Once upon a time, university lectures were accompanied by the sound of pens scribbling on paper. But if you go into a lecture hall today, you will hear students tapping on laptops.
Devices are now an accepted and important part of modern learning. But this does not necessarily mean students should forget the old-fashioned ways of taking notes.
Research shows pen and paper can help students learn and remember more from class.
The benefits of note-taking
Studies have long shown students who take notes during a lecture, class, or while reading are able to remember more of that content later.
One reason is note-taking is more active than listening or reading, which helps us maintain attention.
And students often go beyond just recording the information being said.
These activities are examples of active engagement which strengthens the “encoding process”: the way new knowledge moves into long-term memory and forms memory pathways.
Strong memory pathways enable knowledge to be more easily accessed later, such as when problem solving in class or doing an exam.
Taking notes during class can help keep your focus and make it easier to retain information. Matej Kastelic/Shutterstock
Note-taking on a laptop
Research shows the kinds of notes students take when typing on a laptop differ from those taken with traditional pen and paper.
A 2018 study in the United States found college students took longer lecture notes (both in word count and quantity of ideas) when typing on a laptop than when writing by hand. They also recorded longer sections verbatim from the lecture. This might occur because students typically type faster than they handwrite.
However, while students are faster on a laptop, they are also likely to become distracted.
A 2021 study of US college students used tracking software and found the average student was distracted for about half their lecture by social media, assignments, shopping and other off-task internet activities.
Note-taking with a pen
So how do pen and paper compare?
A 2024 meta-analysis of 24 international studies showed taking lecture notes by hand resulted in stronger overall test performance and course grades for undergraduate students.
This is because handwriting engages the brain in a more active way than typing, which is better for learning.
Students who take notes by hand use more shorthand, visual signals (for example, bolding, underlining, arrows and stars) and images (diagrams, graphs and tables) than those who type.
Taking notes by hand is particularly helpful if a lecturer or teacher pauses during a lecture or lesson, so students can revise or add to their notes in real time. In one US study, students using longhand added three times as many new ideas to their notes during lecture pauses as laptop users did.
Notetaking on pen and paper can help students form strong connections between ideas. ABO PHOTOGRAPHY/Shutterstock
Are there times laptops might be better?
Despite the benefits of handwriting, there are some situations where laptops may be more appropriate for note-taking.
Students who struggle with slow handwriting or spelling may find pen and paper note-taking interferes with their learning. This is because they need to focus more on the physical act of writing so it becomes harder to process new knowledge.
Some neurodivergent students may also find handwriting challenging. For instance, autistic students often experience difficulties with fine motor skills like handwriting. Similarly, students with dyslexia or dysgraphia may struggle with handwriting tasks.
For these students, typing with features like spell-check and auto-correction can allow them to focus on understanding and fully participating in class.
But for those who find both handwriting and typing equally comfortable, the research shows using a pen and paper are more effective for learning.
Humanity faces unprecedented environmental challenges. Nowhere are the challenges greater than in Africa, the second most populous continent. Over the next century Africa will replace Asia as the driver of global population increase and the impact of climate change will be severe.
With colleagues, we recently brought these strands together and linked them to the need for a significant improvement in the continent’s higher education and research capacity.
The reasons for this are clear. The higher education sector in Africa expanded rapidly: enrolment doubled from 6.1 million to 12.2 million between 2000-2013. But funding and capacity – such as the number of teachers, salaries and research support – have not kept pace.
Africa imports more research expertise when it comes to biodiversity research, than any other region. And in international collaborations, the participation of African scholars has been frequently limited to providing access to study sites or data. Trends such as these are partially due to teaching loads. Professors often teach more classes with more students leaving little time for research and other scholarly activities.
Beyond facing the problem of having over-enrolled and outdated classrooms, poorly paid faculty are taking on additional paid work to make a reasonable living for their families. For example, in Uganda, professors will often cancel classes for a few weeks so they can take on consultancies for groups like the World Bank, leaving their students to learn the material themselves.
Despite these difficulties, this could be a very exciting time for research to address Africa’s environmental issues. Improvements in access to pre-university education have provided a large talent pool, and widening internet access has made collaboration more realistic. The stage is set for the African scientific community to reach out globally so that, through collaboration, they can set the agenda and play a significant role in science development.
Change the incentive system in high-income countries to facilitate African collaboration and training;
Modify international programmes for African students; and
Help African universities attract and retain the most qualified home-country educators.
We present a training model suited to surmounting Africa’s environmental challenges. One of the most effective models has been close one-on-one collaborations between African students and internationally respected scientists. These scientists have long-term, site-based training and research programmes in Africa. This approach has led to research, training, and funding opportunities that last decades and form broad networks.
In addition to the typical professor-student mentoring, research collaborations like this usually create opportunities for African students to attend conferences, provide access to literature and software, and generate long-term collaboration involving grants, publications, student exchanges, and much more.
But this model has not been scaled to meet Africa’s current environmental challenges. The model needs the participation of hundreds of dedicated scientists, each having long-term, but not necessarily large, funding. The model has huge potential. The training that takes place within the context of long-term research collaborations, builds the research network needed for the rapid growth of training for future generations of Africans.
The next generation would have the knowledge, skills, and connections to address the critical environmental issue. There are numerous examples of this model working extremely well when used by single researchers or a small group of researchers, but it has never been brought up to the scale now needed in Africa.
Another area that needs urgent action is that African research institutions must improve working conditions. Without this they risk losing the talent fostered by these high quality research collaborations and the networks they engender to private enterprise, non-governmental agencies, or migration aboard.
Researchers only have access to limited facilities and support for research. Only 0.4% of Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is spent on research and development, compared to 2.4% in North America and Western Europe. On a positive note, Kenya recently announced that it intends to increase spending on research and development from 0.4% of GDP to 2.0%
Without access to suitable resources and technical support, many African PhDs find it nearly impossible to remain competitive in their chosen field. Instead, they opt to leave academic life for more lucrative work. This needs to change.
What needs to be done
The changes necessary to implement these recommendations at sufficient scales are not massive or too difficult to overcome. They include: increasing funding to support African students and early career researchers; improved salaries and infrastructure in African universities; and additional incentives to entice faculty from high-income countries to form collaborations and networks where African students are trained and mentored.
Africa must tackle the effects of biodiversity loss and climate change and be an essential player in addressing global environmental issues more generally.
The environmental challenges are huge. The continent’s high biodiversity is at risk with over 6 000 animal and 3 000 plant species being threatened with extinction. Africa’s carbon dioxide emissions increased 12 fold in roughly 50 years, and by the end of the next decade its organic carbon emissions will make up 50% of global emissions.
Given Africa’s projected population growth, management of its environment must be a global priority. A stronger Africa benefits not only Africans, but everyone on our increasingly interconnected planet.
Claire A. Hemingway from the National Science Foundation is also a co-author of this work. She would like to clarify that contents of this publication are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent official views of the foundation.
In the 1990s, a psychologist named Martin Seligman led the positive psychology movement, which placed the study of human happiness squarely at the center of psychology research and theory. It continued a trend that began in the 1960s with humanistic and existential psychology, which emphasized the importance of reaching one’s innate potential and creating meaning in one’s life, respectively.
Since then, thousands of studies and hundreds of books have been published with the goal of increasing well-being and helping people lead more satisfying lives.
So why aren’t we happier? Why have self-reported measures of happiness stayed stagnant for over 40 years?
Perversely, such efforts to improve happiness could be a futile attempt to swim against the tide, as we may actually be programmed to be dissatisfied most of the time.
You can’t have it all
Part of the problem is that happiness isn’t just one thing.
Jennifer Hecht is a philosopher who studies the history of happiness. In her book “The Happiness Myth,” Hecht proposes that we all experience different types of happiness, but these aren’t necessarily complementary. Some types of happiness may even conflict with one another. In other words, having too much of one type of happiness may undermine our ability to have enough of the others – so it’s impossible for us to simultaneously have all types of happiness in great quantities.
For example, a satisfying life built on a successful career and a good marriage is something that unfolds over a long period of time. It takes a lot of work, and it often requires avoiding hedonistic pleasures like partying or going on spur-of-the-moment trips. It also means you can’t while away too much of your time spending one pleasant lazy day after another in the company of good friends.
On the other hand, keeping your nose to the grindstone demands that you cut back on many of life’s pleasures. Relaxing days and friendships may fall by the wayside.
As happiness in one area of life increases, it’ll often decline in another.
A rosy past, a future brimming with potential
This dilemma is further confounded by the way our brains process the experience of happiness.
By way of illustration, consider the following examples.
