For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

A lot of interesting new science this week. BPA makes male mice less attractive, diet soda may cause weight gain and diabetes, and the “good” cholesterol is more complicated that we suspected. All this and more in my top 10 food and health picks for this week.

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Links of the week

• BPA-Exposed Male Deer Mice Are Demasculinized and Undesirable to Females, New Study Finds <<Keep an eye out for those BPA-containing cans (including soda/beer), they may decrease your manliness (and I don’t want to find out what they do to women). (ScienceDaily)
• Really? The Claim: Exercising on an Empty Stomach Burns More Fat <<Some went ahead and looked at the data and decided no, no it doesn’t. (New York Times)
• Study Comparing Local To Meat-Free Diet Is Dated and Debunked <<I’m proud of TreeHugger for stepping up and calling BS of the week on this study.
• Diet soda associated with weight gain and symptoms of pre-diabetes <<I found this so interesting I wrote about it for my story today at KQED Quest, which will be up around 10am PST. (ScienceDaily)
• ‘Good’ Cholesterol Function as Important as Its Levels <<Drugs that raise HDL cholesterol have been ineffective so far at reducing heart disease, even though high HDL is one of the best markers of heart health available. New studies about HDL function may explain why. (ScienceDaily)
• USDA’s new food safety campaign: it’s all about YOU <<You would hope that a food safety campaign would be about producing safer food. Unfortunately this one is about proper storage and overcooking your meat. (Food Politics)
• TV Food Advertising Increases Children’s Preference for Unhealthy Foods, Study Finds <<For the gazillionth time, kids are easily influenced by advertising and it makes it very difficult to parents to resist. Sigh… (ScienceDaily)
• Soluble Fiber Strikes a Blow to Belly Fat <<It is not particularly surprising that eating more vegetables and beans is good for you, but it’s nice to have some quantitative numbers to attach to it. (ScienceDaily)
• INFOGRAPHIC: Lots Of Depressing Facts About How Fat America Is <<Really worth a gander. (Business Insider)
• Cioppino: The Other San Francisco Treat <<I absolutely love cioppino, and not just because it has my name in it. It’s seriously one of the most delicious seafood dishes I’ve ever had. Why have I never tried to make it myself??? (Food Thinkers)

What inspired you this week?

For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

I had a hard time narrowing down articles this week with the New York Times Magazine Food Issue so full of deliciousness. Meat and food safety seem to be on everyone’s mind, and that’s a good thing. Definitely read up if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Also, Michael Pollan’s rules to eat by is worth flipping through, and a new chapter of Good Calories, Bad Calories has been unveiled.

Summer Tomato reader and famous dead head, David Gans, sent me his CD this week titled The Ones That Look The Weirdest Taste The Best. Vegetables of course! Track 6 is about a trip to the farmers market near his home. You can also check out his photos of odd looking vegetables on Flickr. I love this CD and David kind of reminds me of my rockstar hippie dad, which  makes me smile. Thanks David!

I read many more wonderful articles than I post here each week. If you’d like to see more or just don’t want to wait until Friday, be sure to follow me on Twitter (@summertomato) or the Summer Tomato Facebook fan page. For complete reading lists join me on the social bookmarking sites StumbleUpon and Delicious. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you there. (Note: If you want a follow back on Twitter introduce yourself with an @ message).

For The Love of Food

• Rules To Eat By <<Michael Pollan‘s latest in the New York Times. This one is short and fun, and he touches on a lot of the things he discussed in his lecture last week in Berkeley.
• E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection <<If you haven’t read this expose about industrial meat yet, please do. It could save your life. (New York Times Magazine)
• Gout: The Missing Chapter from Good Calories, Bad Calories <<Somehow Tim Ferriss got Gary Taubes to let him publish an additional (and incomplete) chapter from his landmark book, Good Calories, Bad Calories. There is also an awesome video where Dr. Oz gets pwned by Dr. Weil, which is just as hilarious as it sounds. (While you’re at it you should also read Tim’s The Four Hour Work Week, because life is too short for email.)
• Stevia-sweetened strawberries: Does that idea sound scrumptuous? <<B.S. of the week Someone apparently thinks strawberries have too many calories so figured out a way to extract the sugar and replace it with stevia. Seriously. (Los Angeles Times)
• Lettuce and eggs top risky food list <<You’ve probably seen this and wondered why these jerks hate vegetables. My guess is they don’t. Lists like this are only evidence of the dangers of industrial foods. Hate the game, not the produce. (CNN)
• You will be eating again soon <<My buddy Rob got a fortune cookie that prophesied his inevitable desire to eat more Chinese food. That’s right, an ad in his fortune cookie. Is nothing sacred? (Making More of Today)
• Delicata Squash Salad with Kale & Cannellini Beans <<I  made a similar recipe this week, but this one looks way better. Maybe I’ll get it right next time. (shutterbean)
• 5 Ways to Get Out of a Food Rut <<Great tips for mixing up your meals. (Foodista)
• Should we irradiate meat? <<I can tell you from experience in the lab that irradiation does not do a perfect job killing bacteria (like E. coli). And the thing about bacteria is they multiply really fast. See the problem? Buy clean food and you don’t have to worry about this stuff. (Food Politics)
• Chef Rocco DiSpirito pitches frozen food to a tough room at BlogHer food conference <<I’m quoted in this article, but my name isn’t mentioned. Can you guess which one is me? (Los Angeles Times)

What are you reading?