Health
Habits
Food
Weight 
Better Than Butternut: Roasted Delicata Squash Recipe
10 Simple Ways To Eat Less Without Noticing
Juicing: Stupid and Pretentious or Nourishing and Enlightening?
10 Tasty Carbs That Won’t Make You Fat
How To Start Working Out When You Don’t Like To Exercise
Focus More on Your Brain and Less on Your Diet if You’re Serious About Losing Weight
Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control
10 Reasons You Aren’t Losing Weight When You Think You’re Doing Everything Right
How To Burn More Calories Without Breaking A Sweat
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Foodists
For The Love of Food
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?
I’m really conflicted on the FDA story. On the one hand, of course it’s good to stop the bogus claims. And the Juicy Juice one you mention is one of the best. If it’s not actually 100% juice they shouldn’t be allowed to say so.
But the first five items are all cases where saturated fat levels are not disclosed. Saturated fat is not unhealthy. To require it be “disclosed” is perpetuating fear of something that is actually a vital part of a healthy diet. (And I’ll ignore any vegan who disagrees with that one. I know their arguments. I disagree.)
This is the same FDA that won’t allow companies to say that their milk comes from cows not treaded with bovine growth hormone, even though it’s not. Because making that claim would imply that there’s something wrong with BGH.
Then there’s the huge list — about half of what’s on that chart — where you effectively can’t claim anything for baby food, “because appropriate dietary levels have not been established for children in this age range”. Well then how about establishing some guidelines? I may not agree with all your guidelines (see saturated fat claims) but apparently no one is able to tell me what’s in their product until after you decide what “should” be in it.
So the two problems are 1) The FDA has some really wrong-headed guidelines, based more on corporate preferences than science, and 2) They haven’t been enforcing those guidelines anyway. I’m worried about the precedent of increasing enforcement before getting the guidelines fixed.
I would much prefer guidelines that increase disclosure of what’s in products. I would even like to be able to choose to buy products that don’t meet FDA recommendations. Things like raw milk.
Wow, excellent point Drew. I agree, though I am just happy to see them taking a stance at all in a direction indicating they care about the consumers.
But I agree with you completely and this is one of the main reasons I avoid foods with labels and packages at all!
“Physically fit students do better academically too: study”
Don’t you find their claims to be bogus? They found young people who are fit and do well in school. How did they find a correlation between the two measurements? Worse, now they probably want another grant to find the ‘why’ although they haven’t even proven the correlation. wicked.
oh, just realized the article isn’t in your top10 but came from your delicious :/
*Thanks for the links!
*Last weekend, I made the chick peas w/spinach. Looks like carrots this Sunday.
@Drew
*I am not sure that labels do anything, but serve as a strange form of advertising (which kind of fits with your two points). I explore this idea a little more in this post. http://goo.gl/F1YO
I think you took the Time Magazine story (10 Most Dangerous Foods) out of context. The caption to the story reads, “The American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement on Feb. 22, recommending the labeling and possible redesign of hot dogs to prevent choking deaths among children. Here’s a look at 10 risky foods.” It appears this is a list of foods that could cause choking or allergic reactions in young children, and I definitely can see how leafy greens, if cooked but not chopped appropriately, could be a choking hazard for a small child.