Tag Archives: consume

Consume Me Review: A Game That Offers More Than Just Empty Calories

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IIf you accept the notion that the Game Awards serve as an interactive industry Oscar, then it’s reasonable to liken the Independent Game Festival to Cannes, with the Sumas MacNary Grand Prize being the equivalent of Parmedollar. Hence, one might expect that this year’s winner would receive significant attention upon release. Surprisingly, that’s not the case. Apparently, it’s an overwhelmingly early sale and I’m astonished by the absence of reviews. This highlights ongoing challenges regarding discoverability and the issues faced by critics during the busy fall season, rather than focusing on the game itself. Truly, it’s an absolute delight.

It’s certainly easy to sound like you should play this game rather than expressing a desire to want to play it. Crafted over a decade by Jenny Ziao Fusia in collaboration with Ap Thomson, Jie en Lee, Violet WP, and Ken Snyder, this semi-autobiographical narrative follows an Asian American high school student navigating weight loss amid the challenges of adolescence. It’s infused with effective energy and time management mechanics. Content notifications inform players of themes such as bullying, fat phobia, and dietary restrictions. Notably, it’s also one of the most humorous games of 2025.




The pizza date leads to watching her eat for the rest of the week… consuming me. Photo: 66

Consumes adeptly navigates a complex emotional landscape. The main character, Jenny, experiences meal times interpreted as puzzles. Reminiscent of Leon’s attachment case in Resident Evil 4, groceries shaped like Tetris blocks must fit into a grid symbolizing Jenny’s stomach. L-shaped kale and S-shaped tomatoes help her stay within her daily targets (notably, she focuses on “bites” instead of calories). Junk food, with its appealing form, can lead to regret as filling it results in precious time being consumed and potentially using up one of her limited cheat days. Any gaps in her stomach notification mean she might need a snack later.

Beyond merely managing her hunger, Jenny must also oversee her energy and mood levels, which is initially simple. Participating in chores, studying, and applying makeup turns into an enjoyable mini-game akin to Nintendo’s Warioware series, though it rarely presents a challenge. Items created or purchased with in-game currency help maintain Jenny’s happiness and health. However, time is relentless, making it increasingly tough to balance needs against wants. For example, reliance on energy drinks often leads to caffeine headaches. This creates unhappiness during activities other than resting.




A contest on the sinkside with an overwhelming mother… consumes me. Photo: 66

Regardless of whether things are going smoothly or not, the observations are artfully portrayed. The foreboding music accompanies weekly weigh-ins, physically pulling Jenny towards the scale. After cleaning the bathroom, her critically evaluating mother is there to inspect her work, even pressing a finger on the sink to confirm cleanliness. When Jenny first meets Oliver’s affluent parents, even the simple introduction of anxiety meters raises the heart rate, especially as she imagines her own mother as a detective in a trench coat. During their first outing, their awkwardness on-screen guides players toward a sweet kiss.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/vuoo_zhsAhs?wmode=opaque&feature=oembed" title="Consume Me Launch Trailer" height="480" width="854" allowfullscreen="

Love quickly transforms into another responsibility, creating tension that evolves in each chapter. Jenny must prioritize potential dates in her calendar, yet a visit to a pizzeria forces her to strictly monitor her meals for the week ahead. As Oliver heads off to college, their long-distance relationship means that every night brings the potential for “poison damage” as she struggles to prioritize valuable text messages or video calls. (By night, she presses her face against the glass, tearfully observing the rose petals falling from inside, brilliantly encapsulating the path of all adolescents during such times.)

Although it’s a game centered on routines, the continual repetition never makes me feel fully settled. It continually finds creative ways to utilize the system to convey themes without sacrificing humor. If you grapple with food-related issues or fitness, there are moments that resonate deeply. It’s about more than just what you consume or how much you exercise; life’s essentials often take precedence over personal desires.

