For The Love of Food

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

Some truly fantastic articles this week including new data that farmers markets aren’t as expensive as you think, how to cut calories with a knife, and one of my favorite go-to recipes ever.

Want to see all my favorite links? Be sure to follow me on on Digg. I also share links at Twitter (@summertomato) and the Summer Tomato Facebook fan page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Links of the week

• New Study Compares Prices at Farmers’ Markets and Supermarkets. The Results Might Surprise You. <<Turns out when you actually do the comparison farmers markets are pretty affordable, particularly for organics. (Politics of the Plate)
• The “No Nitrites Added” Hoax <<Speaking of nutritionism, here it is at it’s worst. Just because it is natural, doesn’t make it nitrite free–if that even matters. Great investigative work by Michael Ruhlman.
• Do Cooking Shows Make You Fat? <<BS of the week. Though the article does a decent job of exploring the pros and cons, the idea that the popularization of food and cooking could be a bad thing makes me nauseated. We’d all be better served by embracing a stronger food culture. (Fox News)
• Rethinking Saturated Fat? <<I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Weil this week, and was struck by how thoughtfully he fields questions. Interesting to see his take on saturated fat evolve. (Dr. Weil)
• Is sodium a dietary red herring for the effects of processed foods? <<Totally agree with Yoni on this one. Interesting to see where the great salt debate finally lands. (Weighty Matters)
• How to Make Your Herbs Last Longer <<Just in time for spring! I have a lot of trouble keeping herbs fresh, so am excited to try these tricks. (Serious Eats)
• Cutting calories could be as easy as cutting up your food <<All these little behavioral tricks to cut calories can add up. Grab a knife. (Los Angeles Times)
• A Fresh Food Diet Rapidly Reduces Bisphenol-A Content Of Your Body <<Worried about BPA? Good news, it’s easy to cut your levels with a healthy diet. (TreeHugger)
• The Antidote to Fructose Fears <<Great perspective here for those of you who are now worried about fruit being dangerous because of the fructose it contains. (Nutrition Overeasy)
• Easiest Bean or Grain Salad on the Planet <<I love this because I seriously eat a variety of this several times a week, usually for lunch. Try using miso in place of the dijon mustard on occasion. (Mark Bittman)

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.

Why you probably don’t need to worry about your love of seafood causing prostate cancer, how health conscious people are tricked by clever packaging, and why I still won’t eat anything from China.

Want to see all my favorite links? Be sure to follow me on on Digg. I also share links at Twitter (@summertomato) and the Summer Tomato Facebook fan page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Links of the week

• Is Fish Oil Linked to Prostate Cancer? <<A few people emailed me in a panic this week about new data on fish consumption and prostate cancer. Here the lovely Denise Minger describes why there’s no need to worry just yet. (Mark’s Daily Apple)
• Is Coconut Water Worth It? <<I love Dr. Weil’s take on the new coconut water trend. Anyone who has tasted the real stuff knows the difference. (Dr. Weil’s Blog)
• Big Sugar Sues Big Corn Over “Corn Sugar” Ad Campaign For HFCS <<BS of the week. Two big producers of dangerous foods are battling in court to see who deserves to trick you the most. Don’t fall for it. (Consumerist)
• Dieters can get out of ‘healthy’ food trap by checking ingredients <<I mentioned recently in office hours that the only thing I look at on packaging is the ingredients. Looks like that’s a pretty good idea. (Los Angeles Times)
• Interval Training and Healthy Eating Is Solution to Obesity, Study Shows <<Encouraging news about lifestyle approaches to weight loss. (Science Daily)
• Eating Healthily for $3 a Day <<It’s a common misunderstanding that healthy eating is expensive. It certainly doesn’t have to be. (Mike Turitzin)
• Why China Struggles with Food Safety <<I don’t eat anything from China, and I won’t until they get these issues resolved. (Wall Street Journal)
• Coca-Cola not ready to drop bisphenol A in can linings <<Yep, it’s even in Diet Coke cans. (The Vancouver Sun)
• Fish Livers Contain Beneficial Fatty Acids, Study Suggests <<Hooray for organ meats! (Science Daily)
• Chicken Piccata <<This looks so good I think I’m going to have to make it this weekend. Yum! (Chez Us)

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.

