Latest news with #Mediterraneans
Belfast Telegraph
17-05-2025
- Belfast Telegraph
Travel Review: Genoa, the capital of pesto
'It is the taste of Liguria,' says the Pesto World champion, engineer Mattia Bassi (from Genoa) who won the biennial tournament held in the Salona del Maggior Consiglio Palazzo Ducale. The first was staged in 2006, the next will be in March 2026. The Romans made a 'moretum' paste. The Mediterraneans of the Middle Ages made a garlic and walnut mash ('agliata'). Sicilian red pesto, considered sacrilege by Ligurians, is made with tomatoes and almonds. No one ever uses blenders. To lift the prestigious olive wood and gold trophy, Mattia used his grandmother Rosetta's 100-year-old pestle and mortar and the seven prescribed ingredients: Protected Designation of Origin Genovese basil leaves, aged Parmigiano Reggiano Di Montagna, DOP Fiore Sardo cheese (Pecorino Sardo), 1-Vessalico ( Imperial) garlic cloves, Trapani sea salt and PDO extra-virgin olive oil from the Italian riviera. The two-tiered 'vertical' city's chief landmarks are the Palazzi dei Rolli/The Palaces of the Scrolls. These hosted the most notable visitors on behalf of the government. Later, the palaces were used by those on the Grand Tour. Today, Palazzi dei Rolli is the collective name for the most prestigious palaces of the historical centre, especially along the so-called Strade Nuove, built by the Genoese aristocracy at the peak of Genoa's economic power in the 16th and 17th century — Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, formerly Strada Nuova or Via Aurea, Via Cairoli, formerly Strada Nuovissima, and via Balbi, now the home of the University of Genoa. The main street Via xx Settembre is named after the day in 1870 when Rome was re-captured from papal 'authorities'. Other landmarks include Albertis castle, the 1353, 172 step Lanterna lighthouse, San Lorenzo cathedral with its stone lions, sculpted puppy and unexploded World War II 'English' grenade, the monumental fountain of Piazza de Ferrari, the new Museum of Italian Immigration and the pastel-coloured houses of ancient seaside district and mariners' village of Boccadasse ('the mouth of the donkey'). The area around Genoa Riviera comprises 21 miles of coastline with villages like Bogliasco, Portofino, Lerici and the Cinque Terre with its recently re-opened Via Dell'Amore (Path of Love), a paved walk between Riomaggiore and Manarola, one of four sections of the Azzuro Blue Path. Although connected by regular trains, the 'Five Lands' fishing villages are best visited by boat. They get very, very busy in summer. The coastal service from Levanto takes you down to La Spezia, Portovenere, the Gulf of Poets, where Shelley drowned, and the UNESCO islands of Palmeria, Tino and Tinetto. You can base yourself in Levanto's Parco Argentino Hotel or Genoa's 1897 Belle Epoque Grand Savoie Hotel. Checking into one of the oldest hotels in Italy, you are given an ice cream, and aperitivos on the seventh-floor terraces can be taken in a rooftop jacuzzi. You'll dine in the panoramic Saligas restaurant headed by talented young chef, Massimiliano Forno whose specialities include octopus salad with potatoes — which his mother always makes for him on his birthday — and cold anchovy bagnum with tomato cream. Also on the menu is basil pate with two tomato ragout, wild herb risotto with red mullet and salted lemon, green tagliatelle with rabbit ragout, three milk coconut cupcake, and lime powder and watermelon tataki dessert, with the local Basanotto basil liqueur, which was voted Best Liquor in The World 2024. The Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta on the hill of Carignano is visible from almost every part of the city. More modern sights are the 'Biscione' and 'Le Lavatrici' (the washing machines) housing complexes, the Aquarium and Museum of the Sea, architect Renzo Piano's Sphere ('The Bubble' or 'The Ball') and the pencil-shaped Matitone skyscraper. Genoa has many parts, each with its own soul. Columbus's House, where he reputedly lived as a child, is an 18th-century reconstruction of the original which was destroyed by the French naval bombing of 1684. In the Porto Antico, the Palazzo di San Georgio was once the headquarters of the Bank of Saint George, which was founded in 1407 and closed in 1805. Having been captured leading a Venetian ship against the Genova city state in the Battle of Curzola, Marco Polo was imprisoned in the palace. Between 1298 and his release in 1299 he wrote his memoirs, The Travels of Marco Polo, with romance