Again, I’m cautious about framing this as a mere obligation to consume. This thought-provoking, engaging, and boldly original game provided an evening filled with laughter and tears, leaving me with lasting memories.

Consume Me is available now for £12.79

Source: www.theguardian.com

New study reveals Australopithecus did not regularly consume meat

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Australopithecus had a varied but plant-based diet, as indicated by stable isotope data analysis from seven human specimens collected in Sterkfontein, South Africa, 3.5 million years ago.

Lüdecke others. claim that Australopithecus In Sterkfontein, mammalian meat was not regularly consumed. Image credit: Cicero Moraes / CC BY-SA 3.0.

“Tooth enamel is the hardest tissue in the mammalian body and can preserve the isotopic fingerprint of an animal’s diet for millions of years,” says geochemist Dr Tina Lüdecke from the University of the Witwatersrand. said.

“When animals digest food, a biochemical reaction involves light isotopes of nitrogen (14yeah). ”

“Therefore, the breakdown products produced in their bodies include a high proportion of 14N.”

“When these light nitrogen compounds are excreted in urine, feces, or sweat, the proportion of heavy nitrogen increases (15N) It ​​provides the body with this light nitrogen compared to the food it takes in. ”

“This means that herbivores have higher nitrogen isotope ratios than the plants they consume, and carnivores have higher nitrogen isotope ratios than their prey.”

“Therefore, the higher the 15From N 14The higher the N ratio in the tissue sample, the higher the trophic position of the organism in the food web. ”

Nitrogen isotope ratios have long been used to study the diet of hair, nails, bones, and many other organic materials in modern animals and humans.

However, in fossil materials, these measurements have until now been limited to samples only tens of thousands of years old, as the organic material degrades over time.

In the new study, Luedecke and colleagues used a new technique to measure nitrogen isotope ratios in the enamel of fossilized teeth that are millions of years old.

They found that the nitrogen isotope ratio in tooth enamel was Australopithecus Abundances varied but were consistently low, similar to herbivore populations, and much lower than modern carnivore populations.

They conclude that the diets of these hominins, although diverse, consisted largely or exclusively of plant-based foods.

Therefore, Australopithecus did not regularly hunt large mammals, as Neanderthals did millions of years later, for example.

Although researchers cannot completely rule out the possibility that they occasionally consumed animal protein sources such as eggs or termites, there is evidence that their diet was primarily vegetarian.

“Our method opens up exciting possibilities for understanding human evolution and has the potential to answer important questions, such as when did our ancestors start incorporating meat into their diets?” And was the onset of meat eating associated with an increase in brain volume?” said Dr. Alfredo Martínez García, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.

“This study represents a major step in extending our ability to better understand the diets and nutrient levels of all animals to multi-million-year scales.”

“This study provides clear evidence that the diet did not include large amounts of meat.”

“A pioneering application of this new method was pioneered at the Sterkfontein site, which continues to make fundamental contributions to science 89 years after the first hominin fossils were discovered there by Robert Bloom. We are honored to have received this recognition,” said Professor Dominic Stratford, Director of the Center. Research in Sterkfontein Cave.

of study Published in a magazine science.

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Tina Ludecke others. 2025. Australopithecus In Sterkfontein, very little mammalian meat was consumed. science 387 (6731): 309-314;doi: 10.1126/science.adq7315

Source: www.sci.news

The optimal times to consume caffeine in the morning: a guide to maximize productivity.

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It’s not just called go juice. Caffeine is the most popular performance-enhancing drug in the world. It’s not a nutrient, but a drug, and it’s the most widely consumed psychoactive stimulant by humanity.

In the UK, 98 million cups of coffee are consumed every day. Apart from kickstarting your morning, it has been shown to enhance motor skills like muscle strength and endurance, as well as cognitive skills such as attention, reading speed, and problem-solving abilities.

“There’s a long list of substances believed to enhance performance,” says James Betts, Professor of Metabolic Physiology at the University of Bath. “But I would put caffeine at the top of that list because its effects are so powerful and consistent, affecting almost every tissue in the body.”

