Scientists in Singapore have revealed which popular cuisine dishes are most harmful to the environment, including meat-based foods as well as plants.
The new study investigated the "biodiversity fingerprint", which reveals the extent to which the habitats of plant and animal species are affected by various actions, including the clearing of forests to make way for growing crops.
“The biodiversity fingerprint gives us an idea of how many species we are pushing to the brink of extinction by eating certain foods,” the scientists said.
The research team studied the impact of 151 different popular dishes from around the world on biodiversity, based on lists of popular dishes taken from the CNN and TasteAtlas websites.
They monitored the number of mammals, birds and amphibian species affected by the production of each essential ingredient for food dishes, taking into account their range and conservation status.
It was found that Brazilian steak dishes (picanha, churrasco, fraldina) had the greatest impact on biodiversity, while other influential meat dishes included: pork salsa verde, chicken jalfrese, Korean spicy beef and caldo de pollo (chicken soup).
The menu also included many vegetarian dishes such as “dal” (lentil soup), “rajma” (bean curry), “chana masala” (chickpea curry), “idli” (fermented rice cake), as well as “caldo de queso” (soup). It consists of potatoes, tomatoes, onions, hot peppers and oregano).
Scientists say these meals require clearing animal habitats to make way for agriculture and the production of the necessary ingredients.
The biodiversity footprint scores changed depending on whether the component was locally or globally sourced.
Beef is one of the worst foodstuffs in terms of carbon emissions, but when considering biodiversity separately the picture is different.
A future study could combine biodiversity and carbon footprint to find the ultimate environmental impact of various foods.
The study was published in the journal PLOS One.
In light of the mysterious layoff campaign Will artificial intelligence replace Google employees?
Google announced a new wave of employee layoffs despite achieving record profits, raising fears that employees will be replaced by artificial intelligence tools.
The technology giant laid off about 1,000 employees in its sales, hardware and engineering teams last month, despite achieving profits of $20.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, an increase of 52% compared to 2022.
Other major AI investors, such as Amazon and Microsoft, have also reportedly laid off tens of thousands of workers in the past 12 months.
Alphabet's labor union responded to the layoffs with a post on X, writing: "Google has begun another round of needless layoffs. Our members and colleagues work hard every day to deliver great products to users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while... It makes billions every quarter. We will not stop fighting until our jobs are secure!”
Kenneth Smith, an engineering director at Google, said that management informed him of the end of his employment contract with the company in an email, and he wrote in a post on LinkedIn: “I felt a lot of anger and frustration towards Google’s management for the way they handled the layoffs of 12,000 people in "Last January, I don't see a lot of evidence that they learned from that experience."
A Google spokesperson told the Daily Mail: “As we've said, we're investing responsibly in our company's biggest priorities and important opportunities ahead.”
Reports revealed that the majority of AI-related job cuts were due to companies focusing on developing AI technology. This is common at big technology companies, which have laid off a lot of employees as part of cost-cutting measures to invest money in artificial intelligence and expensive graphics processing unit (GPU) computer chips.
Last week, Google launched its internal language model (LLM) Goose, which is trained on more than 25 years of engineering experience and can answer questions about Google's own technologies, write code using internal technology stacks and support new capabilities.
Google is said to be planning more layoffs in 2024, but CEO Sundar Pichai claims it won't be as bad as the mass layoffs in 2023 when the company shed 12,000 jobs in January alone.
A recently leaked memo revealed that Google's primary focus is on artificial intelligence technology for 2024, with Pichai citing goals that include developing advanced, safe and responsible artificial intelligence and building more useful personal computing platforms and devices.
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