A Dose of Dr. E (Edelman):  The Best of Low Calorie Drinks … some great ideas! 

Dr. Edelman doesn’t have many rules about food choices and diabetes, but regular soda is at the top of his “forbidden foods” list. Here he shares 10 flavorful drink options that are low in calories and carbs, so please don’t waste your intake on regular soda, or Dr. E will hunt you down.


In Finland, scientists are growing coffee in a lab was reported by Adele Peters for FastCompany.com, 17 September 2021. Climate change is shrinking the tropical land suitable for growing coffee. What if your caffeine fix came from a bioreactor instead?

Climate change is making it harder to grow good coffee—and as the mountains get hotter in places like Colombia, the amount of land that’s suitable for coffee plantations is shrinking. But 5,000-plus miles away, researchers in Finland are experimenting with growing coffee from plant cells in bioreactors.  Heiko Rischer, a research team leader at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, the state-owned organization developing the coffee, says “Conventional coffee production is notoriously associated with several problematic issues, such as unsustainable farming methods, exploitation, and land rights,” he says. “Growing demand and climate change add to the problems.” In Vietnam, for example, coffee production is driving deforestation.

The researchers are using the same techniques to make coffee that others are using to make “lab-grown,” or cultivated, meat. Coffee plant cells were cultured in the lab, and then placed in bioreactors filled with nutrient medium to grow. It’s a little easier to grow coffee than something like beef. “The nutrient media for plant-cell cultures are much less complex, i.e., cheaper, than those for animal cells,” Rischer says. “Scaling up is also easier because plant cells grow freely, suspended in the medium, while animal cells grow attached to surfaces.”

High-quality coffee from the tropical “coffee belt,” which stretches from Ethiopia to South America to Southeast Asia, isn’t likely to disappear. But as demand for coffee continues to grow, cell-based coffee could be one way to help the industry have less impact—and places like Finland, where coffee can’t naturally grow, could have a local coffee supply for the first time.
 

 

 

 

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