Is the secret to a healthier microbiome hiding in the Hadza diet?

The more that people don’t eat like Westerners, the more variety of microbes they have in their gut. That was one finding in a new study published in Science that compared bacteria found in stool samples in the Hadza group in western Tanzania and in different places in the world. Another interesting find? The composition of the groups' microbiomes also fluctuated over time, based on seasons and what people were eating, meaning that the loss of certain microbes in people in industrialized nations might be reversible by cutting down on fat, upping fiber or changing the diet in some other fashion. Read more at NPR…

Kind Snacks visualizes shocking data about sugar consumption in Times Square

How to create buzz about your new, no-sugar-added product? Kind did it by dumping more than 45,000 pounds of the stuff in Times Square, because that’s now much added sugar children in the U.S. consume every five minutes. Read more at Forbes…

Costa Rice let a juice company dump their orange peels in the forest—and it helped

In the late ‘90s, a Costa Rica-based juice company called Del Oro made a deal that would allow it to dump agricultural waste in certain areas of land that it was handing over to a national park. Fifteen years later, ecological researchers found that particular area of land thriving. The food waste had fertilized the land and fostered richer soil, more tree biomass and more. Read more at Modern Farmer…

Smiling Hara wins Burt’s Bees Natural Launchpad grant

Barnardsville-based foodservice distributor Smiling Hara Tempeh was one of 10 businesses to receive a $10,000 grant from Burt’s Bees. The company makes tempeh from cultured soy-free, non-GMO hemp protein and sells it in some 300 retail stores. Read more at Citizen-Times…

Jackson Reamer, the inspiration behind Crested Butte’s Jackson’s Honest chip company, has died

When their child became ill with a rare neurological disease at age four, Scott and Megan Reamer fed him a diet rich in saturated fats to help him thrive. It worked. Along the way, they developed a way of cooking potato chips by simmering them in low heat in coconut oil. In 2012, they turned them into a packaged food product and created Jackson’s Honest Chips, now a staple brand in stores like Natural Grocers across the country. Read more at Denver Post…