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If you listen to NPR’s Fresh Air, you may marvel at Terry Gross’ ability, after doing thousands of interviews, to recall the name of each guest and even their latest book or film. National treasure though she is, it turns out Terry actually struggles with remembering names. “I've had proper noun issues for years or decades,” Gross confesses in this weeks’ interview with Charan Ranganath, neuroscientist and author of Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters.
“Anything that starts with a capital letter,” Gross continues, “A person's name, a movie, a television show, a recording, the songwriter's name - I'll remember the lyrics, but not who wrote it, even though I know who wrote it…and I can't find it in my brain.”
The topic of memory has been in the news lately amid concerns about President Biden’s cognitive slips – like referring to Egyptian president Mohamed Al-Sisi as the president of Mexico. In a recent New York Times editorial, Ranganath wrote that concerns about Biden’s cognitive decline may be overblown. On Fresh Air Ranganath discusses how things like social media, sleep, and stress impact our memory at any age, and why sometimes it’s so hard to recall a name that feels like it’s “on the tip of your tongue.” Plus, he weighs in on the idea of instituting a cognitive test for presidential candidates.
Read the highlights, or listen to the interview here, on the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Plus: Recent gaffes by Biden and Trump may be signs of normal aging — or may be nothing |
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Many of you who responded to our protein call-out last week told us you’re trying to boost protein consumption without eating a lot of meat. And I hear you!
So when I spotted a new study published in Nature Food on the health and environmental impacts of swapping red meat for plant proteins, I was excited to share what I learned.
Researchers at McGill University estimate that swapping half of your typical red meat intake — for protein from plant sources — reduces your diet-related carbon footprint by 25% and may also boost lifespan and healthspan. This means, if you’re eating meat four times a week, reducing it to twice a week can be consequential.
Richard Waite at the World Resources Institute helped me understand the link between red meat and climate change.
He said by one estimate, beef production requires 20 times more land and emits 20 times more greenhouse gas emissions, per gram of protein, compared to beans. And if Americans swapped beef for beans, this one switch alone could get the U.S. about halfway to its greenhouse gas reduction goals.
For more perspective, I reached out to one of my longtime sources, Dr. Christopher Gardner, a food scientist at Stanford.
He’s done his own research on this subject that’s featured in a new Netflix documentary called You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment.
The study found twins who ate a vegan diet lowered their LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol), lost visceral fat and lowered their risk of heart disease. Bottom line, the study adds to the evidence that reducing consumption of red and processed meats, such as hot dogs and sausages, can be beneficial.
Eating a healthy plant-based diet takes some planning, as many of you have pointed out. And it may take a big shake-up of your shopping habits as you learn to incorporate a range of food.
Gardner points to a variety of plant-based protein sources, from lentils, chickpeas and other beans, to nuts and seeds, whole grains and even vegetables. He told me “If someone is consuming a reasonable variety, meeting protein needs from plant sources to sustain muscle is no problem.”
Read more of his advice on getting enough protein from plants.
Listen: This data scientist has a plan for how to feed the world sustainably
And: New York sues beef producer JBS for 'fraudulent' marketing around climate change |
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We hope you enjoyed these stories. Find more of NPR's health journalism online.
All the best,
Andrea Muraskin and your NPR Health editors |
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