• The smart ring market is exploding, with options available at Costco and Walmart.
• Rings aren't perfect health monitoring tools, but they can help detect patterns and some illnesses.
• Healthcare companies and the US military are increasingly interested in harnessing the tech.

The rich and famous have been wearing them for years, and competing for the very best sleep scores. Longevity doctors swear by them too. But 2025 may just be the year that smart rings become the "it" tracker for the masses.

"We call it a 'check engine' light for your body," Oura CEO Tom Hale told Business Insider. "It's a tool for you to become literate in the dynamics of your biometrics as they relate to your behaviors."

Oura has been the longtime leader in smart rings — the Finnish company debuted its first ring in a Kickstarter campaign 10 years ago. The undeniable giant in the smart ring space (for now), Oura recently debuted a slimmer and smoother 4th generation ring model, priced from $349 to $399.

Oura says it has been profitable for 14 months after many years in the red. On Thursday, the company announced a $200 million series D funding round, bringing its valuation to $5.2 billion.

There's also been an explosion of competitor rings, including the $349 Ultrahuman Ring Air, which debuted in 2022. In 2024, we've seen Samsung's $399 Galaxy ring enter the market as well as smaller devices like the longevity-focused and David Sinclair-backed $200 Virtusan ring.

It all heralds the beginning of a new wearables category that may eventually help people eat, exercise, sleep, and avoid illness a little better than we do now.

"I welcome all the competition," Oura's Hale said. "It makes us better, it's good for the market."

Every smart ring has a different competitive claim

Each smart ring company seems to have its own differentiator, the thing that they say makes them better than the rest, whether it's the thinnest ring band, the best battery life, or the biggest dataset.

They each generally track steps, monitor temperature, and log heart rate.

Dr. Daniel Kraft, a Bay Area-based physician-scientist and founder, says that's probably enough for the general consumer. We don't all need FDA-approved medical devices on our fingers. Instead, there's value in the consistency of the data a ring provides, monitoring trends day after day, learning about our bodies.

"We're all quite different and it's often the change from baseline that is most important," Kraft told BI.

Longitudinal trend lines can be useful for tracking things like how exercise, supplements, or stress are impacting a person's overall health. In Kraft's case, he watched his resting heart rate drop eight points over a roughly three-month period of daily exercise sessions.

"That gets people engaged, like, 'Wow, I make these small incremental changes and I'm going to see changes that show up in weeks and months and years,'" he said.

Until now, interest in Oura rings has largely been driven by word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, colleagues, and some longevity-focused physicians. Oura's friend referrals (a 10% discount) drive a lot of the business; almost half of Oura members were referred by a friend or family member, according to the company.

A smart ring is also "considered a little premium," Jeffrey Kim, Samsung America's senior product lead for the Galaxy smart ring, told BI.

2025 is shaping up to be the year that smart rings could go mainstream in a big way.

Multiple projections show the market for smart rings taking off, growing more than 20% year over year, until 2030. Over the past six months, Ultrahuman has started stocking its ring at major brick-and-mortar retailers in the US, including Best Buy, Verizon, Costco, and Walmart, and the company says more than 15,000 people in the US are picking up a new Ultrahuman ring each month.

Smart rings are about more than fitness tracking — they're being used for period tracking and to predict illnesses

Already, studies have shown smart rings are good at picking up when someone is about to get sick with a viral illness like COVID or the flu, by combining metrics like heart rate variability with temperature and breathing rate while asleep.

Some brands have also been carving out a niche among women, playing up their potential impact on women's health. In the US, women were not required to be included in medical research until 1993.

"We need more data," Dr. Umbereen Nehal, a fem-tech founder and pediatrician, told BI. "I would like to have accurate, personalized care. I would like to prevent bad things happening to me."

Women now make up the majority of Oura and Ultrahuman users (55% and 60%, respectively). Beyond sleep and fitness, a ring can use temperature to track a period — not a failsafe technique, but it's a non-invasive option to help people better plan when to have sex to conceive or avoid a pregnancy.

Nehal hasn't bought into the ring hype yet. In part, she says it's because the current rings are too "ugly" for her. But she also cautions consumers to maintain a "healthy skepticism" toward their wearables, and not take the data insights or recommendations as health gospel.

"Try to understand: who was this tested on? Who was this built for? How do you want to use it? Do you think this is a good way for what you want to know?" she said. "Recognize that when you buy a product, you are still in the driver's seat of deciding what to do with that information."

Having more at-home data on everyday health may prove useful, but it doesn't have to come from our fingers or wrists. Kraft said we can also harness health insights from cameras, voice recorders, and other easily accessible tech.

Ultrahuman founder and CEO Mohit Kumar imagines that his customers will use the Ring Air as an entry point into what can be a whole body and house health monitoring system, complete with a CGM for tracking blood sugar and a CO2 scrubber for cleaning the air.

Oura has recently partnered with CGM-maker Dexcom and inked a $96 million deal with the Department of Defense. Some US Army airmen have been trying out Oura rings in an attempt to optimize performance by helping make decisions about when they might need more rest, or a caffeine boost.

Medicare Advantage plan Essence Healthcare says it will start offering free Oura rings to seniors in 2025, in the hopes of reducing healthcare costs.

"If I see Mrs. Jones's resting heart rate went from 65 to 95 over the last month, and it's not just because she's been climbing stairs, it's when she's sleeping, boy, I might want to call and figure out what's going on cardiopulmonary-wise," Kraft said. "A lot of our healthcare issues, they show up in subtle ways weeks, months, or years early, and they're just not picked up on, they can't be picked on that short clinical visit — if you're lucky enough to have primary care doctor at all."

Smart ring vs smartwatch

Smart ring pros

• Small, inconspicuous, and unobtrusive
• Great for sleep tracking
• Long-lasting battery (~1 week)

Smart ring cons

• Not as ideal for sports like weightlifting or running; you can't track your pace, and it gets in the way when you're lifting weights
• Can't pick up a phone call or respond to a text
• Expensive

• The Food and Drug Administration released new guidelines on what foods can be labeled "healthy."
• The new guidance now allows foods like salmon, avocados, and olive oil to be labeled "healthy."
• "Highly sweetened" yogurts and cereals however can no longer be qualified as healthy, the FDA says.