writer Rusticello da Pisa. It is now the home of the Port System Authority. A mosaic of Marco Polo is displayed in the Palazzo Doria-Tursie on Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, which since 1848 has been the city's City Hall. Henry James described Genoa as 'the most winding and incoherent of cities.' It stretches for over 30km, from the Voltri neighbourhood in the west to the fishing village of Nervi in the east, famous for its parks. Camogli and San Fruttuoso Abbey with its seabed Christ of the Abyss are a ferry away. Lifts, two funiculars and a cogwheel train connect ground-area neighbourhoods with upper areas — the most famous being the Spianatadi Castelletto viewpoint. But inside and outside the Barbarossa walls, down the alleyways (the most atmospheric are Vias San Luca, del Campo and Al Ponte Reale) you can't get away from pesto and bunch after bunch of freshly picked basil leaves. A typical menu in Genoa — as served at Il Genovese which is owned by the organisers of the World Pesto Championship — would be frisceü made with wheat flour and fizzy water, fried tripe, gattafin fried ravioli from Levanto, ravioli with tuccu meat sauce and pansotti (stuffed pasta) with walnut sauce, as well as stockfish, meat balls and rabbit. Says Giovanni Astolfini, the executive chef of the new five-star Capitolo Riviera Hotel in Nervi: 'To make pesto you must use olive oil from one olive variety, the highly valued Taggiasca. And basil which has been granted Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) by the EU. The best basil grows facing the sea.' Factbox
Vox
11-05-2025
- Health
- Vox
Americans are dying younger. 5 science-based tips could reverse the trend.
is an editorial director at Vox overseeing the climate, tech, and world teams, and is the editor of Vox's Future Perfect section. He worked at Time magazine for 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, a climate writer, and an international editor, and he wrote a book on existential risk. After more than a century of steady, upward climb, US life expectancy hit 78.9 years in 2015. Since then, it's been mostly downhill. US life expectancy slid to 76.1 years in 2021 at the pandemic's nadir before inching back up to 78.4 years in 2023 — still well below the 2014 peak and lagging most peer nations. So where's the good news? Science is figuring out ways to pump those numbers up again and pointing the way toward living more years — and more healthy years. And this doesn't require sci-fi, Silicon Valley anti-aging technology like blood swapping, or cellular reprogramming. According to Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and the author of the new book Super Agers, there are evidence-based steps you can take right now to help ensure you live a longer, healthier life. Related The real science behind the billionaire pursuit of immortality 'We're at a turning point,' Topol told me in an interview this week. 'Thanks to advances in the science of aging, we can actually show everything is going in the right direction. We're making headway.' Know — and lower — your biological age It used to be that if you wanted to know how old you are, all you needed was a calendar. But your body's aging isn't as simple as turning the pages on a calendar: Depending on who you are and how you live, different parts of your body can age more quickly or slowly than. And it turns out this other kind of aging, biological aging, matters more for your health than the number of candles on your birthday cake. In Super Agers, Topol points to a 'metric revolution' in which blood-based proteomic clocks and DNA-methylation scores can pinpoint which organ system is aging the fastest, and by how many years. A 2024 Nature Medicine study used machine learning to examine more than 200 plasma proteins in thousands of people and showed that the resulting biological age forecasted 18 major diseases and all-cause mortality better than any single risk factor, like blood pressure or body mass. 'When you particularize risk to a person, the chance of them taking actions to mitigate it is much, much higher,' Topol said. It's one thing to know generally that as you get older, you need to be aware of the risks of heart disease or neurodegenerative diseases. It's another thing to be told that your brain age is, say, five years ahead of your calendar age — which means you need to intervene now to protect yourself. What you can do: Companies are already offering biological age tests that you can order for your own use. Down the line, scientists at the University of Washington are developing a multi-organ biological clock that will be developed into a digital app. Eat like the Mediterraneans do There's no field where the prevailing advice seems more conflicting and confusing than in the science of nutrition. Atkins, South Beach, Paleo, Zone — you'd be forgiven for throwing up your hands and just ordering takeout from DoorDash. But we do know what you eat is key to how well and how long you'll live, and the current American diet, heavy on ultra-processed foods and red meat, isn't cutting it. 