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.
I was so focused on finding new material to share with you that I nearly forgot that yesterday was the 1 year birthday of Summer Tomato! Thanks to all of you who have supported me and this blog over the past 12 months. I can’t tell you how much your kind and thoughtful emails and comments mean to me. I feel blessed everyday to have such an amazing community of people who love life, food and health as much as I do, and I look forward to much more to come. Cheers!
I also want to remind you that Summer Tomato readers can still get 20% off all online purchases at Samovar Tea Lounge until March 31. Samovar has amazing teas and tea accessories. I definitely recommend browsing their shop if you’re a tea fan.
Use the code: summertea at checkout to apply the discount.
There was some interesting news this week (and some BS called) on both saturated fat and high-fructose corn syrup, the foods Americans love to hate. The science is complicated, so be sure to read the stories carefully. Also don’t miss the video of Kevin Rose and Tim Ferriss causing trouble down at my beloved San Francisco Ferry Building.
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
- Is saturated fat back on the hook? <<Saturated fat is a complicated issue, and in my opinion we do not have all the answers yet. It certainly doesn’t seem as bad as we were led to believe, but it doesn’t seem exactly harmless either. I’ve read a few different analyses, but this one is my favorite. (Nutrition Data)
- 12 things you should never put in your mouth <<I can think of more than 12 things for sure, but this is a fun slideshow. (Grist)
- Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain <<BS of the week. This study made a lot of splash, but the evidence isn’t actually very strong. Sugar isn’t healthy, neither is HFCS. I don’t see how this study changes anything. (News at Princeton; Food Politics)
- McDonald’s Happy Meals Evidently Invincible <<Food that doesn’t rot? Are you kidding me? If bacteria and fungus won’t eat it, maybe the rest of us should reconsider as well. (TreeHugger)
- The Claim: Eat Six Small Meals a Day Instead of Three Big Ones <<I’ve never been a fan of the mini-meals, they take the ceremony (and some of the joy) out of sitting down with friends and loved ones to break bread. Turns out there isn’t much science behind the idea of spacing out eating anyway. (New York Times)
- A ‘dude’ explains why salad is ‘man food’ <<Salads may get a bad wrap from some of the guys but let’s be honest, being in great shape is pretty manly. All girls know that the hottest guys eat salads. (CNN)
- Dear Blogger: Do You Hate Your Customer? <<I was touched by this post about fitness bloggers over at Problogger. The author talks about how fitness blogs are often too condescending and cruel to their readers. I try to build a community here around ending deprivation and raising quality of life; I think food should be about happiness and fulfillment. But I’d love to know your thoughts on the subject and how you feel about the vibe here at Summer Tomato. Birthdays are a good time to reflect 🙂
- Last Supper helpings have grown <<Turns out artists have been trying to feed Jesus and his disciples more and more food for the past 1,000 years. Share the love I guess. WTF? (Chicago Tribune)
- Spinach and Chickpeas <<I tried a version of this recipe (minus the bread), and it was delicious. This is a great place to use some of your leftover smoked paprika! (Smitten Kitchen)
- The Random Show – Episode 9/10 <<Summer Tomato got some love this week from Kevin Rose (Digg) and Tim Ferriss (Four Hour Work Week) in their 9th or 10th (who’s counting?) episode of The Random Show. Though most of the video is about tech, books and travel, this time there was talk of food as well (waaay at the end ~23:00). The video was shot at my favorite place on earth, the San Francisco Ferry Building, and our Farmers Market Updates got a shout out. Thanks guys 🙂
What made your meals happy this week?
You and I must read the same sources, because I recognized about half of these. 🙂
I agree with your point that sugar and HFCS are both bad. But I still think it’s worth knowing if one is worse than the other. When I compare a Coke made with HFCS to one made with sugar, I prefer the taste of the sugar version. But regardless of which I prefer, if they taste different, they are different. Which means one might be better/worse than the other.
But even more importantly, I agree with what you say about the Problogger article. People who get too militant about whatever their pet issue is really turn off people who might otherwise be willing to listen. If I care enough to ask a question, don’t answer it in a way that I don’t want to talk to you any more.