Fun fact: Coffee beans are actually seeds from the fruit of the coffee tree – Credit: Sam Brewster

These effects are driven by a diverse biology. Caffeine stimulates the nervous system, increases adrenaline, reduces fatigue, promotes fat burning for energy, and helps conserve glycogen stores, thus improving endurance.

Additionally, it blocks adenosine receptors, a neurotransmitter promoting sleep. This is why coffee makes us feel alert and energized. However, excessive caffeine consumption can lead to irritability, anxiety, and insomnia.

It’s important to time your caffeine intake correctly for optimal effects. Research by Betts suggests that consuming strong coffee after a night of poor sleep can impair blood sugar control over time.

Poor blood sugar control can increase the risk of diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease, emphasizing the importance of strategic caffeine consumption.

For improved performance during workouts or activities, Betts recommends consuming coffee 45 to 60 minutes before starting. The effects of caffeine are long-lasting, lasting up to one to two hours in heavy consumers and four to six hours in moderate consumers.

In the 16th century, coffee was banned in Mecca because it was believed to stimulate radical thinking – Photo credit: Getty

While caffeine can enhance cognitive tasks, excessive consumption can lead to poor academic performance due to disrupted sleep quality and daytime sleepiness.

Overall, Betts believes caffeine consumption, especially in the morning, is beneficial for waking up and functioning well throughout the day. It has been linked to preventing various diseases and promoting a healthy, active lifestyle.

About our experts

James Betts is a Professor of Metabolic Physiology at the University of Bath with expertise in nutrition, exercise, and metabolism.

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Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Ethiopian Wolf Makes History as First Large Carnivore to Consume Flower Nectar

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by honey collectors Ethiopian wolf (canis mensis) may contribute to pollination of Ethiopian Red Hot Poker Flower (Kniphofia foliosa)According to new paper Published in a magazine ecology.

Ethiopian wolf (canis mensis) Lick the nectar of the Ethiopian Red Hot Poker flower (Kniphofia foliosa). Image credit: Adrian LeSafre.

Ethiopian wolf too known as The red jackal, Ethiopian jackal, Abyssinian wolf, horse jackal, Simien jackal, or Simien fox, is the world's rarest wild canid.

The seeds are listed as endangered species IUCN, citing their small number and fragmented scope,

Found only in the highlands of Ethiopia, fewer than 500 individuals survive in 99 herds confined to six Afroalpine enclaves.

This large carnivore's main prey is the African mole rat, but it also eats other types of rats, hares, and sometimes geese and eggs.

Dr. Sandra Rai, a researcher at the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program and the University of Oxford, and her colleagues observed Ethiopian wolves foraging for wolf nectar. Kniphofia foliosa.

“Kniphofia foliosa is an endemic Ethiopian perennial found in the Bare Mountains and other high-altitude grasslands, where the endemic Ethiopian wolf, a top predator restricted to African alpine ecosystems, also lives.” said.

“Flowers from kniphofia This genus produces large amounts of nectar and attracts a variety of bird and insect pollinators. ”

The researchers say some Ethiopian wolves visit up to 30 flowers on a single trip, with multiple wolves from different packs exploiting this resource.

There is also evidence of social learning, with children being taken to flower gardens with adults.

By doing so, the wolf's muzzle becomes coated with pollen, which can be transferred from flower to flower as the wolf feeds.

This new behavior is probably the first known plant-pollinator interaction involving a large predator, and it is also the only large carnivorous predator ever observed to feed on nectar.

Professor Claudio Cirello of the University of Oxford, founder and director of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program, said: “I first discovered the nectar of the Ethiopian red hot poker when I saw shepherd children in the Bale Mountains licking the flowers.'' I learned of its existence,” he said.

“Soon I tasted it too. The honey had a pleasant sweetness.”

“When I later saw the wolves doing the same thing, I could see that they were having fun tapping into this rare energy source.”

