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.
This week I learned that cheese is associated with lower cancer rates, and it wasn’t even an April Fools’ joke. I’m also cautiously optimistic about Kroger’s new food scoring system that actually calls out junk food for what it is. Oh oh oh! And I can’t wait to try the canned unicorn meat I’ve heard so much about.
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
- End the War on Fat <<A fabulous review of America’s upside down nutrition advice of the past several decades, especially as it pertains to fat and heart disease. Hats off to Slate for this one.
- Higher vitamin K intake tied to lower cancer risks <<Read this article carefully and you’ll see they found a correlation between cheese consumption and less cancer. Correlation is not causation, but at least the trend wasn’t in the other direction! (Reuters)
- Giant Greenhouses Mean Flavorful Tomatoes All Year <<BS of the week. This quote says it all: “They don’t make a tomato that my grandmother would have liked. They make a tomato that my son would like or my daughter would like.” Why does our society tolerate the watering down of our quality of life? And at exorbitant prices, no less. (New York Times)
- How to Dye Easter Eggs Naturally, Without a Store-Bought Kit <<Good info on how to use common foods to dye Easter eggs, if you’re into that sorta thing. (Serious Eats)
- Kroger’s New Food Scoring System Spells Trouble for Food Manufacturers <<This makes me incredibly happy. Let’s hope that honesty isn’t a liability in the food industry (but don’t hold your breath). (BNET)
- How Much Exercise Will Prevent Weight Gain? <<The amount of exercise needed for weight loss will be different for everyone, but it’s nice to see a little data for once. (New York Times)
- Springing Back into Food-Forward Farmers’ Markets <<Farmers markets across the country are starting to open back up! EcoSalon lists some of the country’s best.
- Savory Unicorn & Heirloom Tomato Bruchetta Recipe <<The unicorn for this recipe are fattened on candy corn, that’s how you know it’s good. (ThinkGeek)
- Vinegar and Weight Loss: Didn’t Work For Me <<Why does this not surprise me? Steve Parker MD, one of my favorite self-experimenters, debunks another diet myth. (Diabetic Mediterranean Diet Blog)
- Asparagus Pesto <<This week’s real recipe is seasonal and looks delicious, from one of my favorite local bloggers. (Local Lemons)
What’s your good news?
While I agree the quote you list from Backyard Farms is a bit disturbing, up here in New England (New Hampshire to be specific), their cocktail tomatoes are a breath of fresh air in the off season. Local tomatoes of any worth usually don’t show until August up here. The tomatoes from Backyard Farms are far superior to run of the mill grocery store tomatoes.
Well that’s great to know, thanks!
I’m not sure what I think about the Nuval nutrition ratings that Krogers is using. While conceptually they’re a great idea and a simple 1-100 scoring and really help with personal decisions, I see no clear information on their website on the origin of the scores. For example, look at milk:
http://www.nuval.com/scores/list/?g=Milk
2% milk gets a 55, 1% milk gets an 81, and heavily processed light soy milk gets a 82. Does that extra 1% of fat really make milk that much more unhealthy?
I’ll confess this is the first I’ve read about the Nuval scores so the information I want might be out there. Still, it would take minimal effort to put their scoring equation clearly on their website and, for each product list how that information contributes to the score. If the number is heavily influenced by fat & calories per manufacturer listed serving, I’m not sure this really adds much value.
Great points. I’ll continue to post more info as it becomes available.
Hah ! Love the food scoring system Kroger’s is introducing. I hope that some supermarkets over here will pick up this idea as well.
Thanks so much for including my pesto! It was pretty delicious. I’m in NY now visiting family, and there is definitely no local asparagus here…