Researchers asked 600 Finnish citizens what they would be willing to pay to ensure your food was coming from farms that promote biodiversity and mitigate climate change.

Results from the survey showed that an overwhelming 79% of participants would be willing to pay more for food that was sustainably farmed. The majority of participants reported they would be willing to pay a monthly sum of 16 Euros, or 228 Euros a year. This amounts to 245 Euros per hectare of Finnish farmland a year.

Currently, citizens pay 160 Euros a year in annual government subsidies for each hectare of organic farmland in Finland.

Related: Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Of the 21% who said they would not pay more for diversified cropping, half of those said they were unable to afford the added cost.

Ultimately, a system that relies on consumers to pay for more sustainable agriculture shouldn’t impoverish people, or create a hierarchy where only those who can afford it get good quality food. 

A lot of people may be willing to loosen their purse strings to subsidize greener farming

Monocrop farming is becoming more common practice in Finland and all around the world. Monocrop farming can lead to a decline in soil quality and biodiversity as well as causing other problems. Diverse cropping on the other hand, can increase carbon sequestration in the soil, boost biodiversity, introduce new pollinators into the environment, and promote an increase in food production.

Doctors are seeing a surge in eating disorders across the country as people try to cope with the stress and anxiety induced by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Jennifer Wildes, an associate psychiatry professor and director of outpatient eating disorders program at the University of Chicago Medicine says she’s “absolutely seeing massive increases”.

Patients are waiting four to five months for treatment when the wait for treatment prior to the pandemic was usually only a few weeks. Wildes’ program is treating about 100 patients currently, nearly double from before the pandemic.

Related: How To Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children

Other programs are experiencing a similar problem. Jillian Lampert with The Emily Program has reported that her daily calls have nearly doubled since 2019.

The Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness, which started offering virtual therapist-led support groups for adults during the pandemic, has also seen a surge. Since January more than 7,000 people from every state and 32 countries have attended their support groups, said alliance CEO Johanna Kandel.

Pandemic Has Fueled Eating Disorder Surge in Teens, Adults

Related: Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Doctors are seeing an increase in cases across the board, meaning all races and ages. Eating disorders are more common among women than men. Stress and anxiety are common catalysts for eating disorders. Many people have experienced more stress and anxiety in the last year.

President Biden was seen test driving the new Ford F-150 electric pick up truck earlier this week in Dearborn Michigan. Companies are racing to produce their electric pick up trucks (Tesla, Ford, General Motors, and Chevy all have plans to release an electric pick up truck).

Will the release of electric pick-ups be the push we need to those who were previously uninterested in electric cars, onboard? The Ford F-150 has been the most popular pickup truck in the U.S for 39 years. It’s one of the most sold cars in many states across the U.S.

When you imagine an electric vehicle driver they are likely not the same type of people you imagine driving a pick up truck. Maybe the new electric ford can change that.

So are the trailer-towing, pickup truck-driving residents of Middle America going to adopt these EVs? It looks like a long shot: Only 2 percent of all cars sold in the U.S. today are electric, and most of those are sold in blue states like California, Washington, and Oregon. 

Will the Ford F-150 Lightning turn Middle America onto EVs?

With a price tag of $39,974 (for the base model), the new electric F-150 is surprisingly cheap for an electric vehicle, let alone an electric pickup.

The company Tassal has plans to build an 80 hectare salmon farm with 28 large ocean cages filled with hundreds of thousands of salmon, along the coast of Tasmania.

Many along the coast are concerned about the environmental implications of salmon farming and expanding out into untouched waters. Along Macquarie harbor 21,000 tons of fish feed has ended up in the water in the past year alone, creating massive amounts of waste.

In 2015 80,000 salmon suffocated to death after a sudden drop in oxygen. The fish are often seen in distress not wanting to eat and seeking out more oxygen. Despite problems of overcrowding, the government increased the number of fish in the harbor. All this came after another smaller salmon company wrote a letter to the government stating that Tassal has totally disregarded environmental and fish health.

Recommended: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

Finding healthy sustainable fish can be difficult and expensive. Fish is often contaminated with mercury, microplastics, and other toxins. For this reason, we don’t recommend making fish a big staple in your diet.

ABC News released a video on salmon farming and the environmental concerns with it, which you can watch below.

A new study by the University of Michigan suggests that exposure to glyphosate and AMPA significantly increases the risk for preterm births.

The study was published in Environmental Health Perspective and found that the presence of glyphosate in women’s urine later in pregnancy was associated with a higher risk of premature birth. Infants born prematurely are at a greater risk for long-term health problems.

Researchers measured glyphosate and AMPA levels by testing urine. The chemicals are not metabolized by mammals. They tested 247 pregnant women between 16-20 weeks and 24-28 weeks.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

Looking at preterm births (babies born at less than 37 weeks of pregnancy) and comparing them to controls, the research team found that the odds of preterm birth were significantly elevated among women with higher urinary concentrations of glyphosate and AMPA at the third visit, while associations with levels at the first visit were largely null or inconsistent.

Glyphosate herbicide exposure linked to preterm births

With all the other health problems caused and exasperated by glyphosate it’s no surprise that it negatively affects pregnant women as well.

Oxitec, the biotech firm released the first round of genetically modified mosquitoes at the end of April. This is the first time in the U.S that genetically modified mosquitoes have been released.

Previously the modified Aedes aegypti modified mosquitoes have been released in Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Panama, and Malaysia. A. aegypti mosquito populations were said to drop by at least 90% in those locations. In the U.S, the mosquitoes were released in the Florida Keys.

A aegypti mosquitoes carry diseases like Zika and yellow fever. The genetically modified mosquitoes are all male and are engineered with a lethal gene that is passed on to offspring when the genetically modified mosquitoes mate with females. The lethal gene prevents female mosquitoes from developing an essential protein and causes them to die before reaching maturity. Only female mosquitoes bite people, as males exclusively drink nectar.

Recommended: How to Eliminate IBS, IBD, Leaky Gut 

The company will capture mosquitoes throughout the trial to observe how far the insects travel from their boxes, how long they live and whether female mosquitoes are actually picking up the lethal gene and dying off. To make it easier to track the modified mosquitoes, Oxitec introduced a gene that causes the mosquitoes to glow under a specific color of light.

The First Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Have Just Been Released in The US

Releasing genetically modified mosquitoes is suppose to serve as an alternative to spraying with pesticides to control the population. Currently, the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District budgets a million dollars a year to control the mosquitoes by spraying aerial insecticides.

New research shows that the application of three of the most common herbicides used on GM herbicide-tolerant crops (glyphosate, glufosinate, and dicamba) increases antibiotic-resistant genes in the microbiomes of the soil.

Similar to plants, the soil bacteria are becoming resistant to weedkillers. Additionally, bugs that are most resistant to pesticides were found to have a genetic mutation that made them resistant to antibiotics.

Dr. Jack Heinemann, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Canterbury has published two papers that suggest herbicides are “accelerants when it comes to the evolution of antibiotic resistance”. His research is supported by recent findings from the University of York and Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University in China.

Related: How To Heal Your Gut 

When plants are sprayed, though, plenty of weed-killer gets into the soil – where there is an array of bacteria vital for healthy soil ecology. This is where a funny thing happens. Soil bacteria, like plants, are becoming resistant to weed-killer – and the bugs that are most resistant were found to carry a genetic mutation that also makes them resistant to antibiotics

Weedkillers are accelerating the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria