Free Republic

Scientists have identified a less stringent and more manageable alternative to traditional intermittent fasting, offering new possibilities for extending lifespan and promoting healthy aging. This novel method, involving short-term isoleucine deprivation, has shown remarkable results in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster). The research found that intermittent, short-term omission of only the essential amino acid isoleucine from the diet significantly increases stress resistance and extends lifespan in fruit flies. "Unlike conventional intermittent fasting, this approach does not require drastic reductions in overall food intake, making it a more practical and feasible strategy," said Tahila Fulton. Previous research has shown that moderate restriction...

There's never been a better time to eat — and cook with — American apple varieties.One day in 2004, Brooke Hazen noticed something unusual about one of his Golden Delicious apple trees. “Some people are lucky enough in their career to have their own bud mutation variety that they get to name,” says Hazen. “Out of the thousands of trees I have, one branch on one tree decided to do its own thing.” What it did was yield an apple with the typical green-yellow skin but an unusual pink patch where it faced the sun and a sweetness and fragrance...

CBS broke the bombshell news that President Biden had stored a trove of government documents, including some two-dozen classified documents, in a private office in Washington that Biden used as part of his think tank relationship with the University of Pennsylvania, where he was an honorary professor from 2017 to 2019. “The documents were discovered when the President’s personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space,” Richard Sauber, special counsel to President Biden, said in a statement, adding, “The President periodically used this space from mid-2017 until the start of the 2020...

Regional cider makers across the country are reinventing the comforting fall classic. As the director of innovation and quality for Denver's Stem Ciders, Patrick Combs prefers to think like a painter. And artists require the right medium. Every five days, the urban cidery sends a truck driver to southern Washington to retrieve freshly pressed culinary and dessert apples that will then be fermented with white wine yeast, creating what Combs calls a "blank canvas." He then fills his culinary palette with lemongrass, oolong tea, turmeric, and grapes, creating ciders evocative of rosé wine or a salted-cucumber snack. "One of our...

Behind the scenes at Sandford Orchards, the UK's oldest working cider mill - producers of Fanny’s Bramble and moreWhere else could you enjoy a Devon Red, a Shaky Bridge, or a Fanny’s Bramble all under the same roof? The answer is in Devon’s oldest working cider mill, Sandford Orchards, in Crediton. The smell of apples hits you before you see them. Not a sickly sweet apple pie smell. But a tangy, earthy aroma reminiscent of autumn and pubs and perhaps a few hazy nights out. Because if there’s one drink that’s synonymous with Devon, it’s cider. And if there’s one...

One afternoon a few Octobers ago, I sat with a friend from Spain at a picnic table in an idyllic orchard 50 miles northwest of New York City. As our significant others scoured the farm’s various other goods (jams, butters, donuts), the two of us admired the vast green-and-red foliage blanketing the hills in the distance. Beside us were net bags filled with the dozens of apples we had collected by hand from the property’s dozens of rows of trees — a ritual and scene familiar to many Americans. My friend looked at the bags and gestured toward the sprawl...

There is nothing more American than mom’s apple pie. The image of the hot sugar-crusted pie is a happy memory for countless Americans. Variations of this tasty dessert belong to all American mothers regardless of race or ethnic origin. Leave it to progressive demagogues to find a way to tear down this cultural icon. They cannot let an apple be an apple. They deconstruct an apple pie to always find a hidden racist or oppressive narrative. Food InjusticeThe Left rejects the truth that apple pie is just an easy-to-make dessert. Instead, it denounces what it calls “food injustice.” This sour...

A social networking service known as Parler is facing immense pressure from big tech companies to strengthen its content moderation policies. On Friday, Google and Apple both suspended Parler from their app stores, claiming some of the political posts on the platform incite violence and need to be regulated. A spokesperson for Google said the suspension will remain in place until developers submit a detailed content moderation plan and address what he called a “public safety threat.”

Apples were among some of the first crops grown in colonial America. Potted seedlings and bags of apple seeds were brought over on the Mayflower. The Bible-thumping Puritans were not teetotalers. Apple orchards in colonial America usually meant one thing: hard cider. The apple tree is an unusual plant. It’s what’s called an “extreme heterozygote,” meaning the fruit it produces is highly varied from one plant to another. Even seeds planted from apples that fell from the same parent tree will yield offspring trees that produce completely different tasting fruit. Nowadays, we tend to think of apples as perfectly shaped,...

Study shows low intake of flavonoid-rich foods linked with higher Alzheimer's risk over 20 yearsOlder adults who consumed small amounts of flavonoid-rich foods, such as berries, apples and tea, were two to four times more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease and related dementias over 20 years compared with people whose intake was higher, according to a new study led by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University. The epidemiological study of 2,800 people aged 50 and older examined the long-term relationship between eating foods containing flavonoids and risk of Alzheimer's...