This week around the web I found interesting tips on how to avoid cellphone radiation (it’s real), BPA and mad cow disease. Also smaller packages give you less for more, and introducing the bacon alarm clock. Yes, you read that right.

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 a complete list of my favorite stories check out my links on Digg. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Links of the week

• Cellphone Radiation May Alter Your Brain. Let’s Talk. <<I actually learned a lot from this article, like that the most radiation comes when your phone makes contact with the tower at the beginning of the call. (New York Times)
• What’s up with food dyes and hyperactivity? <<There are a bunch of articles about this, but I like Marion Nestle’s point that the only purpose of these dyes is to sell junk food. (Food Politics)
• Make Yourself a Quesadilla <<BS of the week. The New York Times just dropped a notch in credibility for me. I don’t care if you put broccoli in it (who does that anyway?), a quesadilla isn’t a “healthy snack”.
• Weight-Loss Supplement Has Teensy Potential Side Effect: You Might *Get Mad Cow Disease*! <<One more reason to avoid diet pills and the like. (Discover Blogs)
• Wake n’ Bacon is most delicious alarm clock ever <<Now that’s innovation! (DViCE)
• Food Inflation Kept Hidden in Tinier Bags <<It seems portions are getting smaller whether we like it or not. This makes me perversely happy. (New York Times)
• Poor Eating Habits May Lead to Anemia in Women <<This shouldn’t be too surprising, but make sure it doesn’t happen to you. (Business Week)
• 6 Steps to Avoiding BPA in Your Daily Life <<Helpful advice. I’ve found it pretty easy to avoid BPA, how about you? (Fast Company)
• Pretty Patterns That Camouflage a Poison <<Apparently it is not just food from China you should avoid. Time to chuck those decorative plates as well, unless you enjoy eating lead. (New York Times)
• Swiss Chard with Olives <<Chard is in season! Enjoy it! (Simply Recipes)

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.

Be sure to check out my guest post today over at Ecosalon! Top 10 Mistakes Made By Farmers Market Noobz

No good news this week for those of you who still love processed foods. Turns out sugar (not fat) causes heart disease, processed soy products causes cancer and the health insurance industries puts their extra money into fast food stocks. Luckily there is still hope for those of us interested in eating real food with actual taste.

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).

Links of the week

• Health Insurance Companies Invest Billions In Fast Food Stock <<Do you need any more proof that you can’t count on companies to look out for you and your family’s best interests? Stay out of both fast food joints and hospitals by skipping processed foods all together. (ABC News)
• Added sugars are bad for the heart, but does it matter which kind you eat? <<Gasp! Sugar is (really really) bad for you! Who knew? (Los Angeles Times)
• Soy Report and Scorecard <<BS of the week goes to the soy industry for pretending to make health food while actually feeding people carcinogens. Don’t be surprised, processed soy food is just as bad as processed corn food. (The Cornucopia Institute)
• Being fat is bad for your brain <<You know those reports that come out every few months that say being fat might actually be good for you? Well, those ignore a lot of things like, for instance, your brain. (New York Times)
• Steady Weight Gain Boosts Late-Life Breast Cancer Risk <<And also, for instance, your cancer risk. (Medline)
• General Mills to Pull BPA from Organic Tomato Cans <<Good news for those of you worried about BPA in your canned tomatoes. Looks like they figured out a way to get it out of there. (Greener Design)
• Fish oil fails to preserve mental sharpness in the elderly, study finds <<Fish oil supplements fail to show a benefit in cognitive function in this study. Previous studies have been mixed, and remember that supplements are different from real food. (Los Angeles Times)
• Risks for Youths Who Eat What They Watch <<Scary look at the effects of marketing to children by the food industry. (New York Times)
• Cooking Fava Beans in a Flash <<Love this food hack from Allison Arevalo over at Local Lemons. Fava beans are a notoriously labor intensive. Kick that hard work in the pants with this easy recipe.
• My Food Looks Funny <<My new favorite website. Pictures of hilarious (usually nerdy) food. Who needs Lolcats?

What did you find worth reading this week?

