Every week, I share notes from some of my favorite TED talks. Here’s the complete list (pardon the load time, it’s just a continuous, single page).
William Li: Can we eat to starve cancer?
- angiogenesis is the creation or reduction of blood vessels
- it occurs for many diseases, e.g., cancer; also injury, pregnancy (uterus and placenta)
- otherwise, blood vessels are largely fixed from early in life
- once angiogenesis happens, cancer is much harder to treat (the tipping point)
- treat cancer by cutting off its blood supply, “anti-angiogenic therapy”
- avastin is one example
- your diet is 30-35% of the environmental causes of cancer (5-10% is genes)
- what foods are naturally anti-angiogenic?
- red grapes (resveratrol)
- strawberries
- green tea
- men who consumed cooked tomatoes 2x/week, lower incidences of prostate cancer, cause: anti-angiogenesis
- anti-angiogenesis may also have applications for obesity
Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects?
- 1/3 of fruit we eat is the result of insect pollination of plants
- insects represent more biomass than humans
- every processed food contains insects — tomato soup, peanut butter, chocolate
- there are allowed FDA limits for insect material in foods
- current meat supply has many problems:
- animals cause diseases, e.g., pigs
- insects are more efficient source of food — 10kg of feed produces 1kg of meat OR 9kg of insects
- insects create less waste (e.g., manure for meat)
- insects are more nutritious (me: need to research)
- 70% of all agricultural land used for livestock
- 80% of world already eats insects, 1000+ insect species
Here’s the complete list of TED notes