Do you really know?

What is batch cooking?Batch cooking is a technique of preparing meals in large quantities, to be stored for consumption over several days. Generally done during one extended weekend session, batch cookers can then spend less time on food preparation over the course of the week. There’s nothing ground-breaking in the idea, but it is coming back into fashion. For the unenlightened, batch cooking isn’t just about preparing a massive dish to eat 3 days in a row. It’s more about blending ingredients. You can cook basic ingredients like cereals, vegetables and meat with a neutral flavor. Then each day, you add spices and condiments, maybe cook the dish for a few minutes and get your final product.Never having to wonder what you’ll be eating for dinner can be liberating. A Sunday afternoon spent batch cooking also means an opportunity for quality family time. Everyone can come up with seasonal suggestions for the week’s meals and new recipes or variations to try out.Once the menus have been planned out, it’s off to the store to stock up on ingredients. Batch cooking also helps reduce food waste and make savings by only buying the required quantities. Depending on your personal situation, a couple of hours spent batch cooking can mean family fun, whereby recipes are passed down to children. It could be a shared activity with your roommate. Or if on your own, you can stick some music on or catch up on the latest podcast episodes. What better way to spend a Sunday?!Batch cooking doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for improvisation. But you don’t have to stick to the plan religiously if it means depriving yourself of pleasures. You can always take the remaining food to work for lunch the following day.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is aquaponics?OK, from the start I can tell you aquaponics isn’t related to aquabike, aquagym or any other Sunday morning aquatic activities.So forget about ponies in the swimming pool, please!Aquaponics is a revolutionary system of production combining aquaculture and hydroponics. Essentially that means fish are raised and plants are cultivated in the same symbiotic environment. It’s a 100% eco-friendly environment where everything is reused and nothing is lost!In this day and age, one in three fish come from aquaculture which effectively means they are farmed. In aquaponic systems, food is given to the fish being raised, who then produce ammonia through their excretions.Bacteria have an essential role to play in aquaponics, by breaking down ammonia and urea from the dirty water into nitrates. The water is then pumped into a container acting as a hydroponic subsystem, where the plants can benefit for nourishment. With all potentially harmful substances having been removed, the purified water is then pumped back into the rearing tanks, without presenting any danger to the fish.The containers simply play the role of a filter, in a totally virtuous ecosystem. It’s organic, natural and sustainable!Aquaponic systems are raised to an accessible height, meaning you can do gardening at home without hurting your back. They pretty much manage themselves too!The only water loss you get in aquaponics is from absorption by plants and evaporation. There’s no waste either as you can use sludge from the filtering process to fertilise your land plants.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is serotonin?Serotonin is a neurotransmitter which is widely associated with feelings of happiness and well-being, although it does have other wide-ranging biological functions. It’s a molecule produced in order to regulate communication among other neurons in our brains. To feel happy, our brains rely on a wide range of similar hormones, including serotonin. Other examples are endorphins, which are like a natural form of morphine, and oxytocin, which is the hormone linked to affection and security. The interesting thing about serotonin and other wellbeing hormones is that we are able to stimulate their production by controlling our lifestyle, hygiene and food consumption. Nutrition is one of the keys to achieving serotonin nirvana. Banana-based smoothies, for example, are rich in vitamin B, magnesium and tryptophan, while avocado based ones are rich in stress-reducing tyrosine.You can also sprinkle pumpkin, chia and sesame seeds on your salad for a boost in zinc and Omega 3. So long live sardines, bluefin tuna and halibut, all rich in essential fatty acids, which the body isn’t able to produce on its own. These help raise serotonin and melatonin levels.And don’t forget tryptophan, an amino acid which is a precursor to serotonin. It’s present in chicken, fish and legumes like split peas, lentils and dried beans.Fermented ingredients also do wonders for our intestines, which are like a “second brain” lined with neurotransmitters, as outlined by Dr Michael Gershon in his book of the same name. We’re talking the likes of pickles, fermented cabbage and yoghurt, which can have a positive effect if eaten three times a week.