We’ve all started a sentence with the phrase “Won’t it be great when…” (I go to college, fall in love, have kids, etc.). Similarly, we often hear older people start sentences with this phrase “Wasn’t it great when…”
Think about how seldom you hear anyone say, “Isn’t this great, right now?”
Surely, our past and future aren’t always better than the present. Yet we continue to think that this is the case.
These are the bricks that wall off harsh reality from the part of our mind that thinks about past and future happiness. Entire religions have been constructed from them. Whether we’re talking about our ancestral Garden of Eden (when things were great!) or the promise of unfathomable future happiness in Heaven, Valhalla, Jannah or Vaikuntha, eternal happiness is always the carrot dangling from the end of the divine stick.
There’s evidence for why our brains operate this way; most of us possess something called the optimistic bias, which is the tendency to think that our future will be better than our present.
To demonstrate this phenomenon to my classes, at the beginning of a new term I’ll tell my students the average grade received by all students in my class over the past three years. I then ask them to anonymously report the grade that they expect to receive. The demonstration works like a charm: Without fail, the expected grades are far higher than one would reasonably expect, given the evidence at hand.
And yet, we believe.
Cognitive psychologists have also identified something called the Pollyanna Principle. It means that we process, rehearse and remember pleasant information from the past more than unpleasant information. (An exception to this occurs in depressed individuals who often fixate on past failures and disappointments.)
For most of us, however, the reason that the good old days seem so good is that we focus on the pleasant stuff and tend to forget the day-to-day unpleasantness.
Self-delusion as an evolutionary advantage?
These delusions about the past and the future could be an adaptive part of the human psyche, with innocent self-deceptions actually enabling us to keep striving. If our past is great and our future can be even better, then we can work our way out of the unpleasant – or at least, mundane – present.
All of this tells us something about the fleeting nature of happiness. Emotion researchers have long known about something called the hedonic treadmill. We work very hard to reach a goal, anticipating the happiness it will bring. Unfortunately, after a brief fix we quickly slide back to our baseline, ordinary way-of-being and start chasing the next thing we believe will almost certainly – and finally – make us happy.
My students absolutely hate hearing about this; they get bummed out when I imply that however happy they are right now – it’s probably about how happy they will be 20 years from now. (Next time, perhaps I will reassure them that in the future they’ll remember being very happy in college!)
Nevertheless, studies of lottery winners and other individuals at the top of their game – those who seem to have it all – regularly throw cold water on the dream that getting what we really want will change our lives and make us happier. These studies found that positive events like winning a million bucks and unfortunate events such as being paralyzed in an accident do not significantly affect an individual’s long-term level of happiness.
Assistant professors who dream of attaining tenure and lawyers who dream of making partner often find themselves wondering why they were in such a hurry. After finally publishing a book, it was depressing for me to realize how quickly my attitude went from “I’m a guy who wrote a book!” to “I’m a guy who’s only written one book.”
But this is how it should be, at least from an evolutionary perspective. Dissatisfaction with the present and dreams of the future are what keep us motivated, while warm fuzzy memories of the past reassure us that the feelings we seek can be had. In fact, perpetual bliss would completely undermine our will to accomplish anything at all; among our earliest ancestors, those who were perfectly content may have been left in the dust.
This shouldn’t be depressing; quite the contrary. Recognizing that happiness exists – and that it’s a delightful visitor that never overstays its welcome – may help us appreciate it more when it arrives.
Furthermore, understanding that it’s impossible to have happiness in all aspects of life can help you enjoy the happiness that has touched you.
Recognizing that no one “has it all” can cut down on the one thing psychologists know impedes happiness: envy.
After following a white rabbit down a hole in the ground and changing sizes several times, Alice finds herself wondering “Who in the world am I?”
This scene, from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” might resonate with you: In a world that’s constantly changing, it can be challenging to find your authentic self.
I am a social psychologist, and over the past few years my colleagues and I have been conducting research to better understand what it means to be authentic. Our findings provide some valuable insights that not only shed light on what is meant by authenticity – a somewhat vague term whose definition has been debated – but can also offer some tips for how to tap into your true self.
What is authenticity?
In “Sincerity and Authenticity,” literary critic and professor Lionel Trilling described how society in past centuries was held together by the commitment of people to fulfilling their stations in life, whether they were blacksmiths or barons.
