foods tasted much the same, but the fortified grain was producing measurable changes inside the children’s developing gut microbiomes.

Iron deficiency is the world’s most common nutritional disorder, affecting about one quarter of the global population. Without enough iron, the body cannot make sufficient hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood. The resulting iron-deficiency anemia can interfere with physical health, brain development, and cognitive function.

Researchers at the Cornell Joan Klein Jacobs Center for Precision Nutrition and Health, working with collaborators in India and at the University of California San Diego, studied toddlers who ate iron- and zinc-biofortified pearl millet for nine months. They found none of the adverse effects commonly associated with higher iron intake. Instead, the children developed distinct gut microbial changes that may be beneficial.

Published in Nature Communications and presented at the American Society for Nutrition’s annual meeting, the research is believed to be among the first studies to examine how eating a biofortified crop affects the human gut microbiome.

“We thought that a food-based approach could help us move away from one-size-fits-all supplementation strategies to address population health, while also being a way to personalize nutritional interventions,” said Dr. Saurabh Mehta, founding director and Janet and Gordon Lankton Professor at the Jacobs center in the College of Human Ecology, and the principal investigator on the study. “So, we decided to test it.”

Iron deficiency affects approximately one in four people and can be especially damaging during early childhood, when it may slow brain development and weaken resistance to infection. Iron supplements can correct the deficiency, but previous research has identified an important drawback. Because the body absorbs only part of a large supplemental dose, excess iron can reach the colon, encourage harmful pathogens, and restrict beneficial microbes. Supplements may also cause diarrhea, constipation, and tarry stools. Those effects are particularly concerning in infants and toddlers because their gut ecosystems are still developing and remain highly sensitive to outside influences.
A staple crop tests a safer approach

The trial included 223 children between 12 and 18 months old living in Mumbai’s urban slums, where iron deficiency and anemia remain widespread. Half received meals prepared with biofortified millet containing 8.7 mg of iron per 100 grams. The remaining children ate standard millet containing 3 mg per 100 grams. Researchers collected rectal swabs before and after the intervention, then sequenced the samples to chart each child’s gut microbial community.

“We had to work with growers to develop the millet. Then we procured 38 tons of millet, split between the two types, and we had to identify storage facilities with the proper temperature and humidity,” said Samantha Huey, research associate in the Jacobs center and co-first author of the study. “We tested it for contamination and to make sure it had the iron and zinc we wanted it to have.”

SNDT Women’s University in India helped create the millet recipes and foods. Working with the Mumbai-based Centre for the Study of Social Change, researchers distributed the meals across 20 locations. At every feeding center, a research assistant recorded how much each child consumed twice daily, with another meal sent home. The schedule continued six days per week for nine months.

Microbial genes reveal what changed

“The sequencing technique that was used allowed us to delve deeper than just describing the types of bacteria present in these children’s guts – we could also understand what they were actually doing,” said co-first author Nathanial Cole, a postdoctoral associate in the Jacobs Center.

“We compared the DNA from these children’s gut communities to reference DNA from other species with known functions, allowing us to predict what these microbes were doing based on genetic similarities,” he said. “This approach enabled us to track how the gut microbiome developed over time and how it responded to the biofortified pearl millet.”

The biofortified millet was associated with increased activity in microbial pathways involved in resisting pathogens. These included pathways that produce natural antibiotic-like compounds, along with antioxidant metabolism that helps support a healthier intestinal environment. By the end of the trial, the children who received the fortified grain also had fewer microbial markers associated with harmful bacteria.

The researchers observed another pattern in both groups. As the toddlers grew older, their gut microbiomes became more diverse and developed a broader range of metabolic abilities, making them better prepared to process different foods. This progression is expected as a healthy gut ecosystem matures during the first years of life.

Biofortification could scale beyond supplements

“Iron supplementation is usually given at high doses because it isn’t well absorbed, but excess ends up in the colon and can allow harmful bacteria to proliferate,” Huey said. “Biofortification increases the nutrient density of the plant via genetic engineering, agronomic practices or – what we used – traditional cross breeding.”

Supplements depend on reliable distribution systems and consistent individual use. Biofortified crops could instead be cultivated, prepared and eaten in the same ways as ordinary staple foods. That could make them a more self-sustaining strategy, Huey said.

Larger studies involving more diverse populations will be necessary before biofortified crops can be recommended as a gut-friendly alternative to supplements. Even so, the approach may have value in lower and middle-income countries as well as wealthier nations. Iron deficiency remains a significant problem in the United States, where biofortification could strengthen agriculture while providing climate-smart, high-yield staple crops with nutrients the body can readily absorb.

The strategy also reflects a broader shift in nutrition guidance toward minimally processed foods.

“The latest dietary guidelines are now stressing eating whole foods and limiting ultra-processed foods and additives,” Huey said. “Growing crops that are naturally more nutrient-dense, rather than relying on adding micronutrients back in during food manufacturing, aligns with these recommendations.”

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'Barbarians' Have Been Misunderstood For Centuries, Researchers Explain

06 August 2026, By D. NIELD

https://www.sciencealert.com/historys-barbarians-were-far-more-sophisticated-than-we-give-them-credit-for

(Lorado/E+/Getty Images)

The word 'barbarian' comes to use from the ancient Greeks: Originally meaning simply 'foreigner', its connotations quickly drifted towards savagery, wildness, and violence.

Those historical associations linger: These days, the term is most commonly used to suggest people who are primitive and aggressive.

In a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Research, a team of researchers from the US and Sweden breaks down how those labeled as barbarians throughout history aren't quite as disorganized and unsophisticated as narratives might have us believe.

The history, after all, was most often written by those under attack from these so-called barbarians, rather than the 'barbarians' themselves.

The Haudenosaunee were one of the groups studied, shown here fighting the Algonquian near Lake Champlain in the US 

(Wikimedia Commons/Public domain)

Four case studies are used to advance the authors' argument: the Vikings who raided fleets over centuries; the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy in North America, which reached its peak around 1700; the Sea Peoples of the Mediterranean; and the Comanche tribe of the American Southwest (most active in the 17th and 18th centuries).

"Historical knowledge about these groups comes largely from colonial or imperialist outsiders who mischaracterized them as irrational and violent," anthropologist Jennifer Birch of the University of Georgia and colleagues write in their published paper.