For The Love of Food

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

Informative bunch of articles this week on the web. I’m particularly excited by TreeHugger‘s list of canned products that don’t contain BPA and the FDA clamping down on health claims. There’s also an interesting glimpse of the possible future of healthstyle: genetic testing to find the best diet for your body.

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).

Links of the week

• What does saturated fat cause? Arguments. <<Great article in the Boston Globe by Summer Tomato reader Allison Boomer. This is her take on the controversial new study on saturated fat.
• 7 Companies You Can Trust to Use BPA-Free Cans <<I still get a ton of questions about BPA and cans. Turns out some companies have been doing it right all along. (TreeHugger)
• Snake Oil? Scientific evidence for popular health supplement <<Really cool visual display of data on the effectiveness of various health supplements for certain conditions. Thanks @geeksdreamgirl for the heads up! (Information Is Beautiful)
• Cheers to FDA: health claim warnings! <<Seems the FDA is finally tired of food companies printing lies on their packaging. Woohoo! (Food Politics)
• Top 10 Most Dangerous Foods <<BS of the week. Leafy greens? Are you kidding me? What a waste of bandwidth. CHOW also called out Time Magazine for publishing this ridiculous piece. How does this pass as journalism? (Note: Hell yes this gets a “nofollow”)
• Low-Fat Diets Beat Low-Carb Regimen Long Term <<This headline is a bit misleading. Actually neither diet really works in the long term unless you are only interested in losing 5-10 lbs. That’s because dieting doesn’t work. (HealthDay)
• DNA test ‘could predict most effective diet’ <<Given that one diet doesn’t work for most people but that certain diets work well for certain people, could this be the future of healthstyle? (BBC News)
• Whole Grains Take a Bite Out of Type 2 Diabetes Risk <<Believe it or not there actually is data that people who eat whole grains don’t get much diabetes. Gasp! (HealthDay)
• Potassium-Rich Foods Do a Heart Good <<That means vegetables. Yep, they’re good for you too. (HealthDay)
• Roasted Baby Carrots, with Chile, Mint and Orange Glaze <<Carrots are in season and this is one of the most unique recipes I’ve seen. Very tempted to try it out. (The Bitten Word)

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’m back! Sorry for being MIA the past few weeks. But you’ll be happy to hear my thesis committee meeting is over and I aced it. That means I will, finally, get my PhD in 2010. Woohoo!

Also thanks to all of you voted for me in the Wellsphere HealthBlogger Awards! I came in 8th! Not bad for just starting campaigning for votes last Friday. Thanks everyone!!!

Not all the links below are from this week since I had to include a few of the gems I’ve collected since Thanksgiving. I’ve also shared the latest info on BPA, which is getting worse.

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).

10 Best Links of the Week

• The ongoing Bisphenol A saga: more updates <<More bad news about BPA. My guess is this will be taken out of our food supply as soon as canned food companies start to see dips in their profits. So maybe we should stop buying cans for awhile… (Food Politics)
• Rudolph: The Other White Meat <<LOL!!! Hand it to my favorite grocery store to be the source of the most awesome holiday headline of 2009. Bravo Bi-Rite!! (NBC Bay Area)
• Too Much TV Reduces the Benefits of Physical Activity <<This is the best analysis I’ve seen of the much publicized study about TV time and exercise. Travis also wrote a fantastic guest post here on NEAT, a great alternative to structured exercise. (Obesity Panacea)
• Fat in diet won’t affect weight gain over time <<One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say something is low-fat as if that’s a good thing. Dietary fat is not bad for you and is essential to a healthy diet. (Medline)
• A cup (or more) of coffee or tea a day could keep Type 2 diabetes away <<I’m often asked about the impact of coffee on health. Most of the science says it is not bad for you and can in fact be beneficial for weight loss and metabolic health. (Booster Shots)
• Genie In A Bottle? Her Name Is Colatura <<I had never heard of colatura, but after this post I must find it. (MattBites)
• Statins For Everyone! <<As statin use goes up, Monica Reinagel at the NutritionData blog asks why more attention doesn’t go to the less expensive alternative: healthy lifestyle.
• Big Mac: Make Your Own, Have a Party <<I don’t think there’s ever a reason to eat at McDonald’s, so if nostalgia has you craving a BigMac try this one instead. (Local Lemons)
• Looking Younger Than Your Age May Mean Longer Life <<What’s really interesting about this study is that it was done on twins. Proof that aging is about more than just time. (Medline)
• Butternut Squash and Apple Casserole <<It was not easy finding a healthy, seasonal recipe to post this week since cookies seem to be the only thing on anyone’s menu. Luckily White On Rice Couple came through with this beauty.

