【推荐1】Can you remember what you ate yesterday? If asked, most people will be able to give a vague description of their main meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner. But can you be sure you’ve noted every snack bar in your car, or every handful of nuts at your desk?     1    

We originally had this suspicion back in 2016, puzzled by the fact that national statistics showed calorie consumption falling dramatically over past decades. Now, the Office for National Statistics has confirmed that people are considerably under-reporting what they ate by 50%.

    2     We can point to at least three potential causes. One is the rise in obesity levels itself. Under-reporting rates are much higher for obese people, because they simply consume more food, and thus have more to remember.

Another cause is that the proportion of people who are trying to slim down has been increasing over time.     3     It may be driven partly by self-deception or “wishful thinking”.

    4     Both are in terms of how often they happen and how much they contribute to our overall energy intake. Again, there is evidence that food consumed out of the home is one of the most poorly recorded categories in surveys.

So, what’s the message conveyed? If people do not know how much they are eating, it can be really hard for them to stick to a diet.     5     Therefore, we can ensure what people eat won’t have much impact on their waistlines. If this works, it won’t matter if they can’t remember what they ate yesterday.

【推荐3】Chances are that you’re avoiding many healthy options from your dinner table when you really don’t need to be.     1    . Although they aren’t totally perfect, they are packed with much more nutrition than most people realize.

Cheese

Not all cheese is bad.     2    . And 1 ounce has 14 percent of the recommended daily in-take of calcium. In fact, it contains protein, which helps you feel full, as well as lots of bone-strengthening calcium and various vitamins and minerals.

Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are some of the healthiest potatoes. Yet another member of the high-carb category, potatoes often get avoided like the plague (瘟疫). But potatoes with dark flesh are extra healthy, and are shown to boost antioxidant (抗氧化剂) levels.     3    .

Coffee

A few cups of coffee daily has been shown to actually benefit your health. Just leave out all of the calorie creamers. Sure, too much coffee can have you bouncing off the walls and send your heart racing.     4    . In fact, a cup of Joe on the regular can reduce your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, depression and certain cancers.

    5    , pick a few of these foods and enjoy them in moderation. Because, really, it’s the human tendency to totally overdo it that makes many whole foods unhealthy.

【推荐1】In 2011, organizations in England called on the citizens to reduce the amount of meat eaten on Fridays. 28% of people adjusted their dietary habits in various ways. Some gave up meat on Fridays, while others reduced it.

A new study from the University of Cambridge aimed to look at the consequences of behavioral change from people within a society and how these consequences bring in potentially large environmental benefits over time has assessed the impact of this shift, estimating that over the past decade, 55,000 tonnes of annual carbon emissions were saved.

The 28% of people said they changed their habits; of these, 55% reduced meat consumption on Fridays, and 41% stopped eating meat on Fridays. The 72% of people who did not change dietary habits attributed it to preferring to choose their own foods.

Using further data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS), researchers could tell that people in the UK eat an average of 100 grams of meat daily, and the average high-protein, non-meat-eater (who eats fish and cheese) contributes one third of the greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram that a meat-eater does.

Thus, making a conservative assumption that citizens who adapted their diet switched to high protein non-meat meals on Fridays, the researchers estimated that this equated to approximately 875,000 fewer meat meals a week, which saved 1,070 tonnes of carbon, or 55,000 tonnes over a year.

There are some concerns about the implementation(实施) of meatless Fridays leading to further reduction of fish stocks, as fish is a common substitute for red meat. The researchers say, however, that this need not be a concern; there was no increase in fish consumption over the past decade, nor did meat consumption go up on other days to make up for its absence on Fridays. Furthermore, there are many more meat substitutes available now than in the past, offering more options.

【推荐3】Coastal cities around the globe are sinking by up to several centimeters per year, on average, satellite observations reveal. The one-two punch of sinking land and rising seas means that these coastal regions are at greater risk of flooding than previously thought, researchers report in the April 16 Geophysical Research Letters.

Matt Wei, an earth scientist at the University of Rhode Island in Narragansett, and colleagues studied 99 coastal cities on six continents. “We tried to balance population and geographic location,” he says. While subsidence (下沉) has been measured in cities previously, earlier research has tended to focus on just one city or region. This investigation is different. Wei says, “It’s one of the first to really use data with global coverage.” Wei and his team relied on observations made mostly from 2015 to 2020 by a pair of European satellites. Instruments onboard beam microwave signals toward Earth and then record the waves that bounce back. By measuring the timing and intensity of those reflected waves, the team determined the height of the ground with millimeter accuracy. And because each satellite flies over the same part of the planet every 12 days, the researchers were able to trace how the ground deformed over time.

The largest subsidence rates — up to five centimeters per year — are mostly in Asian cities like Tianjin, China; Karachi, Pakistan; and Manila, Philippines, the team found. What’s more, about one-third, or 34, of the analyzed cities are sinking in some places by more than a centimeter per year. That’s a worrying trend, says Dario Solano-Rojas, an earth scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City who was not involved in the research. These cities are being hit with a double whammy: At the same time that sea levels are rising due to climate change, the land is sinking. “Understanding that part of the problem is a big deal,” Solano-Rojas says.

Wei and his colleagues think that the subsidence is largely caused by people. When the researchers looked at Google Earth imagery of the regions within cities that were rapidly sinking, the team saw mostly residential or commercial areas. That’s a tip-off that the culprit (元凶) is groundwater extraction, the team concluded. Landscapes tend to settle as water is pumped out of aquifers (含水层). But there’s reason to be hopeful. In the past, Indonesia’s Jakarta, for example, was sinking by nearly 30 cm/yr, on average. But now subsidence there and in other places has slowed, possibly due to recent governmental regulations limiting groundwater extraction.

【推荐2】Arthur Lih of Massapequa sold his first LifeVac, a device to help save people’s life, to a fire department about 18 months ago, when the Jericho Fire Department purchased 21 of the devices. Now about 10 Long Island fire departments have purchased Lih’s invention, which is designed to draw foreign objects from the throats of choking victims when procedures such as the Heimlich Maneuver (海姆立克急救法) don’t work. He has sold about 5,000 LifeVac devices in the United States and abroad since the device went on the market in August 2014.

The Freeport Fire Department is one of Lih’s clients. It bought about 25 LifeVac devices to put on trucks, as well as in chiefs’ vehicles, said Ray Maguire, the department’s executive director. “It’s an extra tool in the toolbox,” Maguire said. “I’d be surprised if anyone who sees it doesn’t purchase it. It’s that tool you may only need once, but it’s the tool you really want in case you need it. It’s affordable. I have it in my car. I have one at home, too.”

Dr. Lee Smith at Northwell Health said that if a choking victim can’t breathe, he or she becomes a candidate for the Heimlich. If the Heimlich doesn’t work, the victim would probably lose consciousness because of a lack of oxygen.

A challenge for any new medical device is convincing potential users that it works and is safe. In tests, the LifeVac successfully removed an obstruction (阻塞物) from the throat of a dead human body on the first try 49 out of 50 times, according to an August research article in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

Lih invented the product in his garage, inspired after he went with a friend to a hospital while the friend’s mother was going through tests. The friend said the last time he was there, a 7-year-old child had choked to death on a grape.