"This characterization masks the fact that these decentralized groups achieved large-scale strategic coordination in the absence of centralized power."

Digging into historical records and past studies, the researchers built up a framework that draws together commonalities between these various groups.

For example, decentralization was used as a deliberate strategy, making these groups – without a single leader or capital city – much harder to defeat.

The Comanche Meeting the Dragoons oil-on-canvas painting by US artist George Caitlin.

 (Wikimedia/Public domain)



Rather than looking to top-down leadership, these 'barbarians' relied on social ties with other clans and tributes, as well as trading partners, to further their interests.

The process of raiding was more strategic and less haphazard than it has been portrayed as well: The researchers acknowledge these activities as coordinated ways of amassing wealth, resources, and prisoners for the overall benefit of these groups.

"We propose that the decentralized, militarized nature of so-called 'barbarians' were conscious political strategies, often undertaken in opposition to encroachment on the part of pre-modern states and empires," write the study authors.

These strategies could be modified over time, the researchers point out, as the contemporary context changed. Resources could still be amassed, but the distribution was different.

However, this wouldn't necessarily have been evident to the Greeks, Romans, and other communities who encountered 'barbarians'. What outsiders described as uncoordinated was actually a careful mix of autonomy among groups and the pursuit of collective gains.

"This was accomplished by drawing down upon and augmenting a repertoire of institutions, resources, and strategies that allowed them to scale up their activities without the development of centralized power structures," write the researchers.

"The successful strategies of these groups involved balancing the actions and roles of multiple sets of institutions – clans, nations, and confederacies; kin groups, fleets, and nascent polities – in coordinated socio-political structures."

This helps reframe the historical narrative of how warfare and politics evolved in the past. It's also a reminder that history has largely been told by civilizations that wrote things down, yet that one-sided perspective rarely captures the full picture or nuances of different communities.

All of these groups were forced to adapt as more centralized powers with greater numbers took over the regions they lived in.

However, there's still a lot that we can learn from them – and the team is keen to see their framework applied to other groups too.

"Additional systematic cross-cultural comparison would offer much to the discussion of how large-scale decentralized collective societies functioned as well as identifying and explaining variation and change in the same," write the researchers.

We know that many cultures shared oral histories – and continue to do so to this day – histories that enrich the archaeological record, or even challenge what scientists and historians have drawn from it.

"Archaeological data alone may not be sufficient for observing and documenting the kinds of collective behaviors – e.g., alliances, strategic compacts, and military campaigns – that such groups engaged in," the researchers conclude.

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Two Mysterious ‘Ghost’ Ancestors Are Hiding in Our DNA

By R. Sanders, U. of California Berkeley, August 6, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/two-mysterious-ghost-ancestors-are-hiding-in-our-dna/

A new genomic technique has revealed ghost ancestry from two unknown human lineages hidden in modern DNA. 

Credit: SciTechDaily.com



Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred with the ancestors of modern humans, leaving recognizable traces in our DNA. Evidence now suggests that modern humans also interbred with two much older, unidentified ancestral groups.

Hidden within the genomes of people alive today are fragments of DNA from two unidentified human ancestors. Researchers at UC Berkeley traced these genetic regions to ancient episodes of interbreeding involving modern humans and at least four archaic human groups.

Earlier studies had suggested that modern humans mixed with hominins beyond the now-extinct Neanderthals and Denisovans. The new analysis goes further by locating the DNA inherited from these unknown populations and estimating when the interbreeding occurred. To uncover those relationships, the researchers developed a method that reconstructs ancient genealogies from hundreds of present-day human genomes.

Using genealogical relationships in DNA, TRACE uncovers hidden contributions from extinct human populations that left no sequenced genomes. 

Credit: Meaghan Marohn

Two unknown lineages entered our DNA

One unidentified population, described as a ghost ancestor, interbred with modern humans in Africa before 50,000 years ago. This happened before the most recent migration of Homo sapiens from Africa into Europe and Asia.

DNA from this lineage accounts for around 1% of the modern human genome, roughly comparable to the amount inherited from Neanderthals. The ghost lineage separated from the ancestors of modern humans around 800,000 years ago, near the time when Neanderthals and Denisovans diverged, although its interbreeding with modern humans occurred earlier.

“Previous publications suggested that there might be ghost ancestry — ancestry from unknown archaic lineages in modern humans — but they hadn’t concluded whether this unknown ancestry is present only in Africans or not, and when this introgression event happened,” said Berkeley graduate student Yulin Zhang, one of two first authors of the study. “We were actually able to find and map genomic locations in modern humans that are from this ghost lineage and show that this ghost ancestry is in all modern humans, not only in Africans.”

A timeline showing four separate instances (colored arrows) of archaic hominins interbreeding with early Homo sapiens. The dates were inferred from a genealogical analysis of present-day human genomes using TRACE, a technique developed at UC Berkeley.

 Credit: Yulin Zhang and Priya Moorjani/UC Berkeley

The second unidentified population, called a super-archaic ancestor, belonged to a hominin lineage dating back 1.8 million years. It interbred with Denisovans in Eurasia, and Denisovans later passed some of that super-archaic DNA to modern humans through interbreeding with Homo sapiens.

“The super-archaic finding is particularly exciting because it reveals genetic contributions from a human lineage that lived over a million years ago, despite the absence of any sequenced DNA from that population,” said Arjun Biddanda, a postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins University and a co-first author of the study

The results reinforce a growing view of human evolution in which early modern humans repeatedly encountered related hominin populations across Africa and Eurasia. These groups were genetically similar enough to produce offspring together throughout much of the past million years.

“With ancient DNA from Neanderthals and Denisovans and with these new genealogical methods, we are learning that mixture among human populations has been very pervasive across time, and that this is also likely to be true at ancient time scales,” said Priya Moorjani, a Berkeley associate professor of molecular and cell biology. “We often think of human evolution as a branching tree, but new genomic data and analytical methods reveal a much more interconnected history — more like a complex web of populations connected by repeated episodes of migration and mixing.”

The identities of the ghost and super-archaic ancestors remain uncertain. However, their estimated divergence dates overlap with Middle Pleistocene Homo groups living in Africa about 800,000 years ago and Homo erectus populations in Eurasia around 1.8 million years ago.