I made that spinach and chickpea dish (with the bread, but it was GOOD bread) and served it with an egg on top — perfect and filling dinner.
Egg is brilliant. Brilliant. 🙂
Hi Darya,
Congratulations on 1 year of your brilliant blog. You have done a tremendous job, educating and informing people about the facts and myths about food and health. I know I can trust the information on your blog because it is supported with scientific facts and you are doing all this out of the goodness of your heart. Rather than giving vague ‘tips’ and then selling an e-magazine or something to get the full info.
Keep up the great work and all the best for the future.
Thanks Fatima, I appreciate your support and contributions to this blog xoxoxo
Happy Birthday Summer Tomato! 😀 I love this blog!
There’s a fellow at our game club who INSISTS that he is making a healthier choice by drinking Pepsi Throwback (with sugar) instead of standard HFCS Pepsi. One of the guys at our table loves the Mountain Dew Throwback, but just because he prefers the taste; the Pepsi Throwback guy is on a bit of high horse and makes a scene about it almost every week that he’s “doing right by his body”. I finally blurted out last week, “A can of Throwback has 14 teaspoons of sugar – spin it how you want, but that isn’t healthy!” But he either didn’t hear me or chose to ignore me. 😉 I’m neither anti-sugar (I just baked a cake!) nor anti-corn syrup (I like the occasional can of 7-UP myself!) but I think limiting sugar consumption as a whole is more important than fussing over sugar vs. HFCS. JMHO, please nobody jump on me. 😉
If you want to scare yourself away from Mountain Dew, read up on brominated vegetable oil: “A man who consumed two to four liters of a cola containing BVO on a daily basis experienced memory loss, tremors, fatigue, loss of muscle coordination, headache, ptosis of the right eyelid as well as elevated serum chloride.” Yumm, gimme some of that goodness.
LOL! It has always creeped me out that there was oil of any sort in Mountain Dew. I haven’t drank it in nearly 9 years. I have to limit my caffeine intake, so on the rare occasion I have a pop (I maybe have one a month) it’s 7-UP, Sprite, caffeine-free root beer or cream soda, etc. Never was a big pop drinker, period – even when I wasn’t thinking as much about my health, I still felt that if I was going to consume that many additional calories, I wanted FOOD, not a beverage!
I live in a co-op in Berkeley, and always get a kick out of the note on the community board to buy more sucanut while a full jar of white sugar sits on the shelf. As far as I’m concerned, sugar is sugar, and the less you eat, the better. I’d love to hear thoughts from others on this.
I think the distinction between HFCS and sugar is very important. From what I understand, your body can regulate sugar intake by breaking down sucrose into glucose and fructose at variable rates. HFCS is already broken down into fructose and glucose, and therefore spikes blood sugar much more drastically.
I agree the difference between them is important physiologically, however neither is good for you. Sucrose spikes blood sugar. Fructose, however, does not impact blood sugar. It goes straight to the liver, is processed there similar to how alcohol is metabolized, and converted directly to fat. That is why foods with fructose (e.g. agave nectar, HFCS) have a lower glyecemic index, but are not healthier.
If you are interested in learning more about how fructose is metabolized, check out this video lecture by UCSF professor Dr. Lustig: http://summertomato.com/for-the-love-of-food-30/
Darya,
Thanks for linking to that video lecture… very informative. I no longer believe that sugar is sugar, and I’ll be on the watch for fructose. In my quest for the least unhealthy sugar, it appears that maple syrup and corn syrup have the lowest levels of fructose. Are there others? What kind of sugar do you use Darya? Thanks for spreading this important info!
Hi Brad,
Though I do believe sugars are different, I just think they are bad in different ways. Personally I do not use sugar at all, but do enjoy dessert on occasion. At those times I do not worry about the sugar–I eat very healthy 95% of the time–and just enjoy myself. I’ll be writing more about this soon.
Whoa! Nice shout out from Kevin and Tim!
You go girl. 🙂