“We are pleased to report that this behavior is common among Ethiopian wolves and to investigate its ecological significance.”

“These findings highlight how much we still have to learn about one of the world's most threatened carnivores,” Dr Lai said.

“This also shows the complexity of the interactions between the different species that inhabit Africa's beautiful roofs.”

“This extremely unique and biodiverse ecosystem remains under threat from habitat loss and fragmentation.”

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sandra rye others. Are canids pollinators? Nectar collection by Ethiopian wolves may contribute to wolf pollination. Kniphofia foliosa. ecologypublished online on November 19, 2024. doi: 10.1002/ecy.4470

Source: www.sci.news

Astronauts Could Potentially Consume Asteroids in the Future

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Samples from asteroid Ryugu

JAXA

Future astronauts may be able to eat a nutritionally complete meal made from bacteria grown on crushed asteroids, creating a type of milkshake or yogurt.

Astronauts on the International Space Station are experimenting with growing salad leaves, but most of the food consumed in space comes from Earth. This will not be possible for more distant and longer duration space missions. joshua pierce and his colleagues at Western University in Ontario, Canada, decided to study the use of bacteria to convert carbon-containing compounds from asteroids into edible food.

Although they have not yet performed this process using real asteroids, Pearce and his team performed a similar experiment using bacteria that breaks down plastic from leftover military ration packets. To do this, they heated the plastic in the absence of oxygen, a process called pyrolysis, and fed this to a mixture of carbon-eating bacteria.

“If you look at the pyrolysis products that bacteria are known to eat and the materials found in asteroids, there's actually a pretty reasonable match,” Pearce said. “So I think this really works.”

The bacterial aggregates end up being “something like a caramel milkshake,” Pearce said, and the team is also experimenting with drying the material to make something like yogurt or powder.

Although it may not be very appetizing, Pearce says this bacteria is highly suited for human needs. “We did a nutritional analysis and found it to be a nearly perfect food,” he says. “We found that the bacterial consortium we were using was more or less allocating a third each to protein, carbohydrates, and fat.”

If this idea is correct, a 500-meter-wide asteroid similar to Bennu, which NASA visited in 2020, could feed between 600 and 17,000 astronauts for a year, Pierce said. say. The exact amount depends on how efficiently the bacteria can digest the asteroid's carbon compounds.

A fully operational asteroid food project would require an “industrial-sized supermachine” in space, but researchers will begin testing the idea on a small scale next year, starting with coal. He says he wants to move on to meteorites next. They are currently working on the proposal. “It's very expensive, so we have to destroy it.” [the meteorites]So when we made these proposals, the stone collectors were not happy,” Pearce says.

“There's definitely potential there, but it's still a very futuristic and exploratory idea,” he says. Annemiek Wargen At the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. “It's good to think about these things, but in terms of technology, there's still quite a bit of development to be done before we can use these methods.”

The success of this process depends on how much of the carbon compounds in the asteroid are suitable food for bacteria, Wagen said. Based on the composition of meteorites on Earth, it's likely somewhere in the middle of the range the researchers calculated, she says.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Street lights can cause tree leaves to become more durable, making them less palatable for insects to consume.

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Artificial lighting at night can affect tree leaves

Shutterstock/Patrick Kosmider

Urban trees lit by streetlights tend to have tougher leaves and be less eaten by insects than those that spend the dark nights, a pattern the researchers say could disrupt the flow of energy up the food chain and have negative effects on urban biodiversity.

Zhang Shuang Zhang and his colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences studied the Japanese five-story pagoda (Styphnolobium japonicum) and Green Ash (AshBeijing’s street trees appear to be relatively free of insect damage compared to other trees in the city.

The researchers collected around 5,500 leaves from 180 trees at 30 locations in Beijing, including near the distinctive orange glow of sodium streetlights and in dark areas at night, and measured the leaves’ size, firmness, moisture content, and nutrient levels. They also recorded any evidence of insect damage.