Your "healthy" yogurt may be getting a rebrand soon.

On Thursday, the US Food and Drug Administration published its new and improved definition of what constitutes a "healthy" food, tightening up the limits on added sugars, salt, and saturated fat in foods that carry the label.

In a meticulous 318-page document, the federal agency details strict parameters for companies that wish to call their foods "healthy."

For example, a fruit-based food can't be "healthy" anymore if one serving has more than 2% of a person's recommended daily value of sugar. The same goes for veggies, meat, and eggs, while grains can have up to 10% DV of added sugars.

This could change how some brands currently market their food products as a healthy snack alternative.

The last time the FDA issued an update on the "healthy" label was three decades ago, according to the agency.

Under the new standards, the agency said foods such as "water, avocados, nuts and seeds, higher fat fish, such as salmon and olive oil will now qualify to use the 'healthy' claim."

The new guidance comes as competition in the heath food aisle intensifies — the global health and wellness food market was valued at roughly $878 billion last year, according to a 2024 market data study from Data Bridge.

The FDA's report estimates that the changes could make a dent in chronic diseases nationally, saving about $686 million over 20 years.

The cost to manufacturers, meanwhile, comes in at $403 million over 20 years for "reformulating, labeling, and recordkeeping," per the report.

The rule won't change food labeling overnight: it's not slated to take effect until 2028, and it's an optional one — food labels don't have to mention they're "healthy."

But it comes just as President-elect Trump prepares to take office. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who Trump has tapped to lead the US Departmet of Health and Human Services, the umbrella federal health agency that oversees FDA, has recently proclaimed he's waging war against big food companies, vowing to "Make America Healthy Again" and take chemical dyes out of our Fruit Loops. (In case you were wondering: Fruit Loops, with 24% of a person's recommended daily dose of added sugars per serving, do not make the new "healthy" claim cut.)

"If the incoming administration is truly serious about making Americans eat healthier, then they should embrace the power of food labeling," former FDA official Peter Lurie, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told The New York Times.

• A Greek doctor and nutrition scientist says it is possible to eat healthy on a budget.
• She cooks beans a few times a week, and recommends choosing small portions of meat.
• At home, she uses a DIY spread made from 50% butter and 50% olive oil, to make her toast healthier.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dr. Artemis Simopoulos. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Former chair of the nutrition coordinating committee at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Simopoulos is founder and president of the Center for Genetics, Nutrition and Health in DC, a nonprofit focused on nutrition education.

I have dedicated my life to studying and eating good food. It's the dearest topic to me.

Scientifically, there is no confusion about how to eat to promote health and longevity. I think all the conflicting and overhyped diet advice you see has been created strictly for financial and political reasons.

So I want to tell you a little bit of my history, and what I've discovered over my 68-year career studying diet and chronic disease.

I hope this information will help you choose foods that will nourish your body, in an affordable, sustainable, delicious way.

In Greece, traditional diets included fresh produce, fish from the sea, lots of olive oil and sourdough bread

As a girl growing up in Kalamata, on the southwestern edge of the Peloponnesian peninsula, I found fresh food everywhere. On the weekends, we would visit our family farm, about 15 minutes outside the city. Traditionally, most Greeks had something like that, a place they could go to pick up fresh food, whether it was their own farmland or a daily market.

At our farm, we had olive trees, figs, pomegranates, walnuts, anything you can imagine. It was very easy for us to have fresh vegetables, fruit, and fish from the Messenian Gulf on the table. Greek people are very proud of their food, and like to make it very fresh. This was especially true when I was growing up, in the 1940s and 50s, as there wasn't much refrigeration outside the big cities.

We'd supplement local foods with some fatty tinned fish from Norway, like smoked herring or cod. That was especially useful on Fridays, when most Greeks, following the Greek Orthodox church tradition, don't eat any meat. But in general, our diet was pretty low on meat back then. We would eat small quantities of lamb, and some chicken. There was no beef. The backbone of our diet was legumes, like chickpeas, black eyed peas, and northern beans, great for soups and cold salads, plus lots of sourdough bread. People would also hunt and eat some wild birds, which are rich in iron, fostering healthy hemoglobin.

We also had many protein-rich snacks, like lupin beans, which people would often turn into a pickled snack with a little salt. My favorite sweet treat was a Kalamata dried fig stuffed with walnuts and almonds. What a shock it was when I arrived in America for college!

When I arrived in the US for college, I was shocked to find white flour everywhere

When I arrived in New York for college, snow wasn't the only thing that was new, fluffy, and bright white. I discovered that white flour was everywhere in the American diet. Chocolate-chip cookies, chicken à la king, and bread that tasted like cotton to me. I wasn't used to this, and it was a difficult adjustment.

In Greece, I was raised on thinner sauces created with lemon, olive oil, white wine, and maybe some butter. All of this rich, thick, floury food in the US was so different. I couldn't eat half of the meals they served in my dormitory. Sometimes I'd just have Swedish rye crackers with some cheese on them for dinner.

On the weekends, the Greek students would ride the subway downtown to a restaurant near Times Square called The Pantheon. What a great time we'd have, sitting around dishes of lamb and potatoes, big fresh Greek salads, and sharing fruit for dessert.

Once I moved to Boston for medical school, it was easier to get fresh, good food. There were plenty of Greek markets within walking distance of where I lived, and I had my own little kitchenette where I could prepare meals.

I have developed some traditional recipes, which I share in my Omega-3 diet book, but I tell people you don't have to be Greek to eat well, which is why I also have a new book called "The Healthiest Diet for You: Scientific Aspects," which I've made available for free online.

History tells us you can eat well and save money

For thousands of years, people around the world have found their own ways to eat a balanced, nutrient-rich diet that's aligned with their genetics.