PORTLAND, Ore. — A team of retirees who scour the remote ravines and windswept plains of the Pacific Northwest for long-forgotten pioneer orchards has rediscovered 10 apple varieties that were believed to be extinct — the largest number ever unearthed in a single season by the nonprofit Lost Apple Project. The Vietnam veteran and former FBI agent who make up the nonprofit recently learned of their tally from last fall’s apple sleuthing from expert botanists at the Temperate Orchard Conservancy in Oregon, where all the apples are sent for study and identification. The apples positively identified as previously “lost” were...

This year’s apple season has been so fruitful that distributors in Norway are running short on storage space. Meteorologists have linked climate change to the quickly-ripening fruits, NRK reports. Orchards in the western area of Hardanger told the broadcaster that this year’s apple season had been unusually short and intense, with a much shorter window than usual for harvesting. Large quantities of apples are now ready for transport to distributors and trees have been cleared of fruit, according to the report. “It has been a good season. The quality is also good. We can see that in both the color...

Are we eating apples wrong? An ABC news headline reads, “If you aren’t eating the whole apple, you might be eating it the wrong way, a study finds.” This reporting is based on this study, which is a comparison of the bacterial content of different parts of apples, and comparing organically grown to conventionally grown apples.

FAENZA, Italy - Environmentalists, foodies and travelers, unite! You have nothing to lose but your boring supermarket produce. The Festival of Forgotten Fruits — scheduled for Oct. 14-15 in the town of Casola Valsenio, Italy — is an event designed to bring attention to little-known and sometimes ancient varieties of wild fruit that are still cultivated locally. The festival will feature pomegranates, vulpine pears, rose apples, jujubes (also known as red dates or Chinese dates), quince apples, sorb apples, cornelian cherries and unusual types of berries, as well as medlars, which are used as an ingredient in desserts, jelly and...

Apples originally evolved in the wild to entice ancient megafauna to disperse their seeds; more recently, humans began spreading the trees along the Silk Road with other familiar crops; dispersing the apple trees led to their domestication. Recent archaeological finds of ancient preserved apple seeds across Europe and West Asia combined with historical, paleontological, and recently published genetic data are presenting a fascinating new narrative for one of our most familiar fruits. In this study, Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History traces the history of the apple from its wild origins, noting that...

There’s a bumper crop of squirrels in New England, and the frenetic critters are frustrating farmers by chomping their way through apple orchards, pumpkin patches and corn fields. The varmints are fattening themselves for winter while destroying the crops with bite marks. Robert Randall, who has a 60-acre orchard in Standish, Maine, said he’s never seen anything like it. “They’re eating the pumpkins. They’re eating the apples. They’re raising some hell this year. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” he said. Evidence of the squirrel population explosion is plain to see along New England’s highways, where the critters are becoming...

Studies of ancient preserved plant remains from a medieval archaeological site in the Pamir Mountains of Uzbekistan have shown that fruits, such as apples, peaches, apricots, and melons, were cultivated in the foothills of Inner Asia. The archaeobotanical study, conducted by Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, is among the first systematic analyses of medieval agricultural crops in the heart of the ancient Silk Road. Spengler identified a rich assemblage of fruit and nut crops, showing that many of the crops we are all familiar with today were cultivated along the ancient trade...

CNN recently rolled out an ad implying that President Trump tries to tell the American people that an apple is a banana, but that CNN is dedicated to “facts first.” The ad has been met with ridicule, as in the Daily Caller parody seen in this article. You’d think that any self-respecting journalist would run from the ad. But there was good CNN soldier Chris Cuomo echoing it on his show today. Arguing with Trump surrogate Jason Miller regarding the reliability of polls during the 2016 election, Cuomo said, “it’s apples and bananas, my friend.” View the video here.

Apple Howling or 'wassailing' is an ancient custom in which the 'evil' spirits are driven out and the 'good' spirits are encouraged to produce a good apple crop for the following year's cider. The Chanctonbury Ring Morris Men revived this tradition in the area over 45 years ago and it has become an essential part of Christmas for many people, especially families with young children, who seem to welcome the opportunity to make as much noise as possible! The ceremony was traditionally held on the eve of Twelfth Night, old Christmas Day, but we have settled on the first Saturday...

It's getting to be Apple Time here in the Mid-Atlantic; and the P&G email newsletter recently had a clever way of serving things in apple cups: https://www.pgeveryday.com/home-garden/crafts/article/how-to-make-apple-cupsFor the see-and-do folks, here's a video of how it's done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kke5d7qNCgMAnd to go in them, from the great 'Pick Your Own' site - Cider, which I've never made, but it doesn't look more difficult than any other simple canning; and there's also a link in the article for making fermented and hard cider ;-): http://www.pickyourown.org/applecider.htmAnd last, a very simple recipe for Apple Fritters, from Allrecipes: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/90295/moms-apple-fritters-JT