'Our diet is basically inviting disease instead of preventing it., Topol said. A 30-year study looked at 105,000 adults and found that of the one in 10 study subjects who reached age 70 without cancer, cardiac disease, or serious cognitive decline, virtually all scored high on an eating index that closely tracks Mediterranean-style diets. That means plenty of whole grains, vegetables, olive oil, and omega-rich seafood. You should also try to cut out sugars and ultraprocessed foods as much as possible, and go very easy on red meat, which Topol notes can trigger aging-accelerating inflammation. What you can do: Start by something as simple as swapping out butter for olive oil and soda for sparkling water. Sleep more — and sleep deeper At this point, I think everyone knows just how important it is to get a good night's sleep. Poor sleep is associated with everything from heart disease to diabetes to dementia to obesity to cancer, not to mention a significantly increased risk of watching way too many Netflix shows. But as Topol told me, it's not just how much sleep you're getting, but how you're sleeping. 'The key thing is deep sleep,' he said. 'If you don't get it, you're much more subject to brain aging and the three major diseases of aging.' Research has shown that people who get fewer hours of deep sleep per night have a greater risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases like dementia, while a larger amount of deep sleep can act as a protection against Alzheimer's-related memory loss. What you can do: During the writing of Super Agers, Topol increased his own deep sleep from around 15 minutes per night to over an hour by adhering to a consistent sleep schedule and tracking his progress with wearables. And steer clear of drugs and supplements, which are unlikely to help you get the deep, restorative slumber you need. Get strong As a cardiologist, Topol was long focused on aerobic exercise, which helps build up the cardiovascular system. But he now realizes that's not enough. 'Aerobic was the thing,' he told me. 'Now we know that strength and core training are equally important.' One meta-analysis from 2022 found that just an hour of resistance training per week lowered all-cause mortality by as much as 25 percent. And beyond trying to reduce the chance of death, strength training when you're younger helps build up muscle mass, slowing down the inevitable decline of muscle that occurs as you age. What you can do: You don't have to start pumping iron like 1970s Arnold Schwarzenegger to get the anti-aging benefits of strength training. Bodyweight exercises will go a long way, as will resistance training that involves exercise bands. And as much as you may hate them, don't neglect those squats! Get connected It may seem inevitable that as you age, your social circle and connections shrink. But it doesn't have to be that way — and there are enormous longevity benefits to keeping connected to the world and the people around you. 'The strong data for social isolation shows it will compromise healthy aging,' Topol said. A 2023 meta-analysis linked social isolation to a 32 percent higher risk of all-cause mortality, while self-reported loneliness specifically tacked on another 14 percent. Neuro-imaging studies have even shown a biological effect from being alone, demonstrating spikes in inflammatory cytokines and the shrinkage of hippocampal volume in the brain. What you can do: Get off your couch and out of your house, for one thing! Schedule regular face time with a friend, and ideally do it outside: Frequent time in nature has been associated with reduced epigenetic aging. There's plenty more in Super Agers, including Topol's optimism around GLP-1 inhibitors like Ozempic, which have been showing the ability to reduce the risk of diseases of aging like dementia. But you don't need cutting-edge medicines to live a longer, healthier life. You just need to change how you live your life. A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