Zhang, Biddanda, Moorjani and their colleagues published their findings July 30 in the journal Science.
Known fossils revealed only part

Modern humans leaving Africa approximately 50,000 years ago encountered and interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans in Eurasia. Both older lineages eventually disappeared, but parts of their genomes survived in their modern human descendants.

Researchers uncovered that history by extracting and sequencing ancient DNA preserved in Neanderthal and Denisovan fossils. Yet the human genome also contained signs of interbreeding that appeared to be much older.

Identifying the source of those signals was difficult because no DNA has been recovered from the other extinct hominins that might have contributed them.

TRACE reconstructs ancestry without fossils

Moorjani’s group created TRACE (TRacking Archaic Contributions via ARG Estimation), a method that searches for archaic DNA using complete genomes from living people rather than genetic material from ancient fossils.

The researchers analyzed genomes from populations around the world and reconstructed an ancestral recombination graph (ARG), which charts how segments of DNA connect through shared ancestry across time.

“Genealogies preserve a record of our evolutionary past,” said Moorjani. “TRACE reconstructs those histories across the genome. By identifying regions whose ancestry extends unusually far back in time, we can uncover genetic contributions from extinct human populations, even in the absence of ancient DNA.”

As an initial test, TRACE identified some exceptionally old regions that matched the sequenced Neanderthal genome. Neanderthal ancestry accounts for about 1% of the modern human genome.

When the researchers focused on people from Asia and Oceania, the populations with substantial amounts of Denisovan ancestry, the method also correctly located known regions of Denisovan introgression.

Many other ancient DNA segments matched neither Neanderthals nor Denisovans. The researchers concluded that these regions came from two separate lineages that entered the human family at different times.

Ghost ancestry appeared in both African and non-African populations. That widespread distribution indicates that the interbreeding occurred before modern humans made their final major departure from Africa and expanded around the world.

“We discovered that about 2% of the modern human genome is from archaic hominins,” Zhang said. “In the case of the ghost lineage, modern-day Africans and non-African populations both inherited similar amounts of ghost ancestry. Each individual has about 0.5 to 1% of their genome inherited from this ghost lineage.”

To recover evidence of the second lineage, the researchers examined genomes from people in Oceania, where Denisovan ancestry can reach as much as 4%.

The super-archaic signal appeared inside regions inherited from Denisovans, suggesting that Denisovans first acquired this DNA and later passed it to modern humans. Denisovan genomes contain between 3% and 5% super-archaic ancestry, but only a small portion of that DNA reached people living today, Moorjani said.

“TRACE allowed us to contextualize how the ancestry segments from these previously uncharacterized hominins are distributed throughout the human genome,” Biddanda said. “We found that these contributions are widespread throughout the genome, and ghost ancestry is detected even in regions previously thought to be intolerant of Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry.”

Ancient mixing may shape immunity

Moorjani said many of the inherited archaic segments are concentrated in genomic regions associated with immune and metabolic functions.

“This pattern is not entirely surprising,” she said. “Adaptation to new pathogens and food sources has been one of the strongest selective pressures in human evolution. Interbreeding with other human groups introduced new genetic variation, providing additional raw material for natural selection. Beneficial variants could then be retained and spread over many generations.”

As global genome databases become more representative of human diversity, Moorjani hopes TRACE will uncover weaker signals from still more unknown lineages.

Additional Denisovan genomes would also improve the analysis, since only one has been published. Recently sequenced proteins from Homo erectus fossils may even help researchers determine the identity of the super-archaic ancestor.

“I think these new computational methods that allow us to reconstruct genealogical relationships are really the next frontier in this field because they are allowing us to uncover hidden episodes from our past without requiring ancient DNA,” she added.

Moorjani noted that TRACE should also work with other species, “allowing us to also uncover really different patterns across the tree of life.”

The birth of modern Man

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How Brown Tree Snakes Became an Unstoppable Invasive Species

BY T. DINKI, U. AT BUFFALO, JULY 28, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/how-brown-tree-snakes-became-an-unstoppable-invasive-species/

Brown tree snakes are an invasive species in Guam.

 Credit: Bjorn Lardner, United States Geological Survey

Biologists have long wondered how such a small number of individuals from the invasive species managed to colonize the island so successfully.

Few invasive animals have reshaped an ecosystem as dramatically as the brown tree snake, a species commonly used in textbooks to illustrate the damage biological invasions can cause.

Native to Australia and the South Pacific, the snake reached Guam sometime after World War II, possibly as a stowaway on cargo aircraft. It has since eliminated many native forest birds from parts of the island and causes hundreds of electrical outages each year by climbing utility poles. In some areas of the U.S. territory, populations reach as many as 30,000 snakes per square mile.

That extraordinary expansion has long puzzled biologists. Guam’s population apparently began with only a small number of snakes, so extensive inbreeding should have reduced their capacity to adapt and limited their growth.

Hidden DNA changes may explain success

The snakes may carry far more genetic variation than earlier methods could detect, according to a University at Buffalo-led study published on July 24, 2026, in Science Advances.

Researchers from UB and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) used advanced long-read sequencing to examine large sections of the brown tree snake genome. They uncovered thousands of structural variants, including duplicated, deleted, and rearranged stretches of DNA, many of them concentrated in genes connected to immunity and smell.

This overlooked variation may help explain how a population established by only a few individuals survived a severe genetic bottleneck and became so successful.

Brown tree snakes are skilled climbers and mostly active at night.

 Credit: USGS



“The brown tree snake is maybe not wildly diverse, but it has important sources of genetic diversity that have been underappreciated,” says the study’s corresponding author, Trevor Krabbenhoft, PhD, associate professor in the UB Department of Biological Sciences.

For agencies that have spent decades attempting to contain the snakes on Guam, the results may be discouraging. For conservation biologists, however, they suggest that endangered and inbred populations could retain more capacity to adapt than previously recognized.

“It’s possible that endangered species may have more flexibility in their genes than we realize,” says first author Christopher Osborne, PhD, a former PhD student in Krabbenhoft’s lab and now an aquatic biologist with State University of New York Oswego. “We’re now getting a better understanding of unappreciated sources of genetic diversity that may explain how some inbred species can still respond to their environment.”