Leaves taken from under streetlights were stronger and less affected by insects: for Chinese sophora trees, 2.1% of leaves were damaged in the lit areas and 5.3% in the dark, while for ash trees, 2% of leaves were damaged near streetlights and 4.1% in the dark.

The researchers couldn’t answer that question, but they did say in their paper that with fewer leaves for insects to eat, less energy flows up the food chain to insects and birds, which could have a knock-on effect of further reducing biodiversity.

The researchers acknowledge that the mechanisms by which leaf damage is reduced are still unclear and require further investigation — for example, increased light could make insects more visible to predators, reducing their numbers and their impact on trees.

Owen Lewis The Oxford University researcher says the study is intriguing but doesn’t prove causation, and he suggests future studies should take plants from areas with and without street lighting, place them in a controlled environment, and observe the insects’ behavior to see whether they prefer trees that grow in dark conditions.

Lewis also notes that measuring herbivores is complicated. Heavy damage can mean leaves are less nutritious, forcing insects to eat more of them. Holes caused by insect damage can also get bigger as leaves get bigger, he says.

“My intuition is that this may be a fairly subtle effect,” he says. “In central Beijing, the impact of light pollution on insect feeding will be more pronounced as urbanization progresses.” [the area is]”It’s probably trivial how much pollution there is, how much semi-natural habitat there is, etc. It’s important, but it’s probably not the main threat to insect diversity and ecosystem function.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Nuclear fusion reactions produce nearly double the energy they consume

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Nuclear fusion experiments at the US National Ignition Facility reach a significant milestone

philip saltonstall

Scientists confirmed that a 2022 fusion reaction reached a historic milestone by releasing more energy than it put in, and subsequent tests yielded even better results. Says. The findings, now published in a series of papers, offer encouragement that fusion reactors will one day produce clean, abundant energy.

Today's nuclear power plants rely on nuclear fission reactions, in which atoms are shattered to release energy and small particles. Fusion works in reverse, pushing smaller particles together into larger atoms. The same process powers our sun.

Nuclear fusion can produce more energy without any of the radioactive waste that comes with nuclear fission, but science has yet to find a way to contain and control the process, let alone extract energy from it. Researchers and engineers couldn't find it for decades.

Experiments to do this using laser-irradiated capsules of deuterium and tritium fuel – a process called inertial confinement fusion (ICF) – began in 2011 at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) . Initially, the energy released was only a fraction of the energy. The laser energy input was gradually increased and the experiment finally crossed the important break-even milestone on December 5, 2022. That reaction generated his 1.5 times the laser energy needed to kickstart.

One paper claims that the institute's National Ignition Facility (NIF) has seen even higher ratios in subsequent commissioning, peaking at 1.9 times its energy input on September 4, 2023. .

Richard Towne LLNL said it believes the team's checks and double-checks since the 2022 results have proven it was “not a flash in the pan” and there is still room for improvement.

Town said yields are likely to improve with the hardware currently in place at NIF, but things could move further if the lasers can be upgraded, which would take years. “A sledgehammer always comes in handy,” he says. “If I could get a bigger hammer, I think I could aim for a gain of about 10.”

But Town points out that NIF was never built as a prototype reactor and is not optimized for high yields. His main job is to provide critical research to the US nuclear weapons program.

Part of this research involves exposing the bomb's electronics and payload to the neutron irradiation that occurs during the ICF reaction to see if they would function in the event of an all-out nuclear war. The risk of electronic equipment failure was highlighted during a 2021 test when NIF opened fire, knocking out all lights throughout the site, plunging researchers into darkness. “These lights were not hardened, but you can imagine military components having to withstand much higher doses,” Town says.

This mission means that some of the project's research remains classified. Until the 1990s, even the concept of ICF was secret, Town says.

The announcement that ICF would reach break-even in 2022 raised hopes that fusion power is on the horizon, and this will be further strengthened by news that further progress has been made. However, there are some caveats.

