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Podcast: The World, the Universe and Us
Episode: #26: The hidden dark matter of our food; NASA’s new search for life on Mars; smallpox in the American civil war
Description: What’s in our food? By now you’d think we’d have a pretty firm handle on that question, but it turns out we don’t know the half of it.In the pod this week are New Scientist journalists Rowan Hooper, Valerie Jamieson and Graham Lawton. They discuss what’s been called nutritional dark matter: the massive void in our understanding of the biochemicals that make up the food we eat. Our standard guidelines neglect to take into account thousands of molecules and compounds, which might explain why nutritional recommendations tend to flip-flop: chocolate and red wine i...