While it's true the traditional Greek eating plan is great for health and longevity, naturally staving off many chronic diseases, the Greeks were not alone in figuring out how to source local, abundant items that were good for their hearts and minds. In South America, there are Chia seeds, in China, Camellia trees.

The key thing everyone has in common in these traditional eating plans is a focus on fresh foods, like omega-3-rich leafy greens, plus plenty of other vegetables and a base of legumes for protein.

Most traditional diets are rounded out with small amounts of meat, and fatty fish, as well as plenty of nuts.

It's an inexpensive, and sustainable way to eat. We don't need to buy into all these new highly-processed meat-free alternatives, or vegan and gluten-free packaged treats, which are not health foods.

I always advise my friends to select the freshest local meats and fish they can find. Some complain that this is a pricey strategy, so I tell them 'eat half as much.' You don't really need to spend so much money. Replace a third of the meat you eat with beans on the plate. We ought to be a lot more conscious and respect food.

It's this issue of imbalance, piling oil, sugar, and white flour into everything we eat, that I believe is at the core of the modern chronic disease epidemic in the US. Our processed foods are to blame. But I don't want people to lose hope. You can eat a healthy diet.

I take care to ensure, for example, that my eggs are rich in omega-3 — an essential fatty acid our brains need to thrive. In the late 1980s I did some studies comparing American chicken eggs to Greek eggs from my farm and found the ratio of essential fatty acids, which should be 1:1, was in complete balance on the farm, while in the US it was higher than 20:1! I couldn't believe it.

Even in Greece things are rapidly changing, and it's really sad. We all need to get back to our plant-based diets. For the Greeks, these were diets rich in local greens, extra virgin olive oil, and sourdough bread.

My simple trick: add olive oil into your diet — you can even mix it with butter

My recommendation: Cook beans at least a couple of times a week. Snack on nuts and seeds instead of processed foods filled with sugar and white flour, which are stripped of the nutrients and plant compounds that our bodies need to function well.

And if you can only start with one thing, may I recommend one of my favorite home cooking hacks? Mix your butter or your canola oil in a 1 to 1 ratio with extra virgin olive oil.

My butter and olive oil mix makes a great healthy spread for toast, while my go-to cooking oil mixture of 50% organic canola and 50% EVOO is a science-backed way to balance nutrition by improving the polyphenol composition of your meals and the anti-inflammatory properties of the dish.

Enjoy!

• Colon cancer rates for people under age 50 are going up across countries both rich and poor.
• In the US, rates for older adults are declining, while early-onset colon cancer is on the rise.
• Scientists are starting to uncover clues about how modern diets and lifestyles play a role.

Colon cancer is quickly becoming a young person's disease in countries around the world.

A new study released Wednesday in the Lancet Oncology documents rising rates of early-onset colorectal cancer across rich, highly-industralized parts of North America and Europe, and in middle-income areas worldwide.

"We found this trend is not just about high-income, Western countries," lead study author and cancer researcher Hyuna Sung told Business Insider. "It reaches the parts we didn't see before, such as South America and Asia."

During the 5-year period from 2013 to 2017, colon cancer rates in young people went up in 27 of 50 countries Sung's team examined worldwide. Though the study only includes one country in Africa (Uganda), it is still some of the most recent, comprehensive data available on colon cancer rates around the globe. And it shows colon cancer rates spiking in young people living in countries like Turkey, Ecuador, and Chile.

The trend is not hitting all countries equally, though. While in the US, early-onset colon cancer rates continue to rise to unprecedented levels, there are outliers in the data, like Italy, Spain, and Latvia, where the rates appear relatively unchanged year over year.

"This study is quite expected," associate professor Ganesh Halade from USF Heart Health Institute, who was not involved in this study, told BI, while poring over the new data, and noting the rising rates across several continents. "Fundamentally, our diet is changed"

Halade's own colon cancer research, published earlier this week, identified how ultra-processed foods can fuel colon cancer, wreaking havoc on the immune system, and worsening inflammation.

"It's very obvious the way that this disease trend is going on right now," he said. "We need to go back and consider our diet, sleep, and exercise."

Why colon cancer is striking younger people in richer countries

It still seems to be the case that the richer a country gets, the more young people are at risk of developing colon cancer. Countries with some of the steepest gains in under 50 colon cancer cases in recent years include Australia, New Zealand, the US, South Korea and Japan.

"Children and adolescents in these highly industrialized and urbanized countries were probably among the earliest to uptake detrimental dietary exposures and sedentary lifestyles associated with economic wealth," the study authors wrote.

In other words, driving around in a car, sitting at a desk, and eating more convenience food every day for decades on end may not be great for our overall health, and might have some connections to these cancer trends. Once inflammation skyrockets, Halade said, cancer has an easier time both sprouting and thriving. His anecdotes? More sleep, movement, and home-cooked food.

There seems to be a pronounced uptick in the incidence of early-onset colon cancer among people born after 1950, suggesting that there are lifestyle and environmental exposures impacting Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z in ways their baby boomer parents and predecessors like the Greatest Generation didn't experience.

At the same time, thanks to more cancer screenings and less smoking, colon cancer rates in older adults are going down in many rich countries around the world, including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, South Korea, and Israel.

What we eat and how we live matters, it seems

Scientists are still endeavoring to untangle exactly what is driving the early-onset colon cancer risk, but there seem to be some clear signals in the data about the food system we live in. Another new study released earlier this week suggested that our modern diets, filled with candy, sugary drinks, and processed foods, don't have enough of the healthy fats and nutrients our bodies need to keep cancer-driving inflammation in check.

Foods rich in omega-3, like leafy greens, fatty fish, nuts and seeds can help prevent the inflammatory processes that over time lead to cancer. But sweets, chips, sausages, and packaged cakes seem to fuel tumors, while also crowding out more unprocessed, healthier choices in our diets.

Still, food can't be the whole story. It's clear that a family history of colon cancer, as well as the unique dance your genetics and your environment play, have key roles in your personal level of colon cancer risk. Experts are looking into environmental factors like air pollution, microplastics, and more sedentary lifestyles for clues about what else may be driving the increase in young colon cancer.