First, the energy output is far below what is needed for a commercial reactor, producing barely enough to heat a bath. What's worse is that this ratio is calculated using the power of the laser, so for him to produce 2.1 megajoules of energy, the laser consumes her 500 trillion watts. That's more power than the output of the entire U.S. national power grid. Therefore, these experiments apply even in a very narrow sense.

martin freer The researchers, from the University of Birmingham in the UK, say these results certainly do not indicate that a practical fusion reactor can now be built. “Science still has work to do,” he says. “We don't know the answers to all of these, and we don't need researchers anymore.”

Freer says that as scientific experiments advance, they pose engineering challenges to create better materials and processes, which in turn enables better experiments and further progress. “Nuclear fusion could happen,” he says. “But the challenges we face are quite steep from a scientific perspective.”

Aneeka Khan The professor at the University of Manchester, UK, agrees that recent advances in fusion research are positive, but stresses that it will be decades before commercial power plants are operational, and that only global cooperation and He stressed that it depends on a concerted effort to train more people. field. She cautions against interpreting advances in fusion research as a possible solution to dealing with dependence on energy from fossil fuels.

“Fusion is already too slow to address the climate crisis. We are already facing the devastation of climate change on a global scale,” says Khan. “In the short term, we need to leverage existing low carbon technologies such as nuclear fission and renewables, and in the long term, invest in fusion to become part of a diverse low carbon energy mix. must commit to tackling the climate crisis.”

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  • nuclear energy/
  • nuclear fusion power generation

Source: www.newscientist.com

Men who consume kimchi daily may have a lower risk of obesity

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In a cross-sectional study, researchers from Chung-Ang University and elsewhere analyzed data from the Korean HEXA Cohort Study to investigate the association between kimchi consumption and obesity among Korean adults. They showed that total kimchi intake of one to three servings per day was inversely associated with obesity risk in men. Additionally, in men, higher intakes of baechu kimchi (cabbage kimchi) were associated with lower prevalence of obesity and abdominal obesity. It was found that higher intake of gakdugi (radish kimchi) was associated with lower prevalence of abdominal obesity in both men and women. However, all results indicate a “J-shaped” association, suggesting that overconsumption may increase obesity prevalence.

Consuming 1 to 3 servings of kimchi per day has been shown to reduce obesity risk in men. Image credit: Lee Dong-won.

Kimchi is traditionally consumed as a side dish in Korea and is produced by salting and fermenting vegetables with various flavorings and seasonings such as onions, garlic, chili powder, salted shrimp, and fish sauce.

The main vegetables in kimchi are cabbage and radish, and kimchi is low in calories and rich in dietary fiber, lactic acid bacteria, vitamins, and polyphenols.

Fermented kimchi contains the following major types of lactic acid bacteria: leuconostoc seed, lactic acid bacteria Species and Weissella spp.

especially, lactic acid bacteria It is the dominant species of kimchi lactic acid bacteria in late seed fermentation.

In previously published experimental studies, Lactobacillus brevis and Lactobacillus plantarum Components isolated from kimchi had anti-obesity effects.

And researchers Hyein Jung and colleagues at Chung-Ang University wanted to know whether regular consumption was associated with a reduced risk of overall and/or abdominal obesity, which is considered to be particularly harmful to health. .

Scientists used data from 115,726 participants (36,756 men and 78,970 women, average age 51 years) who took part in the Health Examination (HEXA) study.

HEXA is a large-scale community-based longitudinal study of the Korean Genomic Epidemiology Study, which aims to investigate environmental and genetic risk factors for common long-term conditions in Korean adults aged 40 years and older.

Dietary intake in the previous year was assessed using a validated 106-item food frequency questionnaire. In this survey, participants were asked to indicate how often they ate one serving of each food item: never, rarely, or three times a day.

Kimchi total includes Baechu. Kakudugi. Nabak and donchimi (watery kimchi). Others include takana kimchi.