Long reads expose missing variation

Traditional assessments of genetic diversity often focus on differences in individual DNA letters, such as changing an A to a G or a T to a C. Early sequencing technologies largely restricted researchers to finding these single-base-pair differences.

Long-read sequencing can examine much larger sections of DNA and detect structural variants affecting at least 50 base pairs at a time. Across the genome, these large changes involve nearly eight times more DNA than single base-pair variations.

“It’s like looking at portions of two books letter by letter with a magnifying glass and thinking they’re the same, but not realizing entire paragraphs have been moved around or duplicated. Older sequencing technology didn’t allow us to easily see that DNA in one individual might be in a completely different place on the chromosome than in another,” says Levi Gray, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in Krabbenhoft’s lab. “How we define genetic diversity and how we actually measure it is shaped largely by the technology of the day.”

Gray had previously investigated Guam’s brown tree snake problem while working with the USGS. That connection gave the researchers access to DNA provided by the USGS Brown Treesnake Rapid Response Team (RRT), which works to prevent the species from spreading elsewhere in the U.S. and its territories.

Immunity and smell genes stand out

Analysis in Krabbenhoft’s laboratory identified more than 19,000 structural variants in the brown tree snake genome. Each marks a location where stretches of DNA differ through duplication, deletion, or rearrangement.

The variants were not spread evenly throughout the genome. Instead, they appeared especially often in genes related to immune function and olfaction, the sense of smell.

Brown tree snakes depend heavily on smell to find food, using their forked tongues to collect chemical signals from the air. The unusual diversity in their olfactory genes may help explain a behavioral difference between populations. In their native range, the snakes sometimes eat other snakes, but there is little evidence of this behavior on Guam.

“The snakes’ heightened sense of smell may allow them to recognize one another as something more like siblings — especially given the high levels of inbreeding — than as prey,” Gray says.

The variants’ origins remain unknown

Researchers still do not know whether these structural variants existed before brown tree snakes reached Guam or developed afterward. Large-scale genomic changes usually build up across many generations, although some research suggests that severe population bottlenecks can speed their formation.

“Is it possible some of this diversity emerged after the invasion? It is, but we would have to sequence snakes from the native populations to know for sure,” Gray says.

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Feeling a Presence, Seeing Visions, Déjà Vu? Huge Study Maps The 'Uncanny' Experiences We Rarely Talk About

06 August 2026, By M. IRVING

https://www.sciencealert.com/ever-experienced-something-you-cant-explain-detailed-study-investigates-how-people-deal-with-the-uncanny

(David Wall/Moment/Getty Images)

Have you ever heard a voice when you were completely alone? Or felt the presence of some unseen being?

You're not alone; around 60 percent of Americans believe they've had some kind of unexplainable experience.

But was it scary? Inspiring? Perhaps it invoked a new spirituality in you, or made you feel closer to a deceased loved one.

Or maybe it just sent you to the doctor for a brain scan.

Whatever happened, and however you responded to it, there isn't much research into how humans process weird events.

So, social psychologists at the D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR) in Brazil set out to investigate just that, for a new paper published in PLOS One.

The team built on a previously developed questionnaire called the Inventory of Nonordinary Experiences (INOE), which asks participants whether they've ever experienced any of 38 spooky happenings and, if so, the context and aftermath of the event.

The researchers then gave their new 47-question quiz to 5,117 people in Brazil before conducting statistical analyses of the results.

The outcomes are as intriguing as you'd expect.

Out-of-body experiences were one of the 'nonordinary experiences' in the questionnaire. 

(sdominick/E+/Getty Images)



"Experiences like sensing a presence, having a vision, or feeling as though you are observing yourself from outside your own body are far more common in the general population than clinical diagnosis rates would suggest," says senior author Ronald Fischer, a psychologist at IDOR.

"We observed that most people in our sample of over 5,000 participants who report them are not unwell, and most describe them as neutral or positive – both at the time they occur and also when looking back and reflecting on that experience."

Things that constituted a 'nonordinary' event included sudden, overwhelming feelings like joy, awe, or fear; seeing visions; hearing voices; out-of-body experiences; a sense of diminished self; feeling the presence of the deceased or extraordinary forces; deja vu; extrasensory perception; near-death experiences; lucid dreams; or a sense of having lived past lives.

If participants responded that they had experienced any of these, they were then asked a few questions about the context of their experience. That included their mental state – such as whether they were awake and alert, dreaming, just falling asleep or waking up, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol – and where they were at the time.

The participants also had to answer how long the experience lasted, how often it happened to them, and the rough age they were when it occurred or started.

Next, they were asked who or what they felt was responsible, such as gods, angels, demons, spirits, or other entities; and why they might have been 'chosen' for the experience.

Many people reported feeling a 'presence'. 

(Catherine McQueen/Moment/Getty Images)



Finally, the participants were asked whether the experience had helped or hindered what they were doing at the time, how pleasant or uncomfortable the experience was, and what impact it had on their life afterward.

The results were intriguing.

More than 60 percent reported having their experiences while awake and alert, and almost 40 percent were alone at the time. About 36 percent said their experience lasted a few minutes, while 27 percent said it was very quick or almost instantaneous.

Roughly 19 percent couldn't keep track of time during the event.

The most common number of occurrences for a single person was, surprisingly, two to three times, with 38 percent of the respondents. Another 30 percent said the experience had happened just once.

Two-thirds said the experience occurred or began when they were adults, while more than 20 percent reported something strange during their adolescence.

Interestingly, when asked who they believed was responsible for their experience, 36 percent reported that they didn't believe that anyone caused it. A god or gods was the next highest, at 16 percent, while 11 percent attributed it to some kind of holy spirit.

Following a similar pattern, when participants were asked why it happened, 41 percent attributed it to random chance, while 28 percent said it was a 'sign' or a message.

Participants were fairly evenly split on whether their experiences were something that science could or eventually would be able to explain. But the scales were tipped ever-so-slightly towards the answer that 'no, something else is involved.'

Almost half of participants said that they felt joy or well-being during their experience, while less than a quarter experienced suffering or discomfort.

About half also reported that they felt positive or very positive effects on their lives afterward, while less than 15 percent reported negative effects.

"For many people, such experiences can be meaningful and lead to personal growth and insight," says Fischer.