Bryan Johnson spends $2 million a year on longevity treatments. We spent a day with the tech entrepreneur who wants to live forever, getting a close-up look at his antiaging meals, supplements, clinical procedures, and daily exercise routine.

• Novo Nordisk scientist Lotte Bjerre Knudsen paved the way for popular GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic.
• Her work in the 1990s was instrumental in turning short-acting hormones into long-acting drugs.
• Her 'product mindset' is what keeps her going, she said.

Inventor and scientist Lotte Bjerre Knudsen has spent her entire career at Novo Nordisk.

"I started here fresh out of university," she told Business Insider from the company's glass-walled headquarters outside Copenhagen. She's sitting just across the road from where her career began in the late 1980s, developing color-safe laundry detergent.

It would have been impossible to predict then that she'd become instrumental in the development of the popular class of injectable diabetes and weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy that have become a roughly $47 billion global market.

It was her research and development of Novo Nordisk's first daily GLP-1 shot for diabetes (liraglutide, approved in the US in 2010) that would spur the development of those more powerful, longer-lasting weekly shots, which she also oversaw.

For years, scientists had known that the GLP-1 hormone played a key role in regulating appetite. But these hormones were so fleeting in the body, almost nobody in the diabetes world was convinced they'd make a successful drug. As Novo Nordisk tells the story now, the company was less than a year out from closing down the entire GLP-1 program when she had her breakthrough.

Today she's proudly wearing her new Lasker Prize lapel pin, as a 2024 recipient of the science award widely seen as second only to a Nobel Prize. It's in recognition of the pivotal role she played in developing the first long-acting GLP-1 drugs.

Here are the three key guideposts she said have helped her succeed with business breakthroughs for 35 years.

Develop a 'product mindset'

Knudsen's cardinal goal, she says, has always been to develop products that "help people at an everyday level" — a tenet she's held onto from her early days experimenting with laundry detergent.

"I've only ever had one job," she said.

She calls it a "product mindset," or "enterprise mindset" and says she learned it first from her dad. It's a type of energy, a way of being driven to solve problems, to make something that will be useful.

"It's the same mindset I have used in everything I've ever done, to just say, 'actually I want to help, make a product that can help' — either in society, or people with disease," she said. "That mindset is exactly the same whether you are making laundry detergents, which certainly help people, or you are making medicines to help people in a very different way, but still help people at an everyday level."

She's clear-headed about the fact that the approach only sometimes ends with success, but is not deterred by the failures, she says. Instead, they press her on to find new ways to solve the problems that pop up.

"I'm okay with being challenged, I don't mind," she said. "But it doesn't make me give up. I listen to the critique, or the feedback, and then I go think about whether there's something I should be doing differently."

Focus on what you know

Knudsen says her training at "Denmark's MIT" (actually called the Technical University of Denmark, or DTU) helped her chart a path toward a drug development solution rooted in biotechnology. Specifically, she focused her research on injectable peptides. This wasn't because she thought peptides were superior to pills. It was what she knew best.

"I think there's some kind of synergy between the background that I had and the problem that needed to be solved," she said. "I was very comfortable with peptides as a potential medicine."

To make the GLP-1 hormone "long-acting" her team found a way to attach a fatty acid to the molecule. She compares this structure to a steak — it's a one-two punch of protein and fat, protecting the hormone-mimicking shot from rapid degradation in the body.

Stay humble and curious

Even though Knudsen and her teams at Novo Nordisk invented an entirely new class of diabetes and weight loss drugs, she's still level-headed about these relatively new medicines.

She says more scientific studies of the drugs are essential to better untangle how they work, and reveal all the different aspects of our health they impact, from inflammation and addiction to dementia.

While she acknowledges there are serious concerns about muscle loss in many people taking GLP-1s, she says drug developers should exercise caution in combining GLP-1s with other medications, like those designed to help combat muscle loss.

"You can't start combining left, right, north, east, west unless you really understand what the foundational part of the biology means," she said.

Now a chief science officer at Novo Nordisk, her executive role is far more focused on mentorship and governance than technical knowledge. But she still aims to explore the basic science that can steer new discoveries. In 2021, she took a job rotation at Novo Nordisk's research site inside Oxford University to learn more about genetics, hormones, and machine learning.

"There's all these things that need to happen in the body after you've eaten," Knudsen said. "GLP-1 is involved in that, and that's why it has both effects on different organs, and the brain, and everything that needs to happen after you eat."

• California's biggest raw milk brand tested positive for bird flu.
• With a voluntary recall underway, the company has started sending out milk to be pasteurized.
• Raw cheese, kefir, and butter are still being sold.

One of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s favorite raw milk producers is temporarily going pasteurized, as bird flu sweeps across California's dairyland.

Raw Farms is California's largest producer of raw milk products, and a huge name in West Coast wellness circles. This summer, the company partnered with carnivore diet influencer Paul Saladino and trendy LA grocery store Erewhon to produce a $19 raw kefir smoothie.

Now, the company is recalling all of its raw milk and raw cream on store shelves statewide, after initial retail tests of at least two batches of milk turned up positive for H5N1 bird flu.

In the meantime, raw milk produced at the Fresno-based dairy is being processed like regular milk.

"It's going from our dairies directly to a processing plant owned by somebody else to be pasteurized," Raw Farms founder Mark McAfee told Business Insider on Wednesday, adding that the move is a "horrible" one for his bottom line.

"We're getting about 20%" of normal sales revenue, he said.

Raw Farms isn't recalling its raw cheeses, butter, or kefir, and McAfee said that's because those products have been fermented, heated, cultured, or aged, and therefore are somewhat less of a concern to regulators.

Can you get bird flu from raw milk?

It's normal for raw milk to have viruses or bacteria floating around in it. Unlike pasteurized milk, raw milk is not heated to kill pathogens.