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is Google Stadia?Stadia is the name of the cloud gaming service launched by Google in late 2019. The American tech company observed the high levels of pollution generated by video game consoles and computers. That could be due to the production process or regular use by gamers. They decided to launch Stadia, allowing users to play on their TV, smartphone or computer without the need for any additional hardware. With cloud gaming, you just need to click on a link to set up a game from whatever connected device you’re using. In simple terms, the launch of Stadia aims to provide a viable alternative to PC gaming. Gamers have become accustomed to obtaining powerful PCs and consoles. The constant evolution of gaming graphics means many feel the need to regularly change equipment in order to keep up.With Stadia, image processing is handled in real time by Google data centers, so the computer simply receives the video stream. Gamers can therefore play high-quality games on a low-quality device, at least in theory!Google isn’t really known as a big player in gaming, so the company has to be commercially aggressive in order to make its mark. That’s exactly the aim of the Founders’ Pack, which includes a limited edition blue Stadia controller, a Chromecast Ultra, the game Destiny 2 and a free 3-month subscription to Stadia Pro, all for 130$. There are two regular subscription options, the first of which is Stadia Pro. For around 10$ a month, you get access to a limited selection of games. The second option, Stadia Base, is totally free. But image resolution is limited to 1080p while Stadia Pro subscribers get to play in 4K. Players also have to pay for every individual game they want to play.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is the Mozart Effect? What if listening to 10 minutes of Mozart could increase your IQ? That’s exactly what Frances Raucher and her Californian research team suggested back in 1993. The theory spread like wildfire around the world, leading to much speculation about the so-called Mozart Effect.The myth comes from the publication of an experiment in American scientific journal Nature. The study required participants to listen to The Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K 448 by Mozart. After just 10 minutes, they were better able to solve spatial intelligence tasks which are part of IQ testing.These findings made headlines all over the globe. Soon Mozart was being played to everyone from pregnant women to newborns babies and rats. Some American states made it compulsory for kindergartens and nurseries to play Mozart to children on a daily basis. Needless to say, the market for Mozart audio products exploded.  But controversy followed as a number of subsequent studies contradicted Rauscher’s findings. A team in the University of Vienna’s psychology department looked at around 3,000 cases across 40 studies. The team’s leader, Jakob Pietschnig, stated that “there is no proof of the Mozart effect”, while reminding everyone that the 1993 study was only carried out on a very small sample size of 36 students.The reality is whether you’re listening to Mozart, Michael Jackson, Beyonce or Eminem, there’s no real difference. Music we enjoy improves our cognitive faculties because it stimulates increases in our mood and arousal.Rauscher herself actually later disclaimed the idea that listening to Mozart could somehow make a person smarter. She referred to this as a misconception, underlining that the effect was limited to spatial-temporal tasks involving mental imagery and temporal ordering.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is freeganism?Freeganism is a portmanteau word made up of the words “free” and “veganism”. As you may already know, vegans reject animal abuse. They avoid consuming products which are derived from, or have been tested on, animals.Meanwhile, freegans choose an alternative lifestyle which limits their participation in the conventional economy. Where possible, they avoid buying things in favour of recovering food from other sources.The basis for this anticonsumerist ideology is that primary needs such as eating, sleeping or having a place to live should be freely available to all. Freeganism’s ethics also extend to environmental values linked to responsibility and sustainability.A person may become freegan due to their personal convictions, or by necessity. In any case, the practice opposes overconsumption by recovering food surplus from households and businesses, from trash cans, dumpsters and other waste receptacles.Freeganism is often associated with “dumpster diving”, a practice which basically means searching through dumpsters, containers and waste storage locations to find food which is still suitable to eat. Those who do it consider the health risk to be low and some even say it boosts the immune system. Depending on the type of food, and the place where it is recovered, the risk is acceptable.If it’s in a public location, there’s no legal problem at all as waste is considered as not belonging to anyone. Therefore it can in theory belong to anyone and everyone.However, some food chains take a negative view towards freeganism for fear of getting a bad reputation or on management orders. Some supermarkets destroy their waste on-site or spray bleach on it to combat freeganism. Recovering food can therefore sometimes be problematic.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is carbon footprint?A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the energy and raw material consumption of a person, organisation or event. It is measured in the volume of CO2 emitted.Per capita emissions in the USA are estimated at around 16 tons per year. That includes CO2 produced directly by an individual’s household, and emissions created by products they consume. The rough split is 70/30 between the two.Carbon footprint is measured based on an index called global warming potential. It’s defined by scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and allows researchers around the world to base their work on the same frame of reference.Calculating carbon footprint allows us to understand the impact of a product, service or organisation on the planet. The higher the figure, the worse the impact is and the greater the need to reduce it. It’s mainly down to this that the index has become more popular across the world.Carbon offset schemes allow individuals and companies to invest in environmental projects to counter their own carbon footprint. For example, a household which invests in a reforestation program which reduces carbon emissions by 16 tons, would have offset its entire carbon footprint for a year.In 2019, the UN announced that over 60 countries have committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050. That requires reducing emissions through a range of measures.The carbon footprint index does however have some limits. It doesn’t take into account waste production, water pollution, land pollution or the depletion of natural resources for example. It’s certainly a useful indicator, but there are other measures for environmental impact which are more far-ranging.