"Highlighting these possible positive outcomes is important to help people make sense of them and help to normalize them."

The researchers say that these kinds of experiences are largely unstudied academically. But regardless of what's actually going on, understanding them in more detail could help support people who report strange things.

"Importantly, we hope our work can help to remove stigma by focusing on the diverse ways that people experience and make sense of them," says Fischer.

"However, we would also stress that if people feel that these experiences interfere with their daily activities, then they should talk to a professional or seek help from somebody that they trust."

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'Only One Conclusion': Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

06 August 2026, By M. Irving

https://www.sciencealert.com/radical-study-suggests-life-on-earth-arose-from-non-living-matter-twice

(witsawat sananrum/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

The fact that you, or I, or any living creature, is here at all is a series of astonishing strokes of luck stretching back more than 4 billion years.

One of the biggest hurdles was the very first one: How did life emerge from a primordial soup of stuff that very much wasn't alive?

A radical new study, published in Science Advances, suggests that this unlikely threshold may actually have been crossed not once, but twice.

Two of the main lineages of life – bacteria and archaea – may have independently figured out the secrets of metabolism that upgraded them from non-living to living, according to the new study, which focused on the most rudimentary set of chemical reactions thought to enable this transformation.

"The surprise is that the enzymes that catalyze those reactions are not conserved across the evolutionary divide that separates bacteria and archaea," says William Martin, a biologist at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany.

"The new data leave only one conclusion. The bacterial and archaeal lineages made the transition to the free-living state independently. Only free-living cells are alive.

"Let's call it by name: we are looking at one origin of the genetic code, but two origins of life."

That's a huge claim to make, especially when defining what life even is can be surprisingly tricky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNK3u8uVG7o

Generally speaking, life is considered matter that responds to its environment, takes in energy, grows, and reproduces itself.

That sounds like it should cover the basics, but even that broad a statement is imperfect. After all, viruses can do most of those, but aren't traditionally considered 'alive'.

One aspect of life that is universal – and which viruses lack – is metabolism, the collection of chemical reactions that organisms use to make molecules that are vital for their everyday functioning.

Enzymes are the workhorse proteins that act as catalysts for these reactions in organisms, but that raises a weird chicken-and-egg question.

Enzymes themselves are products of chemical reactions – so how did the first lifeforms begin metabolizing things, including making enzymes, without the help of other enzymes?

The answer, it seems, lies in their surroundings.

It's generally believed that the first life arose in extremely reactive environments, such as hydrothermal vents. Metals that naturally occur in these places could have been the first catalysts for metabolism, converting compounds like hydrogen gas, ammonia, and carbon dioxide into other useful molecules.

"Almost everything about the origin of metabolism is debated, including the roles of energy, genetics, autocatalysis, phosphate, cofactors, cyanide, CO2, and water," Martin and colleagues write in their paper.

"Yet on one aspect all will agree: the ~400-reaction network that converts H2, CO2, NH3, H2S and phosphate into amino acids, bases and cofactors cannot have arisen in an instant.

"Its emergence from spontaneous environmental reactions had to traverse intermediate states of assembly, which have previously been elusive."

The researchers investigated the protein structures of core metabolic enzymes in the genomes of bacteria and archaea, and developed a method and algorithm to order them in complexity. From there, they could determine which ones evolved in which order, and put together a rough timeline.

Starting compounds are shown at the left; they are converted by metabolism into the building blocks of life. The 420 enzymatic reactions are indicated as circles, and chemical metabolites as diamonds; lines connect reactions that share metabolites. Circles shown in magenta shading indicate reactions that could have been catalyzed by inorganic compounds in the environment where metabolism of the first cells arose. 

(HHU/Nadja Hoffmann)



"We found that the last universal ancestor of all cells, LUCA, possessed enzymes for only about half of the reactions of metabolism," says Martin.

"The other half was catalyzed by metals in the environment where LUCA arose."

The team found that there were likely four different phases in the development of catalysis (enzyme-driven reactions). The first relied solely on metals in the environment.

Once enough of the useful molecules built up, the not-quite-living-yet proto-cells (which included LUCA) could start developing their own enzymes that performed some of the functions of those metal catalysts.

Over time, later proto-cells developed more and more enzymes, reducing their dependency on external metals, until they no longer needed them at all. Only at that point would they be considered 'free-living cells'.

Importantly, the researchers say, this didn't occur until after bacteria and archaea had separated. These two branches figured out their own ways to tackle the same problems.

"We can see cases where the ancestors of bacteria and archaea independently evolved structurally distinct enzymes to catalyze the same essential metabolic reaction," says Natalia Mrnjavac, a biologist at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.

"Such parallel inventions could have paved the way to the independent emergence of free-living bacteria and archaea."

The study may also plug another gap in our understanding of the origins of life.

A molecule called ATP is now a vital energy source to fuel metabolism – but it's also made by enzymes, and wasn't available in prebiotic chemistry. The researchers say they identified an alternative.

"When we react phosphite, a form of phosphorus that naturally occurs in hydrothermal vents, with organic compounds, we get metabolic phosphorylation reactions overnight in water," says Manon Schlikker, a molecular evolutionary scientist at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.

"Phosphite and palladium replace ATP and enzymes; it's amazing, and it makes early evolution a lot easier to grasp."

Yet critical to chemical reactions is the medium in which they occur, and scientists still don't have a clear idea about that. Was it water, or a sticky goo?

If the findings are backed up with further research, it seems that the tree of life, as we picture it, may need an update. We tend to think of LUCA as the 'trunk' of the tree, with all the other lifeforms, past and present, branching off from there.

But perhaps there were two completely separate trunks, which first diverged at the roots, before they were even technically alive.

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Drug-Resistant Bacteria May Be Jumping Between Pets And Humans, Scientists Warn

26 July 2026, By F. MacDonald

https://www.sciencealert.com/drug-resistant-superbugs-may-be-jumping-between-pets-and-humans-scientists-warn

(Clouds Hill Imaging Ltd./Getty Images)



In 2022, a batch of chicken and duck embryos that died before hatching arrived at a veterinary lab in China for testing.

Buried in their brain tissue, researchers found Acinetobacter baumannii – a pathogen labelled 'Priority 1′ by the World Health Organization'. It's best known for tearing through hospital ICUs due to its resistance to even last-resort antibiotics.