That's why the US Food and Drug Administration advises against anyone drinking raw milk. There's a risk of contracting stomach bugs like Salmonella or E. coli, which can cause food poisoning, and in rare cases hospitalization or death. Kids are especially at risk.

It's not clear whether people can actually get bird flu by drinking milk from a sick cow. So far, there have been no reports of raw milk drinkers catching bird flu, but there have been several cases of cats drinking raw milk from cows sick with bird flu, and then dropping dead afterwards.

"Like many foodborne illnesses, illnesses from raw milk are often underreported because many people aren't tested by a doctor in time to identify a pathogen and link the illness to a specific food," the Santa Clara County Public Health Department, the agency that first identified bird flu virus in Raw Farms products in November, told BI in a statement.

The FDA declined to comment for this story, citing an ongoing lawsuit against Raw Farms, which accuses the company of selling raw milk across state lines (that's forbidden under federal law).

A spokesperson for the agency pointed BI to a recent letter to dairy producers nationwide, which mentions that bird flu is a virus, like other viruses, that can't withstand pasteurization.

A bird flu outbreak will not stop the raw milk trend, McAfee says

McAfee is trying to set up some raw milk bottling and processing in another area of the state that isn't as affected by the current H5N1 outbreak as the Central Valley. He said he hopes to start selling raw milk again soon, after performing (and clearing) some additional tests.

"Hopefully, within the next 10 days, we'll have a dairy that's up and going, and products will be flowing from a different area of California," he said.

That would be welcome news to President-elect Trump's pick to head up Health and Human Services next year.

Kennedy has promised to end the FDA's "war" on raw milk. McAfee said he's been tapped by Kennedy's transition team to apply for a position advising the FDA on standards and policy for raw milk production.

"People don't really appreciate the deep science of this," he said. "I do."

He pointed to the latest science that suggests the biggest hazard for bird flu transmission lies not in the milk itself, but in dairy cow udders.

So far, of the 32 human bird flu cases reported in California, 31 have been traced back to cattle exposure.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been warning dairy workers to watch out for raw milk splashing into their eyeballs, and McAfee said his dairy workers wear eye protection.

• A new YouGov poll highlights the most popular Thanksgiving pies of 2024.
• More women prefer pumpkin pie, a trend that may have a scientific explanation.
• Politics is not a great pie choice predictor, but there are some trends in pecan versus sweet potato.

There is a clear winner in the Thanksgiving pie wars this year.

According to a November 20 YouGov online poll of 9,900 adults across the US, pumpkin pie took first place for favorite pie pick, with 29% of the vote nationwide.

Second place goes to apple pie (20%) while smaller crowds of Americans prefer pecan pie (14%), sweet potato pie (9%), and chocolate pie (9%).

Then there is the 6% share of the survey respondents that chose "I don't like to eat pie on Thanksgiving." Fine, more pie for us.

Pie preferences divided by gender and age

If you're trying to guess what kind of pie your guests might like best, gender provides one small indication.

Roughly one in every three women (32%) surveyed this year was a pumpkinhead, preferring to eat pumpkin pie. Male survey respondents, however, were almost equally likely to pick apple (24%) or pumpkin (26%).

There may be a biological reason for those taste differences. Scientific research suggests that about 35% of women in the US are supertasters, while only 15% of men can say the same. So it's possible that a larger share of female pie eaters may gravitate to the comparatively subtle, savory flavors of a pumpkin pie while more men enjoy sweeter apple pies.

According to this survey, younger people also tend to like apple pie more than older people, with 29% of respondents ages 18 to 29 making apple pie their first choice.

With age comes an increasing appreciation for pumpkin pie, but whether that's by tradition or through a change in palate with age is unclear: 30- to 44-year-olds were almost evenly split on picking pumpkin or apple for their first choice, while folks from 45 to 64 chose pumpkin a third of the time, and 38% of people over 65 ask for pumpkin.

Pumpkin pie has been the first Thanksgiving pie of choice for a while in the US, but YouGov polls from 2020 and 2022 suggest that apple pie has been gaining ground against pecan pie.

Pumpkin pie unites the table

You'll have less luck trying to guess people's political alliances by their pie choices.

Equal shares of Democrats and Republicans surveyed picked apple pie as their top flavor (23%), and roughly a third of all respondents nationwide — Democrats (28%), Republicans (30%), and independents (30%) — enjoy pumpkin pie the best.

More Republicans in the survey favored pecan pie than Democrats (16% versus 12%), and similarly small numbers reflect a sweet potato pie difference: It was the first pick of 12% of Democrats versus 8% of Republicans surveyed.

More uniting than any pie flavor this year? Shopping. About half of YouGov's Thanksgiving survey respondents said they plan to do at least some holiday shopping during the week after their Thanksgiving feast.

• Two batches of raw milk from a trendy California brand have tested positive for bird flu this week.
• Bird flu has been spreading rapidly among cattle in the US.
• Experts say drinking raw milk is dangerous, and can cause food poisoning.

Another batch of raw milk just tested positive for bird flu in California.

Last Sunday, Fresno-based Raw Farm voluntarily recalled a first batch of cream top whole raw milk with a "best by" date of November 27. By Wednesday, the California Department of Public Health announced that a second batch of Raw Farm cream top, with a "best by" date of December 7 had also tested positive for bird flu, based on retail sampling.

"We're not making a big deal about it, because it's not a big deal," Kaleigh Stanziani, Raw Farm's vice president of marketing, said in a short video posted on YouTube after the farm's first voluntary recall was announced earlier this week.

She said there had only been an indication that there might be a "trace element of something possible," emphasizing that there had been no reported illnesses of Raw Farms cows or positive tests from the cattle.

Raw Farm owner Mark McAfee later told the LA Times that the California Department of Food and Agriculture had requested that his company "hold delivery of further products" until Friday, after conducting thorough testing of two Raw Farms and one creamery on Wednesday. (McAfee could not immediately be reached for comment by Business Insider during the Thanksgiving holiday.)