Trilling argued that people in modern societies are much less willing to give up their individuality, and instead value authenticity.
But what, exactly, did he mean by authenticity?
Like Trilling, many modern philosophers also understood authenticity as a kind of individuality. For example, Søren Kierkegaard believed that being authentic meant breaking from cultural and social constraints and living a self-determined life. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger equated authenticity to accepting who you are today and living up to all the potential you have in the future. Writing many decades after Heidegger, the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre had a similar idea: People have the freedom to interpret themselves, and their experiences, however they like. So being true to oneself means living as the person you think yourself to be.
Common among these different perspectives is the notion that there is something about a person that represents who they really are. If we could only find the true self hidden behind the false self, we could live a perfectly authentic life.
In an attempt to define authenticity, psychologists in the early 21st century started to characterize what an authentic person looks like.
They settled on some criteria: An authentic person is supposed to be self-aware and willing to learn what makes them who they really are. Once an authentic person gains insight into their true self, they will aim to be unbiased about it – choosing not to delude themselves and distort the reality of who they are. After deciding what defines the true self, the authentic person will then behave in a way that is true to those characteristics, and avoid being “false” or “fake” merely to please others.
Some researchers have used this framework to create measurement scales that can test how authentic a person is. In this view, authenticity is a psychological trait – a part of someone’s personality.
But my colleagues and I felt there was more to the experience of authenticity – something that goes beyond a list of characteristics or certain ways of living. In our most recent work, we explain why this traditional definition of authenticity might be falling short.
Thinking is hard
Have you ever found yourself trying to analyze your own thoughts or feelings about something, only to make yourself more confused? The poet Theodore Roethke once wrote that “self-contemplation is a curse, that makes an old confusion worse.”
And there’s a growing body of psychological research supporting this idea. Thinking, on its own, is surprisingly effortful and even a little bit boring, and people will do almost anything to avoid it. One study found they’ll even shock themselves to avoid having to sit with their own thoughts.
This is a problem for a definition of authenticity that requires people to think about who they are and then act on that knowledge in an unbiased way. We don’t find thinking very enjoyable, and even when we do, our reflection and introspection abilities are rather poor.
Fortunately, our research gets around this problem by defining authenticity not as something about a person, but as a feeling.
We propose that authenticity is a feeling that people interpret as a sign that what they are doing in the moment aligns with their true self.
Importantly, this view does not require people to know what their true self is, nor do they need to have a true self at all. According to this view, an authentic person can look many different ways; and as long as something feels authentic, it is. Although we are not the first to take this view, our research aims to describe exactly what this feeling is like.
This is where we depart a bit from tradition. We propose that the feeling of authenticity is actually an experience of fluency.
Have you ever been playing a sport, reading a book, or having a conversation, and had the feeling that it was just right?
This is what some psychologists call fluency, or the subjective experience of ease associated with an experience. Fluency usually happens outside of our immediate awareness – in what psychologist William James called fringe consciousness.
According to our research, this feeling of fluency might contribute to feelings of authenticity.
In one study, we asked U.S. adults to recall the last activity they did and to rate how fluent it felt. We found that, regardless of the activity – whether it was work, leisure or something else – people felt more authentic the more fluent the activity was.
Getting in the way of fluency
We were also able to show that when an activity becomes less fluent, people feel less authentic.
To do this, we asked participants to list some attributes that describe who they really are. However, sometimes we asked them to try to remember complicated strings of numbers at the same time, which increased their cognitive load. At the end, participants answered some questions about how authentic they felt while completing the task.
As we predicted, the participants felt less authentic when they had to think about their attributes under cognitive load, because being forced to do the memory task at the same time created a distraction that impeded fluency.
At the same time, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not being authentic if you take on challenging tasks.
While some people may interpret feelings of unease as a hint that they aren’t being true to themselves, in some cases difficulty might be interpreted as importance.
Research by a team of psychologists led by Daphna Oyserman has shown that people have different personal theories about ease and difficulty when carrying out tasks. Sometimes when something is too easy it feels “not worth our time.” Conversely, when something gets difficult – or when life gives us lemons – we might see it as especially important and worth doing.
We choose to make lemonade instead of giving up.
This might mean that there are times when we feel particularly true to ourselves when the going gets tough – as long as we interpret that difficulty as important to who we are.
Trust your gut
As romantic as it sounds to have a true self that’s merely hiding behind a false one, it probably isn’t that simple. But that doesn’t mean authenticity shouldn’t be an something to strive for.
Seeking fluency – and avoiding internal conflict – is probably a pretty good way to stay on the path to being true to yourself, pursuing what is morally good and knowing when you’re “in the right place.”
When you go searching for the self in a sea of change, you might find yourself feeling like Alice in Wonderland.
But the new science of authenticity suggests that if you let feelings of fluency be your guide, you might find what you’ve been looking for all along.
In teaching, “fidelity” refers to closely following specific procedures for how to teach a lesson or respond to student behavior. For example, following a curriculum to fidelity might mean a teacher is required to read from a script, use a certain tone or expression, or teach from a designated page in a guidebook on a specific day.
I’m a former elementary school teacher and I now study how teachers make ethical decisions. This includes how they observe their students and try to help them – regardless of whether their decisions align with a prescribed curriculum.
In a recent study, I interviewed 12 teachers, primarily in rural towns in the Northeast, about how they deal with problems that arise in the classroom every day. They discussed how they came up with responses based on best practices they had learned in school from resources such as books and videos. They also spoke of techniques they learned in professional development workshops.
Of the nine who worked in public schools or publicly funded child care centers, however, all but one of the teachers were influenced by pressure to follow a curriculum to fidelity. This pressure came from administrators in the form of threats of punishments and even job loss, as well as from colleagues who questioned when they taught a curriculum differently.
The term “fidelity” comes from the sciences and refers to the precise execution of a protocol in an experiment to ensure results are reliable. However, a classroom is not a lab, and students are not experiments.
One participant in my study, a fourth grade public school teacher, described an oppressive environment at her school: “They were really driving the curriculum down our throats. We need to meet this at this date. And everyone should be at this lesson at this date.”
This counteracted what she was taught in college – every student is different, and every classroom is different. Not all teachers will be on the same lesson on the same day.
A kindergarten teacher in the study also described being “boxed” in and forced into a mold.
Students face the consequences of following a curriculum to fidelity. For example, this kindergarten teacher described how when she was teaching preschool her students who lived in a rural area did not understand references to crossing busy city streets in a book she was required to read as part of the curriculum. She brought her students outside to the parking lot to practice street crossing and listen to the noises of local traffic. This was not part of the curriculum. Had the teacher followed the curriculum to a tee, the students may not have been able to grasp the lesson from the book.
When teachers are trusted and given greater flexibility, they teach better. They also feel more supported. The fourth grade teacher in my study began to feel she could better meet the needs of her students only when she changed schools and principals.
Of her new placement: “My administrator is always saying, ‘If there’s anything that you feel your students need, then do it. If it doesn’t completely align with the expensive curriculum we’ve invested in, that’s okay,’” she said. “It’s been a weight lifted off my shoulders.”
A new path forward
Research shows that flexibility in teaching methods and curricula allows teachers and students to participate more fully in the learning process – and even promotes a more democratic society.
Instead of mandating that teachers stick to the curriculum word for word, schools can implement these more flexible approaches:
1. Trust teachers. Asked why they want to teach, prospective and current teachers say they care deeply about children and want to help them. Working with teachers should begin with the belief in their good intentions.
2. Follow the evidence. Learning is complex, and educators’ knowledge of how students learn evolves as new research comes out. When following a specific curriculum to fidelity, teachers are sometimes required to use methods that are no longer evidence-based. In fact, teachers have been forced to follow a curriculum to fidelity even when they have evidence that the curriculum is interfering with student learning.
While much recent attention has focused on who the next attorney general might be, there has been less attention on what the attorney general actually does.
The attorney general is the lawyer appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to lead the Department of Justice, known as the DOJ. Because the attorney general’s expansive responsibilities place the office at the forefront of both politics and the law, the position is one of the most important in the federal executive branch.
NAACP leader Roy Wilkins walks in front of U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy during an NAACP march on June 24, 1964, in Washington, protesting the disappearance of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Washington Bureau/Getty Images
File lawsuits, give advice
Congress created the position of attorney general in 1789 so the national government had a designated lawyer to conduct federal lawsuits for crimes against the United States such as counterfeiting, piracy or treason, and to give legal advice to the president and cabinet officials, such as the secretary of the Treasury.
Initially, the attorney general served part time. Indeed, for the first few decades of U.S. history, most attorneys general maintained private law practices and even lived away from the capital. But as the federal government began to do more, the role of the attorney general grew and became a full-time job.
The attorney general represents the United States in all legal matters. In doing so, the attorney general supervises federal prosecutions by the 93 U.S. attorneys who live and work across the United States to enforce federal laws. The attorney general also supervises almost all legal actions involving federal agencies – from the Department of Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency to the Social Security Administration.
For example, in the past few months, DOJ lawyers supervised by the attorney general have successfully prosecuted a man for conspiring to send to China trade secrets belonging to a leading electric vehicle company; worked with the city of Baltimore to adopt police reforms after DOJ opened a comprehensive investigation into the 2015 death of Freddie Gray; and found that Arizona’s Department of Child Safety discriminates against parents and children with disabilities.
In combination, these two aspects of the job, representing the U.S. and advising the cabinet departments, mean that the attorney general plays a key role in helping the president perform his constitutional duty to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed.
115,000 employees
Since 1870, attorneys general have had an entire executive department – the Department of Justice – to help them execute their duties.
Today’s department contains over 70 distinct offices, initiatives and task forces, all of which the attorney general supervises. There are currently 115,000 employees in the department.
The DOJ contains litigation units divided by subject matter like antitrust, civil rights, tax, and national security. Each of these units conducts investigations and participates in federal lawsuits related to its expertise.
The Justice Department also has several law enforcement agencies that help ensure the safety and health of people who live in the United States. The most well-known of these agencies include the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. branch of the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.
Additionally, the DOJ contains corrections agencies like the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Parole Commission. These agencies work to ensure consistent and centralized coordination of federal prisons and offenders.
Finally, the department manages several grant administration agencies. These agencies, such as Community Oriented Policing Services, the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART), provide financial assistance, training and advice to state, local, tribal and territorial governments as they work to enforce the law in their own communities.
Given all the attorney general’s responsibilities, the role is both political and legal. As such, attorneys general historically have a difficult task in separating their jobs as policy adviser from their duties as chief legal officer of the United States.
For example, President George W. Bush’s attorney general, Roberto Gonzales, resigned from office amid accusations of the DOJ’s politicized firing of U.S. attorneys and misuse of terrorist surveillance programs. And Loretta Lynch, President Barack Obama’s attorney general, was criticized for meeting privately with former President Bill Clinton while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was under investigation by the DOJ.
The attorney general’s job is complicated by the fact that the president has the constitutional power to fire them for political reasons.
During his first term, Trump replaced Attorney General Jeff Sessions after Sessions angered Trump by recusing himself – removing himself – from overseeing the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Given the attorney general’s connection to the president and the attorney general’s position as the head of the DOJ, critics see Trump’s nomination of Pam Bondi as a key part of his plan to control the department’s agenda, including through the use of the FBI to pursue his perceived enemies.
There is good reason for critics to question the relationship between the president and attorney general. As Kristine Olson, former U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon, wrote in the Yale Law and Policy Review, “The President’s power to appoint the Attorney General of the United States as a member of the Cabinet subject to dismissal contains the seeds of a fundamental rule of law crisis in the politicization of the U.S. Department of Justice.” In the past six presidential administrations, Olson writes, many attorneys general have yielded to presidential and political pressure when performing their jobs.
But some have not. For example, in large part because of her reputation for high ethical standards when navigating the job, Janet Reno – President Clinton’s attorney general – was the longest-serving attorney general in the 20th century.
Whether the Senate will confirm Bondi or someone else as the next attorney general puts the fate of the nation’s top law enforcement official in the hands of politicians.
Imagine a world where food on grocery store shelves is ranked by its healthiness, with simple, research-backed scores. In some countries, that world already exists.
Nutrient profiling systems, or NPSs, support clear front-of-package labels that assess food quality based on nutrient content. Nutri-Score in France is a rainbow-colored system grading foods from A to E. Health Star Rating in Australia is a five-star system rating foods in half-star increments. And the Traffic Light System in the U.K. labels nutrient levels as green, yellow or red.
In contrast, the U.S. lacks a front-of-package ranking system for food. Food Compass was recently developed out of Tufts University to help address this gap and shortcomings in other systems. But it uses nutritional information not currently available for most foods and consumers.
As a gastroenterologist and physician-scientist, I focus on making the latest microbiome and nutrition data more accessible to the public. Drawing on this research, I developed Nutrient Consume Score, or NCS, which rates foods from 1 to 100 using nutritional information available for all foods and incorporates factors important for a healthy microbiome.
But how do nutrient profiling systems work? And how do they compare to other nutrition guides for consumers?
Nutrient cyphers
Each nutrient profiling system uses different scoring algorithms, but most assign positive points to nutrients and foods that are typically underconsumed, such as fiber, fruits and vegetables. Conversely, negative points are given to overconsumed nutrients like sugar, saturated fat and sodium, which are often added to processed foods. These points are combined into a single score: higher scores indicate healthier foods, while lower scores indicate less healthy options.
For example, kale – rich in fiber, potassium and unsaturated fats, while low in sugar, sodium and saturated fats – would earn a high score. In contrast, Twinkies, which are high in sugar, sodium and saturated fats, but low in fiber, potassium and unsaturated fats, would receive a low score. A food like black olives, high in fiber but also high in sodium, would fall somewhere in between.
Nutrient profiling systems work similarly to the Nutrition Facts labels on the back or sides of food packages in helping consumers make informed choices. These labels provide information about a food’s nutrient content, including calories, macronutrients, and key vitamins and minerals. The values are determined through laboratory analysis and nutrient databases based on standardized serving sizes regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.
But NPSs differ in that they combine nutrition information into a single actionable score. This means you don’t have to spend time deciphering Nutrition Facts labels, which are often in small print and can be confusing to interpret.
Ultraprocessed profiling
Nutrient profiling system algorithms are all quite similar in their high ranking of unprocessed foods – beans, nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables and whole grains – and low ranking of processed foods like hot dogs, soft drinks, cakes and cookies. They help people rebalance their diets that have been skewed by food processing, or the degree to which the ingredients have been altered.
They complement the NOVA classification system developed by researchers at the University of São Paulo, which categorizes foods based on their level of processing. This system introduced the term “ultra-processed foods,” which are foods that have undergone significant industrial processing and contain ingredients not typically found in home cooking.
While NOVA has linked ultra-processed foods to poor health outcomes like obesity, worse mental health, cancer and early death, it treats all such foods equally, overlooking differences like amount of sugar, sodium and other additives.
Nutrient profile systems help provide nuance by identifying healthier options within the ultra-processed category. For example, plant-based milks, such as almond or soy milk, may be classified as ultra-processed under the NOVA system, but they can have relatively higher NPS scores if they contain minimal added sugars and salt.
Ratios and bioactives in balance
While nutrient profiling systems can be useful for choosing healthier options, current systems have limitations. They don’t always align perfectly with other research, often overlook the bioactive chemicals that regulate microbiome and body processes, and may rely on incomplete data. Current systems also don’t account for the caloric and health effects of alcohol.
The Nutrient Consume Score I designed aims to address these gaps by incorporating these neglected components of food. For example, it uses food categories as proxies for areas with limited data, including bioactive compounds like polyphenols, omega-3 fats and fermentable fibers. Proxies for bioactive compounds found in unprocessed foods – such as fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, nuts and seeds – are integrated into the score’s core algorithm, which uses nutrient ratios to measure the degree of food processing.
Nutrient ratios – including carbohydrate-to-fiber, saturated fat-to-unsaturated fat and sodium-to-potassium – reflect the natural balance of nutritional content of the cells in unprocessed foods, which research has shown correlate with cardiometabolic health.
The fat profiles of unprocessed foods are similar to the fat composition in cell membranes. Saturated fat-to-unsaturated fat ratios capture how different types of fat, affect inflammation and weight.
Finally, the potassium-to-sodium ratio reflects the natural function of cell membrane pumps, which concentrate potassium inside cells while transporting sodium out. This affects blood pressure as well as microbiome and metabolic health.
Research currently under peer review shows that the Nutrient Consume Score compares favorably with other systems. Derived from nutrition data from nearly 5,000 Americans, NCS sores are linked to blood pressure, waist circumference and weight. NCS has also been incorporated into a smartphone app intended for public use, currently in beta testing.
Empowering smart choices
While nutrient profiling systems are a promising tool for healthier food choices, they come with important caveats. Most studies testing how well they work focus on how two factors relate to each other rather than whether one directly causes the other. Correlation doesn’t prove causation.