It's also more recently starting to become recognized as being zoonotic: capable of moving between animals and people.

It's long been thought that livestock may play a role in spreading drug resistance in superbugs.

But, interestingly, the specific strains of bacteria isolated from the poultry weren't actually resistant to much of anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcYOc-LxZzs

When comparing this genetic data to that found in humans and companion animals such as cats and dogs, the researchers from Nanjing Agricultural University, Wuhu Institute of Technology, and Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine in China found that the real concern turned up somewhere closer to home.

Researchers pulled together genetic data on 509 A. baumannii samples collected from animals in 17 countries, spanning 33 species – everything from white storks in Poland (which, oddly, make up a vast proportion of the animal samples on record) to cats, dogs, and horses in veterinary clinics across Europe.

Combined with thousands of human clinical samples from the same regions, plus the new poultry data, the picture that emerged wasn't reassuring for pet owners.

"A. baumannii isolated from animals can be divided into two groups: a high antimicrobial resistance (AMR) group dominated by hosts such as horses, cats, and dogs and a low AMR group dominated by hosts such as livestock, poultry, and wildlife," the researchers, led by Xiangkuan Zheng at Nanjing Agricultural University, wrote in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

(NickyLloyd/E+/Getty Images)



Using a classification system that groups related A. baumannii strains into "international clones" – the same lineages behind hospital outbreaks worldwide – the team found that several of these clones, including one called ST25, turned up again and again in companion animals.

ST25 alone was found in nine different animal species, mostly cats, dogs, and horses.

Bacteria from cats, dogs, and horses turned out to be genetically almost indistinguishable from strains infecting people in hospitals nearby, with genome similarity scores above 99 percent, and in some cases over 99.5 percent.

Livestock, poultry, and wild animals, by contrast, carried strains that were far more distant relatives – typically just 97 to 98 percent similar to the human strains.

"Our study suggests that A. baumannii has a higher potential of intertransmission between companion animals and humans compared to livestock, poultry, and wildlife," write the researchers. "This elevated potential may be related to the close contact of companion animals with humans."

Cats and dogs even carried resistance genes that livestock never should. Isolates from companion animals turned up two genes that make bacteria resistant to carbapenems – the antibiotics doctors reach for when nothing else works, and which are off-limits in livestock farming altogether. Those same resistance genes turned up in precisely zero of the livestock, poultry, or wildlife samples.

None of this means your dog or cat has given you a hospital infection, or ever will.

Let's be clear: there's no direct evidence here of the bacterium actually jumping from a specific pet to a specific person, just a genetic paper trail suggesting the opportunity is there, and has been for a while.

Last year, the American Society for Microbiology (AMR) published an article exploring the emerging link between antibiotic-resistant bacteria in pets and humans – which specifically flagged the need for more species specific pathogen sampling to help further understand the picture moving forward.

While this latest study gives us more important clues, there's still a long way to go.

What happens next is more sampling – of paws, feathers, hooves, and the humans standing next to them – to work out how often, and how easily, this hospital regular slips between species.

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Humans and Mice May Process Smells in Very Similar Ways

By K. Samuelson, Northwestern U., August 4, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/humans-and-mice-may-process-smells-in-very-similar-ways/

A mouse appears to sniff a flower. 

Credit: Michael Lynch

Every deliberate sniff may activate a brain system that has survived millions of years of evolution.

A mouse searching for food may sniff several times each second. A person checking whether a cantaloupe is ripe usually leans in for one slow, deliberate breath.

Those behaviors look completely different, but new research suggests the brain may treat them in much the same way.

Two complementary Northwestern University studies found that mice can perform a single intentional sniff, while humans use brain rhythms that closely resemble those seen in rapidly sniffing rodents. Together, the findings suggest mammals share an ancient neural system for gathering information through smell, even when their breathing patterns and behavior differ dramatically.

The studies were published together in Science Advances.

“The true similarity is this single sniff, but it’s not just a sniff,” said corresponding author John M. Barrett, research assistant professor of neuroscience at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Mice even move their hands while sniffing, which shows it’s volitional; they’re doing it on purpose.”

Co-corresponding study authors John Bartlett (center) and Mang Gao (right) and study co-author Rita Fischer (left) discuss the study in the lab of Gordon Shepherd on Northwestern University’s Chicago campus.

 Credit: Olivia Dimmer, Northwestern University



Different Sniffs, Same Brain Process

Smell begins with breathing, but it is not a passive sense. Animals actively control when and how they inhale, changing the flow of odor molecules into the nose and shaping the information sent to the brain.

Rodents are especially known for rapid sniffing. Humans breathe much more slowly, which raised a long-standing question: How can both species identify odors with similar speed and precision when their sampling rates are so different?

The Northwestern teams approached that puzzle from opposite directions. One group studied how mice coordinate breathing and movement while examining food. The other recorded activity directly from the human olfactory bulb, the brain structure that receives the earliest neural signals from the nose.

Their results converged on the same conclusion. Humans and mice appear to rely on a shared timing system for processing smells.
Why Sniffing Could Reveal Disease

That similarity matters because changes in sniffing have been associated with autism, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease. Understanding how healthy smell circuits operate could help researchers recognize when those systems begin to break down.

“Knowing we have this evolutionarily conserved set of mechanisms helps us understand how mammalian brains work, which could ultimately help us understand how they fail in pathology,” said first author Andrew Sheriff. “It helps us know how the brain works so we know how to fix it when it doesn’t work.”

A study participant looks at a computer screen in the lab of Christina Zelano on Northwestern University’s Chicago campus.

 Credit: Kristin Samuelson, Northwestern University



The mouse study began with a small behavior that was easy to overlook. When mice handled food, they sometimes paused and lifted it toward their noses before eating. Rather than continuing their usual rapid sniffing, they appeared to take one carefully timed breath.

Researchers in the laboratory of Gordon M. G. Shepherd in the Department of Neuroscience at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine worked with collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Florida College of Medicine to investigate.

Led by Mang Gao and Barrett, the team created a robotic multi-camera system that followed freely moving mice as they searched for food and ate. The researchers tracked breathing along with movements of the animals’ heads and forepaws.