Raw milk may be helping bird flu spread — but not in the way you might think

Scientists suspect that cross-contamination of raw milk between animals may be one reason the H5N1 virus is spreading rapidly among cows in the US — and could even contribute to the human spread of the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautions that dairy workers might be able to contract bird flu by infected raw milk splashed into their eyes.

There is no definitive evidence yet that humans can get bird flu from drinking contaminated raw milk. Instead, health authorities generally recommend avoiding raw milk because of other serious health risks, including food poisoning with bacteria like Salmonella, E.coli, or Listeria.

There are no known health benefits of drinking raw milk. Instead, all evidence suggests that pasteurized milk is just as nutritious, and is safer to consume.

Still, raw milk has become a trendy product among some influencers. Gwenyth Paltrow says she has it in her coffee in the morning.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Trump's pick for Health and Human Services secretary, says he wants the US Food and Drug Administration to stop its "war" against raw milk.

Over the summer, "Carnivore MD" Paul Saladino released a raw milk smoothie in partnership with the elite Los Angeles health foods store Erewhon featuring unpasteurized (raw) kefir from Raw Farms, and powdered beef organs.

California has some of the loosest rules around raw milk in the country; it's generally fine for California retailers like health foods stores and grocers to sell it, raw milk products just can't be transported across state lines, per FDA rules.

Michael Payne, a researcher at the Western Institute of Food Safety and Security, told The Guardian that people consuming Dr. Paul's $19 smoothie were "playing Russian roulette with their health," and ignoring pasteurization, "the single most important food safety firewall in history."

California dairy farms have been seeing an uptick in bird flu cases since August. The state has reported 29 confirmed human cases of bird flu, and all but one of those was sourced back to cows.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the first confirmed case of bird flu in a California child from Alameda County. The child had no known contact with infected farm animals, but may have been exposed to wild birds, the California health department said in a statement.

The child had mild symptoms and is recovering well after receiving antiviral drugs.

• Over the past few years, fears about toxic and inflammatory "seed oil" have taken over the internet.
• Many experts dismiss this, saying studies show cooking with vegetable oil is good for you.
• What seed oil is actually doing in our diet is more complicated than either side lets on.

In recent years, a war has been brewing over the fats we eat. Specifically, it's a fight over "seed oils." Are they as toxic as some health influencers believe?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, President-elect Trump's pick for Health and Human Services secretary, is a leading figure in the fight. He has a line of t-shirts, bumper stickers, and red hats dedicated to "make frying oil tallow again," arguing for places like McDonalds to go back to using beef fat.

Nutrition experts say the discourse around so-called seed oils stokes unnecessary fear, obscuring the truth about what is already well-established about how to eat to promote human health and longevity.

Professor Richard Bazinet, who studies how fat fuels our brains at the University of Toronto, says online discourse about seed oils being the "root of all evil" has exploded since 2020.

"People are coming out and saying, 'Hey, the government's lying to you,'" he told Business Insider. "Saturated fats are good for you. Seed oils are actually what's killing you, causing cancer."

Let's not get it twisted: butter is not the salve here. But the health benefits of seed oils are also murky.

The seed oils under fire, aka 'the hateful 8'

For centuries, people around the world have used local oils, some of which could be classified as "seed oils," derived from mustard seeds and flaxseeds. None of those were bad for their health.

These days, "seed oil" is more of a pejorative term than a technical definition, referring to oils high in omega-6 fatty acid, including:

• Canola
• Corn
• Soybean
• Cottonseed
• Grapeseed
• Sunflower
• Safflower
• Rice bran

Some influencers call them "the hateful eight."

Do seed oils cause inflammation?

Opponents of seed oils say that they are toxic and often recommend butter instead, which is rich in saturated fatty acids with only small amounts of omega-6.

Cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, told BI he has found no compelling evidence that seed oils are harmful.

Mozaffarian has authored dozens of studies independently investigating how oils rich in omega-6 impact health issues like heart disease, stroke, and weight gain. He said he has found lots of evidence they're good for overall health, lowering type 2 diabetes rates, and improving cholesterol levels.

But he still can't convince some of his "very smart" friends to agree with him on this, including some nutrition scientists who say the concerning trends linked to omega-6 can't be waved away.

A long-term study of Eastern European countries in the 1990s found that those who used "seed oils" with a higher concentration of omega-3 had fewer heart disease deaths than countries that went with oil richer in omega-6.

One thing all researchers — including Mozaffarian — agree upon is that we need a healthy balance of the two essential fatty acids: omega-3 and omega-6. These days, we do not get enough omega-3.

There are clear trends showing that less omega-3 and more omega-6 in the diet is associated with more obesity, and operates on pathways in the brain that can encourage more eating, and tell the gut to store more fat. Studies link high omega-6 intake with more chronic pain, overeating, and potential mood issues while new research on omega-3 suggests supplementation can improve satiety and keep cognitive function going strong in old age.

Several scientists who've studied dietary fats at the National Institutes of Health told BI the internet's focus on specific oils obscures a deeper issue: omega-6 is infused in the American food system in myriad ways, distorting the nutrient density of what we eat.

From processed foods at the gas station, to seemingly innocent, seed oil-free items like chicken eggs, our nutrition equation has been thrown completely off balance.

Baked into the fabric of the modern American diet

A century ago, consumption of omega-6 fatty acids was less than 3% of our total calories.

That changed after World War II, when new technology made it possible to mass-produce new kinds of monounsaturated vegetable oils from plants rich in omega-6.

Canada invented canola, and many cooks swapped out dangerous trans fats for this cheaper, more accessible oil. Food producers also started making ultra-processed foods with things like canola oil or corn oil.

Suddenly, our modern eating era was born. There were some holdouts: McDonald's didn't stop using beef tallow until around 1990, but as vegetarianism and veganism became more popular, "seed" oils became the default inoffensive, dirt-cheap choice to manufacture, fry, and cook food for the masses.

Today, omega-6 accounts for roughly 10% to 20% of calories in the average American diet, which is dependent on a backbone of soy and corn.