Did you miss me?

Photo by TheBittenWord.com

Chances are that if you do much cooking, especially during the winter, you rely on canned tomatoes as the base for many dishes. Canned tomatoes are one of the staples of my kitchen and I’ve recommended them many times as a good alternative to fresh winter tomatoes (yuck).

But recent reports indicate that the lining of most cans (including tomatoes, beans and soda) contain a resin that leaches a toxic chemical, bisphenol-A (BPA), into food.

BPA has been shown to be a neuroendocrine disruptor and causes several biological problems, especially during development. Outrage over BPA back in April 2008 led to massive changes in consumer demands about the safety of food containers, especially baby bottles and the then-popular Nalgene bottles.

Since publication of the The 7 Foods Experts Won’t Eat article in Shine, I’ve been bombarded with questions asking if it is still okay to eat canned tomatoes.

Here are my thoughts on canned tomatoes & BPA:

1. Canned tomatoes aren’t great, but soda is worse. In the article, Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, says that tomatoes are a particular problem in cans lined with resin because they are acidic, which increases the rate at which BPA enters food. He goes on to argue that this amount exceeds recommended doses and can “impact people.”

Since Dr. vom Saal studies BPA and I do not, I concede his point. But I think it is also important to consider the context of this argument. It is true that tomatoes are acidic, but tomatoes also have many health benefits and can be a valuable part of your diet.

I don’t drink soda (which is substantially more acidic than tomatoes) or eat canned beans, so tomatoes are the only canned food I eat. I also don’t eat canned tomatoes every day. I therefore question if the tiny, sporadic amount of BPA that I am exposed to through canned tomatoes has a real effect on my disease risk, given my healthstyle.

My guess is the risk is very small. If you do drink a lot of soda, however, you may have more to worry about.

2. Glass jars are a fantastic alternative. Home canning was all the rage this summer, and I’m sure those of you who produced gallons of home stewed tomatoes are feeling pretty awesome right now with your BPA-free stockpiles.

There is no way on earth I would have time for a massive canning project of my own, but fortunately there are some wonderful independent companies willing to do it for me and sell them to me as I need.

I have yet to try tomatoes from a glass jar, but my guess is they lack the metallic aftertaste of those in cans. As an experiment, I’ll make my next preserved tomato purchase from one of my favorite companies, Happy Girl Kitchen, to see if I can tell the difference. They are more expensive than the cans I normally get, but it might be worth it for the better flavor. You can also find their products at Foodzie.

Keep up with my foodie experiments on Twitter @summertomato.

3. I’m not a kid, but if you are you should be more careful. One of the biggest problems with BPA is its effect on children. Kids are small, so the amount of BPA they are exposed to pound-for-pound is relatively higher than it is for the rest of us. Children also metabolize (eliminate) BPA more slowly, so the toxins stay in their bodies longer. Lastly, during development certain organs are more susceptible to the effects of BPA, which may result in serious problems later in life.

In other words, BPA is substantially more dangerous for children than it is for adults.

So while BPA may be a mild concern for grownups with a basically healthy lifestyle, it may be worth keeping it out of your diet for the sake of the younger members of your family.

Conclusion

BPA in canned tomatoes is a legitimate concern. However unless you are a regular consumer or are under the age of 6, the long-term impact of BPA on your life is probably mild.

If you would rather be safe than sorry, glass jars are a fantastic BPA-free alternative that will probably improve the taste of your winter tomato dishes.

As for the other items on the list, I mostly agree with their conclusions. However the selection of these particular 7 things (as opposed to dozens of other problematic foods) seems rather random and arbitrary. In my opinion you will get much more out of shopping at the farmers market than you will from fretting over blacklisted foods.

What do you think about canned tomatoes and BPA? Did I answer your questions?