Breathing and Movement Work Together

The recordings showed that the mice timed one sniff to the exact moment food reached the nose. Their breathing, head position, and hand movements came together as a coordinated action.

This was not the same as the repetitive sniffing mice use while searching. It looked more like a quick inspection, similar to the way a person may raise food to the nose before deciding whether to take a bite.

The mice sniffed more strongly when handling less appealing food. However, odor alone did not trigger the behavior. When researchers disrupted the animals’ sense of smell, the mice continued performing the single food sniff. The behavior stopped only when the scientists silenced the motor cortex, a brain region involved in voluntary movement.

Corresponding author Andrew Sheriff adjusts a study participant’s EEG cap ahead of recording electrophysiological signals on a multi-contact electrode. 

Credit: Olivia Dimmer, Northwestern University



“This means when mice sniff food, they’re not doing it as a reflexive response to an odor, but rather as a proactive act of deliberate sensory sampling,” said Gao, a postdoctoral scholar in the Shepherd lab. “It turns out the mice choose to perform these quick ‘smell checks,’ which is characteristic of a lot of human olfactory behavior, rather than being passively triggered to sniff.”

The study is the first to document this intentional, non-reflexive sniffing behavior in rodents during natural foraging.

How Humans Process Odors So Quickly

The second study examined the problem from the human side. Researchers in Christina Zelano’s laboratory in the Department of Neurology at Feinberg, working with Dr. Bruce Tan in the Department of Otolaryngology at Feinberg, wanted to understand how people can recognize smells quickly despite inhaling far more slowly than rodents.

“We wanted to understand how we can identify odors as fast as rodents do even though we sniff over 10 times slower,” said Sheriff, a postdoctoral scholar in Zelano’s lab. “By recording directly from the human olfactory bulb using a novel technique, we were able to find rhythms of odor processing that closely resemble those of rodents, suggesting conserved time windows for olfaction across species.”

Using a minimally invasive, high-precision method developed in the Zelano lab, the team measured activity in the olfactory bulbs of healthy volunteers as they took one intentional breath. That single inhalation triggered low-frequency brain waves known as theta oscillations (2–8 Hz). The rhythm matched the same frequency range at which rodents repeatedly sniff.

One Breath, Multiple Brain Cycles

This means the human brain does not need to match each theta cycle with a separate breath. Instead, one slow inhalation can activate several internal processing cycles, allowing odor information to be divided and organized rapidly within a single sniff. The theta rhythm also helped structure faster bursts of neural activity associated with analyzing the smell itself.

In rodents, breathing and theta activity are so closely synchronized that they are difficult to separate. Human breathing is slower, making it possible to see that the brain rhythm can continue independently of the physical sniff.

“The implications of our findings are significant,” said co-author Qiaohan Yang, a graduate student in Northwestern University Interdepartmental Neuroscience. “In rodents, sniffing and theta are so tightly fused that the two are nearly indistinguishable. In humans, the slower sniff rate pulls them apart, revealing the theta oscillation as a distinct, independently generated rhythm that a single deliberate inhalation is sufficient to engage.”

Smell Is an Active Decision

The studies add to a broader understanding of perception as something the brain actively constructs.

A sniff is not simply air entering the nose. Its timing can be coordinated with movement, attention, expectation, and decision-making. Mice appear to choose when to perform a focused smell check, while the human brain uses one breath to create a rapid internal sequence for analyzing odor.

The difference between species may therefore lie less in the basic machinery than in how each animal uses it. Mice run the shared system through rapid breathing cycles. Humans compress similar neural timing into a slower inhalation. Both strategies allow the brain to collect information quickly enough to guide the next action, whether that means eating a crumb, rejecting spoiled food, or deciding that a piece of fruit is ready.

Together, the studies suggest that evolution did not invent a completely new olfactory system for humans. It retained the same core design and adjusted how that design operates within a very different pattern of breathing and behavior.

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There's One Predator That Terrifies Bears And Mountain Lions Alike

05 August 2026, By M. Starr

https://www.sciencealert.com/theres-one-predator-that-terrifies-bears-and-mountain-lions-alike

(Cris Cantón/Moment/Getty Images)

The wilds of North America can be a hazardous place.

It's there that some of the most intimidating predators make their home – black and brown bears that could eviscerate a person with one swipe of a mighty paw, and mountain lions that stalk almost silently on padded feet.

Many hikers will gird themselves against the possibility of an attack from one of these feared beasts – but, as two new papers explain, there's an animal out there that even the most formidable predators will try to avoid.

Us.

In fact, attacks by these animals are so uncommon that, in North America, people are far more likely to be struck by lightning.

The research suggests one reason why: bears and mountain lions go to remarkable lengths to stay away from humans whenever they can.

"These discoveries change the narrative about human-carnivore conflict," writes Yale University ecologist Oswald Schmitz in a Current Biology dispatch tying together two studies, one on bears and the other on mountain lions.

Mountain lions rarely attack humans.

 (Kathleen Reeder Wildlife Photography/Moment/Getty Images)

In North America, brown, or grizzly, bears (Ursus arctos) attack, on average, around 11.4 humans per year.

Mountain lions (Puma concolor) attack just 4 to 6 people per year, and the rate of black bear (Ursus americanus) attacks is unknown, but just 63 human fatalities due to black bear attacks were documented between 1900 and 2009.

By contrast, between the US and Canada, around 580 people are struck by lightning every year.

Looking purely at the numbers, lightning strikes outnumber brown bear attacks by roughly 50 to 1 (although, of course, the actual risk depends on other factors such as where you live and how much time you spend in bear-filled woods).

So why are these attacks so rare?

The answer, according to the two studies, is that these animals don't simply react to humans showing up. Instead, they actively change their behaviors to avoid us.

In a study led by wildlife biologist Philip Manlick of the USDA Forest Service, researchers studied black and brown bears feeding along salmon streams in southeast Alaska.

Motion-triggered speakers played recordings of either gull calls, off-road vehicles, or human voices whenever a bear approached. Cameras recorded what happened next.

The bears were twice as likely to beat a hasty retreat when they heard vehicle sounds compared to the gull sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKL9HDh3M34

They were almost 10 times more likely to flee from the sound of human voices.

This has implications far beyond bear-human interactions.

Bears take the salmon they catch into nearby forests, leaving behind decaying remnants that help fertilize the ecosystem. Disrupting that nutrient transport has knock-on effects on other ecosystem processes.