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is zetetic?Zetetic is the practice of giving a scientific explanation to apparently paranormal activity. In other words, zetetic is the art of skepticism and doubt, a tool for critical thinking, which researchers and popularizers use to bring reason into public debates.The word zetetic comes from the Greek “zetein”, which means to look for. Humans have an inherent need to look for reasons and explanations about the world they live in. However, the human brain is not always smart enough to uncover the truth. Our perceptions and intuitions are often incorrect, which is what we know as cognitive bias. This is where zetetic has an important role to play. It’s a tool that can be used by any individual trying to understand and describe reality.As far back as the ancient Greek era, Plato was lecturing about Socratic questioning, which looked to identify contradictions in a line of reasoning. But zetetic in the modern term isn’t simply about philosophical posturing. Rather, it’s a tool for critical thinking. Use of the term grew first among American researchers in the 1970s, then in France, where it was given a framework by professor Henri Broch. He defined zetetic as a “method of scientific investigation into so-called paranormal events.”Broch wrote a lot about paranormal activity and pseudosciences, theories which are often disguised as science. We’re talking about astrology, homeopathy, UFOs and other myths. Broch oversaw the International Zetetic Challenge, which offered a large cash prize to anyone who could scientifically prove paranormal activity.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is biomass?Biomass is organic matter, mainly coming from plants or animals, used for energy production. European governments consider biomass to be the world’s main source of renewable energy. But some NGOs have refused to agree that biomass is green energy.Biomass may sound like the latest futuristic invention that biological engineers have come up with. But really, humans have been using biomass since the prehistoric ages, for example burning wood to cook food or heat homes. It’s only in recent decades that industrialised countries abandoned biomass energy in favour of fossil fuels. The problem is that current consumption rates would see us run out of petrol in 50 years. In 100 years, we could also run out of gas, carbon and uranium. So, governments have started taking an interest in biomass again.The burning of wood accounts for a portion of biomass energy and it is encouraged in several countries. But biomass energy can also come from biogas, the mixture of gases produced by the breakdown of organic matter, mainly from our waste. Biomass centers have been created to collect methane from fermentation in order to produce steam and electricity.The Energy Information Administration reported that biomass fuels provided about 5% of total primary energy use in the United States for the year 2017. Those figures should increase as researchers are investing heavily in ways to use biomass for more fuel.The United Nations do indeed believe that biomass is a renewable energy source. However, there are debates about its use, as it is not necessarily totally clean. For example, burning wood is still one of the main sources of fine particle pollution.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is cyberbullying?Cyberbullying is the practice of repeatedly insulting or threatening a person online. Anyone can become a victim of cyberbullying, but it does tend to be children and teenagers who are most often subjected to it. In the worst cases, it can have serious consequences, with a number of suicides attributed to cyberbullying in recent years.  For some kids, school has always been synonymous with harassment, often for simply being different. For example, they could be targeted due to their religion, gender identity, nationality, or disability. So when the school bell rang to mark the end of the school day, kids could at least find peace at home.The problem for victims is that since the 2000s and the advent of social media, harassment is no longer limited to the playground. Everybody is online all the time, whether it be on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter or Facebook.Cyberbullying can take the form of creating fake profiles, spreading rumors, sending insulting messages, or sharing photos in private and public groups. In the digital age, a message can reach thousands of people within a matter of seconds.The social and psychological consequences of cyberbullying are potentially terrible. The self-esteem of young victims can take a real hit, with several high-profile cases of suicide. In 2012, Amanda Todd was just 17 years old when she ended her life. Shortly before committing suicide, the Canadian published a Youtube video explaining how she had been a victim of bullying for years. Todd used post its to explain just what a horrible impact the ordeal had had on her life.NGO Ditch the Label published a report claiming one in 10 bullying victims ends up attempting suicide.See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices