Albert Hofmann, Rest In Peace

Archive for April, 2008

Albert Hofmann, Rest In Peace

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

As one of the main goals of Calorie Restriction is longevity, it feels right to honor here the memory of a historically significant man, who made it to 102. I don’t know what his dietary habits were, but to say he lived a rich and full life, with vigor to the end, would be an understatement.

Albert Hofmann in 1993, photo by Philip H. Bailey

To learn more:

Speaking of centenarians, in case you were wondering, the current record for the longest-lived CRS member belongs to Ralph Cornell, who died last year at 104 years of age.

Posted in activism, misc | 1 Comment »

Jicama, aka Yambean

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

If you can believe it, just the other day I brought home my very first jicama root from the supermarket. Seems I must’ve had it in a Mexican restaurant before, but maybe not. <shrug> Anyway, it felt like a new experience, and it was so good.

Of course, I enjoyed it raw initially to get a sense of its flavors. It struck me as a combination of a potato and a cucumber—really juicy. Then I doctored it up by dry frying in a skillet with onions before splashing in balsamic vinegar at the end. This gave it a nice caramelization and is the same way I tend to make eggplant too.

It took me a while to find the nutrition information for it in my software, since it’s listed in the USDA database under Yambeans. Lower-cal than potatoes, I’ll be having this one again soon.

Posted in food | 8 Comments »

PETA’s Test Tube Meat Challenge

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

Not known for shying away from controversy, PETA’s latest proposal doesn’t even have full support within their organization. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is offering $1 million for the

“first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.”

Do you support the in-vitro production of meat?

Speaking of challenges, there’s another pretty cool one going on right now that fits right in with the spirit of Earth Day. The X Prize Foundation has added another technological contest to their line-up. This one’s for the first to design an affordable car that gets 100 MPG.

Get your body care from one of the good guys. Tested negative for
1,4-Dioxane in the Organic Consumers’ recent Coming Clean study.

Posted in environment, food | 3 Comments »

Al Gore Redux

Monday, April 14th, 2008

With Earth Day right around the corner, I want to share Al Gore’s latest presentation on the environment. Using similarly impressive graphics as in his award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, he suggests the situation may be worse than we’d originally thought.

By the way, his latest book, The Assault On Reason, looks really good. It’s now available in hardcover, and, oddly enough, it actually costs less than the soon-to-be-released paperback. Weird. Anyway, I’ll probably add it to my growing stack of future reading.

So many books, so little time!