Top left: A cinnamon-colored black bear and her cub flee after hearing human voices. Top right: Brown bears on alert after hearing engines from an off-highway vehicle. Bottom left: A bald eagle eats a freshly caught meal from the nearby stream, ignoring the control sounds of gull calls. Bottom right: A black bear continues to eat a salmon, ignoring the gull calls at a control site. 

(Forest Service photos)

The mountain lion paper, led by environmental scientist John Morgan of the University of California, Santa Cruz, told a similar tale.

The researchers analyzed 6 years of GPS data collected from 36 tagged wild mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains. They mapped this data against data from the GPS fitness-tracking app Strava, which showed where and when people were hiking, biking, and using trails.

The mountain lions didn't just respond to the presence of humans. Rather, they seemed to anticipate where and when human activity was likely to be heavy, and proactively avoided those places at those times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7CtjkZFTQs

Even when mountain lions lived in areas with lots of human activity, though, they were not more likely to attack. Any higher attack rates in those areas were better explained simply by more frequent encounters between people and mountain lions.

Taken together, the two studies suggest that the animals take actions that indicate they perceive humans as a significant threat.

Bears abandon their feeding opportunities. Mountain lions plan their movements around predictable human routines.

They're already doing a lot of the heavy lifting that prevents dangerous encounters with our own species.

For our end of the bargain, the mountain lion study suggests, we can try to avoid forcing them into situations where their avoidance strategies fail.

The popular image of the relationship between humans and carnivorous predators is that the predator is the aggressor, and the human is the helpless prey that stands to lose the most from an encounter.

In reality, Schmitz argues, humans have not just the power but the responsibility to do all that we can to keep those animals safe.

"By being cognizant of how they shape the landscape of fear experienced by carnivores and their prey species," he writes, "humans can proactively adjust their behavior and spatial use of landscapes in ways that can transform the human-carnivore relationship from one of conflict to one of coexistence and thereby rebalance the attendant cascading effects that human fear effects have on wildlife communities and ecosystems."

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New Research Questions Decades of Low-Fat Dairy Advice

By B. Zou, U. of Toronto, August 3, 2026

https://scitechdaily.com/new-research-questions-decades-of-low-fat-dairy-advice/

Full-fat dairy may have a more nuanced effect on the body than nutrition labels imply. Researchers found no meaningful adverse changes after regular consumption and observed several unexpected nutritional and cardiovascular signals. 

Credit: Shutterstock

Researchers found that people can consume three daily servings of full-fat dairy without adversely affecting body weight, body composition, energy metabolism, or blood lipid levels.

For years, people scanning the dairy aisle have often been steered toward skim milk and reduced-fat products, largely because full-fat dairy contains saturated fat. Yet the health effects of dairy may depend on more than the amount of fat listed on the label.

Research led by University of Toronto scientist Harvey Anderson found that adults could consume three servings of full-fat dairy each day without harmful changes in body weight, body composition, energy metabolism or blood lipid levels. The results were published in the Journal of Nutrition.

Testing full-fat dairy directly

To examine the effects under controlled conditions, Anderson and his colleagues recruited 74 adults with overweight or obesity and randomly placed them into one of three dietary groups. One group followed a low-dairy, calorie-restriction diet. A second consumed three daily servings of dairy while keeping calorie intake energy-neutral, meaning participants ate roughly the amount of energy their bodies used. A third group also consumed three daily servings but did not face calorie limits. All participants were encouraged to follow Canada’s food guide.

Harvey Anderson.

 Credit: Harvey Anderson


 
This design allowed the researchers to separate the effects of dairy from those of calorie restriction. After 12 weeks, participants consuming three servings of dairy showed no meaningful differences in weight gain, body composition or cholesterol compared with those eating the low-dairy diet.

The higher dairy groups also recorded lower blood pressure and consumed more calcium, protein and vitamin D, nutrients that support functions such as bone maintenance, muscle health and immune activity.

“Those who had three servings of dairy didn’t have adverse levels of blood cholesterol or lipids or evidence of insulin resistance,” says Anderson, a professor of nutritional sciences in U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Insulin resistance occurs when the body’s cells stop responding properly to insulin, the hormone that helps move sugar from the bloodstream into cells for energy. Over time, that reduced response can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Guidelines face conflicting evidence

Nutrition guidelines in Canada and many other countries have long favored fat-free or low-fat dairy. The reasoning is that reducing saturated fat may help prevent high cholesterol and lower cardiovascular disease risk.

Human research, however, has not consistently shown that eating full-fat dairy leads to worse health outcomes, Anderson says. Some investigations have even identified possible protective effects. Those include recent work led by Kozeta Miliku, an assistant professor at Temerty Medicine.

The apparent contradiction may come from viewing saturated fat in isolation rather than considering the food that contains it. Anderson and other researchers point to the dairy matrix hypothesis, which proposes that a food’s physical structure changes how its nutrients are broken down, absorbed and used.

In practical terms, dairy is not simply a collection of separate nutrients. Its proteins, fats, minerals and other components are packaged together, and that arrangement may influence how quickly they reach the body and what effects they produce.

“With dairy products, it’s got two proteins – casein and whey – that are bound together with fat and with nutrients mixed in,” Anderson says, adding that it’s this unique and complex physical structure that is responsible for the slow and steady delivery of nutrients from dairy products, and that expands their health impacts to more than just the sum of the isolated nutrients.

Whole foods reshape nutrition advice

The findings may be particularly useful for older adults, Anderson notes. As people age, their overall energy needs often decline even though they still require adequate protein, calcium, vitamin D and other nutrients.

That creates a practical challenge. Older adults may need to obtain more nutrition from fewer calories. Dairy products offer a familiar source of concentrated energy and nutrients, Anderson says, and the study found no evidence that including them increased the risk of diabetes or other chronic diseases.

The results also support a broader shift in nutrition research. Instead of judging foods mainly by a single component, such as saturated fat, researchers and policymakers may need to consider how nutrients behave when consumed together in a whole food.

Faced with constantly changing trends in food and nutrition and sometimes conflicting messaging around diet, Anderson’s advice is straightforward: “Keep it simple, eat a variety of foods and not too much of anything.”

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