It's unavoidable in our food system, and it's in prepared foods at higher concentrations than ever. It's in everything: corn chips, peanut butter, farmed salmon, even today's grilled chicken is higher in omega-6 than it used to be.

Getting enough omega-3 to balance this all out would be a tall order.

"We have a river of oils flowing through the food supply," psychiatrist and nutritional neuroscientist Joseph Hibbeln said.

Hibbeln is an expert in lipid biochemistry and brain health, and studied dietary fat at the National Institutes of Health for nearly three decades. He has seen through his research how these oils increase appetite, and change people's taste preferences so food companies can drive up sales. "It doesn't have to be a conspiracy, it's just: you sell more food."

Traditional Mediterranean diets, the favorite eating plan of most dieticians and nutrition buffs, had about a 1:1 ratio of omega-3's to omega-6's by default. There was plenty of olive oil, high in omega-9, but also a good amount of omega-3 fatty acids from foods like fatty fish, walnuts, and flaxseeds.

Still, Dr. Artemis Simopoulos, former chair of the nutrition coordinating committee at the National Institutes of Health, says demonizing "seed oils" misses the point. If most of your diet is ultra-processed, it doesn't matter what your McDonald's french fries are cooked in.

"This was a problem that was created by agriculture and food industry," Simopoulos told Business Insider.

This is not dissimilar from Mozaffarian's common refrain whenever anyone asks him if they should switch to avocado oil or beef tallow to prevent inflammation.

"There are things that are way more important for you than to even think about seed oils," Mozaffarian said. "I want people to be avoiding super processed foods and to be avoiding refined flours and sugars."

What does this mean for the food industry?

New alternatives to deep fryer "seed oils" are popping up, and gaining traction.

Take Zero Acre, an oil company developing monounsaturated oils made from fermented sugar cane. The company has investment from Chipotle, is used in the restaurants of Michelin-starred chefs, and had a collaboration with Shake Shack.

The oil industry is already bracing for a change in public sentiment, and not just with independent alternatives like Zero Acre.

Simopoulos has consulted for giant food companies like Nestlé and is working with farmers in China to plant more traditional camellia trees for cooking oil, since it's rich in omega-3. She and Bazinet, the University of Toronto researcher, both said big food giants are pivoting away from using omega-6-heavy oils, favoring omega-9, which is nonessential and doesn't compete with omega-3.

"Things are totally changing, and the sooner the better," she said.

Don't let fears about 'seed oil' derail a healthy diet

US health authorities speak in broad terms about nutrition, without diving too deep into the chemical and molecular differences between different fat sources.

They don't make any scientific distinction between seed oils and other unsaturated fat sources, and they don't talk much about the importance of balancing essential fatty acids. Their unwavering focus is on prioritizing "healthy fats" in the American diet, like omega-3 from salmon, and cutting out butter, which is linked to heart disease.

That general messaging doesn't sit well with seed oil skeptics, who are mistrustful of the health system and crave clarity on how manufactured food impacts our health. It leaves no room to acknowledge that maybe vegetable oil isn't the greatest ingredient around.

Bazinet said, while the jury is still out on seed oils, some people may want to take extra precautions. Smokers, who are already under extra inflammatory stress, could perhaps be at elevated risk of health issues from consuming seed oils since their blood won't have as much capacity to oxidize fats.

For most people, the same advice you've heard for decades still holds true.

Eat a diet rich in whole grains, nuts, and vegetables. These polyphenol powerhouses are dream nutrients for your body. Prioritize olive oil — it's low on omega-6 but high in nonessential omega-9, and great for inflammation and brain health. Routinely add in foods that are rich in omega-3, like chia seeds, flax, or fatty fish.

Because here's the thing: If you avoid processed foods that are loaded with sugar, calories, and yes, probably have "seed" oil in them too, all nutritionists would consider that a win.

• Neuralink, Elon Musk's neurotechnology company, is hiring for multiple manufacturing roles.
• A Neuralink recruiter wrote that the firm is looking for people to "boost production" of its tech.
• Experts say it shows the company ramping up production earlier than most medical device makers would.

Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain-computer interface company, is looking to hire manufacturing technicians and microfabrication specialists.

The company, which is developing a device Musk has compared to a "FitBit in your skull," posted the job listings on its website this week. It also held multiple hiring events at its facilities in California and Texas this month, according to a review of LinkedIn posts from Neuralink recruiters and engineers. Two manufacturing technicians work at the company, based on public LinkedIn profiles, with those employees joining in 2021 and February 2024.

The roles will help "boost production," according to one post. "You will be instrumental in ramping production to accelerate progress towards our goal of restoring autonomy to those with unmet medical needs," another post reads.

Manufacturing technicians in Texas would be paid $22 per hour flat rate to produce brain implants and accessories, and are required to work "extended hours and weekends, as needed." In California, technicians would be paid between $28.85 and $44.23 per hour to manufacture the R1 Surgical Robot, which is designed to fully automate the implantation of Neuralink's brain-computer interface.

A spokesperson for Neuralink did not respond to a request for comment. LinkedIn messages to Neuralink recruiters were not immediately returned.

Musk has said Neuralink's technology will eventually allow people to send messages or play games using only their thoughts. Initially, it will work to help people with neurological disorders.

The company received FDA clearance in May 2023 to launch human trials. So far, it has reported implanting the device in two human patients; one patient had issues with wires in the implant coming loose weeks after the surgery was completed.

Tinglong Dai, a professor of operations management and business analytics at Johns Hopkins University, told Business Insider that job posting indicates Neuralink is "staffing up for volume production."

"That's wild for a company that's only implanted two devices in their trial," Dai said. "But in some sense, this isn't really odd if you consider who is running this business," he said, pointing to Musk's experience with "production hell" at Tesla as perhaps influencing Neuralink's focus on quickly building out manufacturing capabilities

A separate listing for a microfabrication technician was posted two weeks ago and is no longer accepting applications. That role lists "experience working in a cleanroom" — a space designed to limit contamination — as a preferred qualification.