Further studies are needed to assess whether these systems influence buying habits, consumption trends, and health outcomes like weight and blood pressure. Additionally, individual dietary needs can vary, and personalized algorithms could help refine these scores for tailored recommendations.
Despite these considerations, nutrient profiling systems are promising tools to combat rising rates of metabolic disease. Their use in Europe demonstrates their potential to shift consumer purchasing habits and inspire food companies to create healthier products.
Americans may one day see similar front-of-package labels in the U.S. Until then, smartphone technologies can offer a practical way to help consumers make smarter choices today.
The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has set off soul-searching among many Americans. Part of that reflection is about the public reaction to Thompson’s death and the sympathy the suspect received online, with some people critical of the insurance industry celebrating the assailant as a sort of folk hero.
As many observers have pointed out, frustrations are no excuse for murder. But it has become a moment of wider reflection on health care in America, and why so many patients feel the system is broken.
Philosopher Nicole Hassoun researches health care and human rights. The Conversation U.S. spoke with her about the deeper questions Americans should be asking when they discuss health care reform.
We’re seeing an outpouring of anger about health care in the United States. Your work deals with global health inequality and access – can you help put the U.S. system in perspective?
If we compare ourselves to other rich countries, we don’t do very well. We spend much more money – about double per patient, on average, compared with other OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries – and get much less in return. In a study of 10 wealthy nations, including New Zealand, Sweden and Canada, The Commonwealth Fund – a private foundation for health care research – ranks the U.S. last overall.
And there is a great deal of inequality in the U.S.: both disparities in access to health care and disparities in outcomes. Black infants die at a rate nearly 2.5 times higher than white babies do, for example, and diabetes rates are 30% higher among Native Americans and Latinos than white Americans. People of color tend to have lower rates of coverage as well.
Before the Affordable Care Act, the situation was really dire. It’s likely many of us will get some terrible health condition like cancer during our lifetime, even when we’re relatively young. And what that meant before the ACA was that, if you got sick enough to lose your job – and so, your health insurance – new insurers could charge high rates because of your “preexisting condition.”
You’ve argued there’s a universal right to health. What does that mean, and what would it look like?
But the United States has not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which includes a right to health. Morally, I think that the U.S. ought to have signed on to that. People should be able to live minimally good lives, and health is really important to do that. Countries should protect their citizens’ human rights, and health is fundamental to other human rights, like the right to life.
When I say people have a right to health, I mean they have a right to the socially controllable determinants of health. This includes a clean and safe environment, health care and adequate food, water and social support. I am not saying that they have a right to be healthy, because you can’t guarantee that for anybody.
What I mean is that society should do what it can so that everybody has health care at a reasonable cost. Good governments and their social support systems help everyone secure the health they need to contribute to society.
The alternative is costly for everybody, not just people who are sick. Nearly half of the health problems in the U.S. stem from preventable diseases. As a wealthy country, we should have the resources to address those problems – including steps as simple as making sure people have high blood-pressure medicine, or regular primary-care visits. Everybody should be getting that kind of care, because otherwise, people certainly end up in the emergency room. Even ER visits that do not result in hospitalization cost an immense amount of money, ratcheting up the costs for everyone in the system, and often patients still don’t get the care that they need. According to a 2020 study published in The Lancet, a single-payer system could save the U.S. 13% savings in health care spending or US$450 billion each year.
It’s a matter of how we want to be as a country. We can make health a right, but that is a decision that the American population has to make. We’re all in this together. We’re all trying to make this country work. And it’s a lot harder to do that when you’re sick.
You mentioned an interesting phrase: the idea of the “minimally good life.”
I just wrote a book on the minimally good life, and the main question it grapples with is this: What do we owe each other as a basic minimum? What kind of social safety net will suffice for everyone?
I argue that respect for humanity requires people to help others live “minimally good lives” when that help does not sacrifice our own reasonably good quality of life.
But how should we define that minimum? How should the country decide what kind of social welfare system to have? The basic idea is this: Put yourself in other people’s shoes and think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” What would I need to live a good-enough life as that person? What would I need if I were them?
Maybe you don’t have cancer right now, or heart disease, or anything else. But someday you might. Empathy lets us think about how we can create the kind of security that will help us all flourish and live good lives.
It’s also part of being a good-enough person. I think we live better lives when we help each other. When we think about what we want, what policies and laws we want to vote for, we have to put ourselves in others’ shoes and consider what would be good enough for all of us.
