Letters archive

Brian Kateman argues that lab-grown meat firms should focus on staple foods before they produce versions of exotic meats. In this way, we can increase public acceptance of cultured foods and reduce the adverse impacts of animal farming ( 14 October, p 21 ). Surely the effort involved in persuading people to eat lab-grown chicken …

Being a microbiologist, I get tetchy about some claims made of the colonic microbiome. I concede its importance in young infants and possibly in obesity. Undoubtedly, some evolutionary adaptations have led to many interactions with it. But calling these critical or of prime importance is somewhat overdoing it, in my opinion ( 7 October, p …

Claims made about our gut microbiome and health greatly exceed the causal evidence. It is telling that the European Food Standards Agency hasn't, to date, approved any health claims for probiotics, foods or supplements that intentionally contain live bacteria. Its decisions are based on the sum of evidence reviewed by independent experts – clearly, they …

Having read James Wong's take on native versus non-native plants, I agree that more research on this is needed, but I wish he hadn't attributed a preference for native plants solely to "cultural bias". In fact, there are good reasons to think that native plants will tend to be better ( 30 September, p 44 …

Conor Feehly writes interestingly about the psychological reasons for "the legacy paradox", but omits possible evolutionary ones. Striving to be remembered by future generations may get you noticed by your contemporaries, enhancing reproductive success, thereby propagating the putative LEG-AC.Y gene ( 14 October, p 40 ).

When it comes to a perfect site for a moon base, solar radiation can be a danger on the surface. If we could find a cave big enough, that would be a good solution. But lunar dust makes it hard to dig a hole in a conventional way. Some suggest drilling a hole, dropping an …

In 2020, as part of the UK's push for net zero, the government set a target of 600,000 heat pump installations per year from 2028. However, there are over 20 million domestic gas boilers in the UK with an average life of about 15 years, so about 1.5 million new ones are needed annually. After …

I apply conflicting theories about free will to myself – do we have agency over our actions, thoughts and imaginings, or are we the result of a "zillion" influences? This gets tricky for artists like me, with imagination, lateral thinking, heightened aesthetic sensibilities, creativity, emotions and originality thrown into the pot ( 30 September, p …

Guy Cox can't see civilisation surviving 6 to 9 metres of sea level rise. It can. Most land and many great cities are higher than that, so we would still have plenty of room. In any case, it would take centuries for the sea to rise that much, and most buildings don't last that long …

The company that created the "mammoth meatball" is simply called Vow ( 14 October, p 21 ). It was Robert Stewart of San Francisco, California, who contributed to a recent Last Word ( 16 September ).