Obesity has risen for decades and social scientists and government officials have scrambled to link cause and correlation, proposing everything from low income to public parks to a thrifty phenotype hypothesis, which says that poor people are biologically unfit to not be poor.

Income may be less of a factor, according to a report by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Despite record-level food stamp usage, chronic under-employment and earnings increases below the rate of inflation, 19 states saw obesity among low-income preschoolers decline between 2008 and 2011. 

Soylent is getting ready to feed people - I will spare you a joke about the 1973 dystopian film "Soylent Green", inspired by Harry Harrison's "Make Room! Make Room!", since you already made it in your head.(1)

In the 19^th century, following the Enlightenment, the process of secularization seemed to be on a slow but unstoppable roll.  One consequence of this was the development of a view of history, whereby religion in general, Christianity in particular, and above all the Roman Catholic church, assumed the rôle of the enemy of all progress, and progress was by definition good.  Clerics were pictured as Asuras (in Hindu epic titanic beings perpetually at war with the Devas or gods) always opposing the scientists with their own Clerisy.

Last week, a study published in the journal Human Reproduction reported that bisphenol-A (BPA), a compound widely used to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, altered maturation of human oocytes in vitro

Genomic sequencing has shown a mutational signature of upper urinary tract cancers caused by aristolochic acid, a plant compound contained in herbal remedies for arthritis, gout and inflammation.

Caffeine drinks are in some kind of arms race and as caffeine levels escalate, so do reports of caffeine overdose. It's not just those terrible-tasting energy drinks, it's also in snacks, candy, and even chewing gum.

EnergyFiend.com has  tracked caffeine levels for the past 8 years and found that the number of caffeinated products does not appear to be slowing down. According to editor Ted Kallmyer, “We’re now tracking over 1,000 items, and among those are some products with very high levels of caffeine. They are clearly targeted to the teen market.”

How would you measure the 'evolution' - that is to say, changes - in human culture and psychology over the last 200 years? 

Psychologist Patricia Greenfield of the University of California, Los Angeles used the Google Ngram Viewer to examine the frequencies of specific words in a corpus of over 1,160,000 English-language books published in the United States between 1800 and 2000. At least it tells us how linguistics evolved.

The result, says Greenfield, is that people have shifted from rural environment to urban. 

She has coined this hypothesis the "Theory of Social Change and Human Development" and believes that the usage of specific words waxes and wanes as a reflection of psychological adaptation to sociocultural change. 

Mathematics is a skill. Some people are better at it than others, so an individual person's math ability can range anywhere from being able to do simple arithmetic to calculus and abstract set theory. 

But there is some math ability we all share, according to psychologists: a simple ability to estimate and compare quantities without overtly counting, like when choosing a checkout line at the grocery store - guesstimating, though not quite as lazy as it sounds.

Though it makes microbiologists gasp in horror, sous vide ("under vacuum") cooking - which uses lower temperatures with claims it improves food quality - is all the rage in food circles now.

But it's unclear what the risks are. Advocates of it have history on their side; preserving and cooking food in leaves, fat, salt and animal bladders before being cooked is as ancient as cooking. And isolating food from air, such as vacuum sealing, can arrest the decay of food.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), is always in conflict with itself. While it claims to care about animals, it also kills about 90% of the animals it takes in. While they advocate less meat consumption, the people they rally around that flag abuse animals with dietary quackery and forced ideology, like the recent case of a dying kitten who was non-responsive when brought to a veterinarian by its vegan owners - who told them a diet of potatoes, rice milk and pasta was killing their cat.(1) The posturing of PETA members overall is cloying, but nothing like most vegans.