Baechu kimchi or gahdugi kimchi weighs 50g, and nabak kimchi or donchimi kimchi weighs 95g.

We measured each participant's height, weight, BMI, and waist circumference. BMI 18.5 was defined as underweight. Normal weight is 18.5-25. Obesity for people over 25 years old.

Abdominal obesity was defined as waist circumference of at least 90 cm for men and at least 85 cm for women. Approximately 36% of men and 25% of women's girlfriends were obese.

The results showed a J-shaped curve, likely because the higher the consumption, the higher the intake of total energy, carbohydrates, protein, fat, sodium, and cooked rice, the researchers said. ing.

Compared to participants who ate less than one serving of kimchi per day, those who ate five or more servings were more likely to gain weight, have a larger waist size, and be obese.

They were also less highly educated, had lower incomes, and were more likely to drink alcohol.

However, after accounting for potentially influencing factors, researchers found that consuming up to three servings of kimchi per day was associated with an 11% lower obesity rate compared with less than one serving per day.

Among men, those who consumed three or more servings of baechu kimchi per day had a 10% lower prevalence of obesity and a 10% lower prevalence of abdominal obesity compared to those who consumed less than one serving per day.

For women, consuming this type of kimchi two to three times a day was associated with an 8% lower obesity rate, and consuming one to two times a day was associated with a 6% lower incidence of abdominal obesity.

It was found that eating less than the average amount of gakdugi kimchi reduced obesity rates by about 9% for both men and women.

Consumption of 25 g/day for men and 11 g/day for women reduced the risk of abdominal obesity by 8% (men) to 11% (women) compared to no intake.

“A 'J-shaped' association was observed across all outcomes, suggesting that overconsumption may increase obesity prevalence,” the authors said.

“Kimchi is also one of the major sources of sodium intake, so the health benefits of other ingredients should be considered when recommending appropriate amounts.”

of findings appear in the diary BMJ Open.

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H. Jung other. 2024. Association between kimchi intake and obesity based on BMI and abdominal obesity in Korean adults: A cross-sectional analysis of a health checkup survey. BMJ Open 14: e076650; doi: 10.1136/bmjoopen-2023-076650

Source: www.sci.news

House cats consume more than 2,000 species, including turtles and insects.

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cats are formidable predators

Gary John Norman / Alamy

Domestic cats have been recorded to eat more than 2,000 other species, and the actual number of species they eat is probably much higher. This is the result of a first attempt to create a comprehensive list.

“We know that cats eat a lot, but I don’t think anyone has really looked into the full story,” he says. Christopher Lepczyk At Auburn University in Alabama. “We started thinking, how big is this problem? Are there any animals that cats aren’t eating?”

Based on scientific papers, his team created a database of what cats ate and where they ate. This list includes 981 birds, 463 reptiles, 431 mammals (including humans), 119 insects, 57 amphibians, and 33 species belonging to other groups.

Of these 2,084 species, 347 are considered endangered or already extinct in the wild, including the western quoll, green turtle, and Newell’s shearwater, including the Stevens Island wren. But the study didn’t consider how big a role cat predation played in these cases, Lepczyk said.

These numbers are far from telling the complete story, he says. “We are just the tip of the iceberg.”

For example, in many cases where cats were recorded eating insects or other invertebrates, the species was not identified.

“The range of cats’ diets far exceeds what we’ve seen in many other carnivores and predators,” Lepczyk said. “There are few things cats won’t eat.”

Some of the species included in the database are also scavenged by cats, which is part of the reason why the list includes species too large for cats to kill. But in some cases, such as green sea turtles, cats can catch juveniles, Lepczyk said.

The study did not consider what could be done to reduce the amount of wildlife killed by domestic cats. However, some helpful measures include keeping your cat indoors or in a fenced yard, microchipping, and having your cat spayed or neutered.

It was also recently discovered that cats can spread the brain-altering parasite that causes toxoplasmosis to both wildlife and humans.

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Source: www.newscientist.com