Nobel Conference Blog

Author: heldke

  • Jeffrey Friedman-inspired menu in the MarketPlace today!

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    heldke

    Jeffrey Friedman is the man who discovered leptin, the a hormonal signal made by the body’s fat cells that regulates food intake and energy expenditure and has powerful effects on reproduction, metabolism, other endocrine systems, and even immune function. Friedman’s team isolated the gene that, when mutated, caused the rat on the left to, as…

  • Celebrate Cary Fowler Day in the MarketPlace!

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    heldke

    Today, you have an opportunity to taste something quite rare and special, if you venture over to the soup zone in the MarketPlace. In honor of Cary Fowler (who just won a big prize, for his efforts to preserve biodiversity, btw!), we’re serving Grass Pea Soup. Grass Peas, also called Cicerchia (Lathyrus sativus), are similar…

  • It’s Paul Thompson Day in the Marketplace!

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    heldke

    Check out the VariVeggie Zone today, to find the menu inspired by Nobel Conference presenter Paul Thompson. Professor Thompson blogged about one of his favorite summer meals, heirloom tomatoes with cottage cheese and fresh black pepper–and about his dream of opening a restaurant chain called “Fat Elvis.” The Dining Service has recreated that meal here,…

  • Nobel: A weeklong gastronomic preview to be offered in the MarketPlace

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    heldke

    The mission: Create seven menu items, each of which somehow evokes the life or work of one of our seven Nobel Speakers. Offer them to diners in the MarketPlace the week before the Nobel Conference. (Check out the day’s menu offering s at the Dining Service website The creative team: Dining Service director Steve Kjellgren…

  • Tabasco Sauce: now THAT’S evolved!

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    heldke

    Yet another upside of human evolution: we like to set our mouths on fire. In this Times article, we learn a bit about the psychology of pleasure and pain, as they concern the infernal chili. Linda Bartoshuk, our Wednesday afternoon speaker, explores the terrain of taste, pleasure and health.

  • Race to the genome, redux

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    heldke

    Remember when two rival organizations were racing to sequence the human genome? Well, it’s happening again; this time with something that is, to some, nearly as precious as their own life: chocolate. The USDA and Mars (the candy company, not the planet nor the god of war) have just this morning announced that they have…

  • Frances Moore Lappe at TED

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    heldke

    Frances Moore Lappe, whose talk will conclude the 2010 Nobel Conference, delivered this TED talk.

  • FDA: genetically modified salmon safe to eat

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    heldke

    On the Friday before Labor Day, the FDA released its findings that a salmon, genetically modifed to grow fast, is “as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon,” according to this story in the New York Times.The fish features a growth hormone from the Chinook salmon, which is kept “turned on” by a “switch” from…

  • Finding: Diet, not environment, the best indicator of “personal pollution levels”

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    heldke

    From an article in Chemical Engineering News: Research directed by Emma Undeman, a Swedish chemical engineering student, and Frank Wania, an environmental chemist at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, shows that diet  is a “key factor” in determining the load of pollutants that a given individual will carry. The region of the world in which…

  • What’s Biomimicry?

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    heldke

    The August 19 issue of  Now, a weekly news magazine from Toronto, features several articles on  “biomimicry,”  a concept developed by biologist Janine Benyus (Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired By Nature). One short article in the issue, “Plagued by the Plow,” by Wayne Roberts suggests that the agro-ecology long practiced in Latin America and Asia, constitutes a…