Neuralink also appears to be hiring for manufacturing roles for its surgical robot, a job listing shows.

John Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown University who worked on the brain-computer interface BrainGate, described the hiring strategy as unusual.

"Typically, at this stage, you'd be hand-crafting the device. You wouldn't be expecting to scale production until you'd fully finalized it," Donoghue, who helped ramp up production for BrainGate's device, told Business Insider.

The FDA previously rejected Neuralink's bid for human testing in March 2023 over safety risks, Reuters reported. The agency cited concerns about movement from the wires connected to the brain chip and the potential for overheating.

Donoghue believes that Neuralink is at least seven years from the FDA approval required to bring a device to market. Any changes to the device, even small ones, would require the company to get further approval from the FDA and could further extend the timeline, he said.

Donoghue said Neuralink's apparent manufacturing push was outside "the usual process" for medical device companies. The company appears to be investing in mass production earlier than usual, he said.

Outside of the manufacturing roles, Neuralink has more than 30 full-time jobs listed on its careers page. It employs more than 600 people, including several former Tesla and SpaceX employees, according to a review of LinkedIn profiles.

It filed plans for a multi-building facility outside of Austin in 2022, according to the Austin American-Statesman. In July 2024, the company filed construction plans for a $14.7 million, 112,000 square foot facility, public records show, and earlier this year, it moved its state of incorporation to Nevada.

Do you work for Neuralink or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at [email protected] or via the secure-messaging app Signal at 248-894-6012.

• Scientists have created an "atlas" of ovarian aging.
• The atlas suggests ovaries are an untapped, rapid way to study human longevity treatments.
• One researcher is testing antiaging drugs on ovaries, and she says supplements could be next.

A study published in Nature Aging on Friday reveals a new and revolutionary way to rapidly test out potential antiaging drugs: Give them to women.

Or, more specifically, test them out on aging ovaries, whether in well-controlled human studies, in the ovaries of mice, or in donor tissue samples.

The finding could speed up the way that so-called geroprotective (aka longevity) drugs are evaluated, and ultimately brought to market, by making it easier for researchers to assess how well potential aging drugs are working. Researchers could measure the health of ovaries dosed with different drugs and supplements over a matter of months, instead of waiting years or decades to see what works.

"Yeast, worms, flies and mice, we already know how to make them live longer and healthier," Columbia University professor and geneticist Yousin Suh, lead author of the new study, told Business Insider. "Since aging occurs in the ovaries so much more rapidly, why don't we use ovaries as a very fast test platform for geroprotectors?"

The ovary could be a perfect testing ground for slowing down aging

For years, longevity scientists have known that the ovary is the fastest-aging organ in the body.

Suh's new study goes deeper. It shows that ovarian aging is a great proxy for overall human aging at a molecular level — ovarian aging is just happening several decades earlier, and very rapidly.

"This is the first time where you've seen a really solid study done by a leading aging researcher that is demonstrating that a very highly conserved pathway that drives aging is happening in the ovary," Francesca Duncan, a professor of reproductive science at Northwestern University, told BI.

Duncan said for many years, aging researchers were hesitant to consider ovarian changes as a true aging phenomenon because they happen when women are still relatively young.

"We just don't consider women in their 30s to 50s in that 'old' category," she said. "But I think that tide has turned because we know this is an aging process and it has significant clinical and societal implications. So more and more people are paying attention to this concept of ovarian aging and considering it as a true aging process."

For the study, Suh's team evaluated human ovary tissue samples from four young women (aged 23-29) and four more "reproductively aged" women (49-54) to create an "atlas" of aging across every cell type in the ovary.

Her study displays in fine cellular and molecular detail how human ovaries age, and how genetics impact the process. It shows that one of the critical hallmarks of aging, mTOR signaling, is "screaming high" in middle-aged women's ovaries across all cell types, Suh said. That suggests those 50-year-old ovaries could be a great model for studying aging and for rapidly testing out drugs that scientists think might extend human lifespan and healthspan.

"People just do not get the message," Suh said. "They think, 'oh, who wants a baby until you're 60? Or, who wants a period until you're 60 or 70?' That's not the point. The point is we want them to slow down aging."

Changes in ovarian aging are also rapid, specific, and traceable with widely available tools, such as the common blood tests that measure a woman's ovarian reserve or inflammatory markers.

"If something works in the ovary in terms of delaying aging, chances are it's going to be a geroprotector of the whole body," Suh said. "It's not just reproduction; the ovary does coordinate and orchestrate health."

But Duncan cautioned that while the idea of using ovaries as a proxy for whole-body aging is "tantalizing," more research will still be needed to confirm the technique.

"There needs to be a lot more studies of: how do those changes that are happening in the ovary, how do those directly translate into changes into overall health?" she said.

Hot antiaging supplements and drugs, like metformin and NMN, could be tested faster on ovaries

To date, there are no drugs approved in the US to treat aging.

Instead, there's a patchwork of influencers, clinics, and high-end spas all promising to help people feel young as they grow old. They promote treatments like metformin — a diabetes drug that's being repurposed for antiaging and weight loss — or supplements like NAD+ boosters, CoQ10, and resveratrol.

It's pretty hard to assess how well each of those personalized (and often pricey) treatments are actually working. Hard science on human health outcomes is still limited because evaluating the traditional signs of aging, by measuring things like brain or heart health, takes years.

Suh imagines future studies could try these pills out in female mice or in women, and focus researchers' attention on how well their ovaries are doing over the course of the next several months.

In fact, Suh is already trying this: she's one of the first people testing out potential antiaging drugs on middle-aged women.

She is spearheading an ongoing study of a few dozen women in perimenopause who are taking small doses of rapamycin, an immunosuppressive cancer drug that longevity researchers think could be repurposed for healthy aging. The study will measure how subjects ovarian reserve levels change over the course of several months, both during and after their three-month treatment.

While the full results aren't ready yet, Suh says she's seeing clear trend lines in the data, suggesting that the experiment might have been a success.

"I think it's really exciting because in ovaries the results will be very, very quick," she said.