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.
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?
“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)”
true, but isn’t it a general problem of most nutrition related studies that brain/mental measurements are mostly ignored?
as for the article, it is interesting. quote:
“For example, one long-term study of more than 6,500 people in northern California found that those who were fat around the middle at age 40 were more likely to succumb to dementia in their 70s. ”
Could someone bother to explain to me how i can show the causality between being fat and 30 years later being more likely to succumb to dementia?
First, yes, they usually ignore the brain and it kills me because that is my field of interest.
Second, there are many speculations about why fat may influence cognition. The first is vascular, and this is likely correlation not causation. Someone who is over weight likely has a poor vascular system from not working out and a bad diet. The brain is particularly sensitive to poor circulation. Alternatively, I’ve seen studies suggesting hormones such as insulin and leptin directly impact the health of the brain. Third, the brain is also sensitive to inflammation, which is also common in overweight people.
Truth though, is that we don’t know yet.
Hi! I am so happy to have found you blog- loving this post and I cannot wait to go read more!
thank you
Something fun this summer: several of us are getting together for a tomato tasting. There are so many varieties and we really have no idea how they vary in flavor, so we will have them all identified. We’ll probably have a few tomato dishes – salsas, gazpacho, etc. Also, I’m thinking tasting notes, but that may not interest everybody. At any rate, it will be a fun, tasty time which we will recall when we choose our tomatoes next year !
That is so awesome, enjoy!!