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
by Darya Rose | Sep 24, 2010
For The Love of Food
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
Many thoughtful stories on the internets this week. I love JC’s piece on clean eating and food dogma. And if you’re curious about genetically modified salmon or other foods, I’ve included some very informative links. Enjoy 🙂
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 reading list join me on Digg. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.
Links of the week
- In Worries About Sweeteners, Think of All Sugars <<You call it corn syrup, I call it corn sugar, but the reality is it’s all the same unhealthy junk. This is a great explanation of the similarities and differences between sugar types. (New York Times)
- Clean Eating: Why I Still Call it a Scam <<Very thought provoking piece on food dogma. If you’re low-carb, paleo, Atkins, vegan or locavore, you should probably read this. (JCD Fitness)
- FDA to consider OK of genetically engineered salmon <<BS of the week. You know how it’s bad to have milk from cows that have been given growth hormones? Well these fish have extra growth hormones (from other animals) added directly to their DNA! You shouldn’t need a PhD in molecular biology to understand what you’re eating. (CNN)
- Genetically modified foods in supermarkets: how many? <<Great article explaining the extent of GM foods in supermarkets. (Food Politics)
- Making healthy food is easy. Making people eat it is not. <<The first part of this statement is true, but not in the way they mean. Fake, processed, “healthy” food tastes like cardboard. But in my experience getting people to eat real, seasonal foods is remarkably easy (because they are delicious). And they’re actually healthy. (Economist)
- Gluten-free has gone big time, but why so popular? <<An interesting examination of the gluten-free trend. (Associated Press)
- Last Call for Peaches <<Important safety tip, thanks Sean. (SFWeekly)
- Doctor’s Orders: Eat Well to Be Well <<Excellent article about educating doctors and medical students on the value of nutrition. (New York Times)
- Estimating calories may be more difficult than you think <<The health halo strikes again. (Los Angeles Times)
- Stuffed Indian Eggplant <<This recipe makes me want to eat my computer. Maybe I will. (Mark Bittman)
What inspired you this week?
Love the post about clean eating 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
And the eggplant recipe looks delicious. We have a similar one with meat filling. You can search for “karniyarik recipe” and see the pics .. yum 🙂 Most people fry the eggplants first, rendering the dish to a unhealthy fat sponge. But it can be prepared in a healthier way too.
I enjoyed the article about gluten-free diets. I have noticed the trend and wondered why it’s suddenly all over the place. 🙂
I think I’m too old (read=seen too many things to get excited) and lazy for this trend – if it’s too difficult to implement I won’t bother.
I haven’t read the articles, so forgive me if I’m jumping to any conclusions here.
But.. I see no reason to be opposed to genetically modified food simply on the basis that it is genetically modified. That seems to be a dogmatic stance in and of itself. And in so far that the modifications provide only beneficial aspects to food production and/or health, I see no reason to not be using as much genetically modified food products as is deemed safe with regards to maintaining proper large scale ecosystem function. I applaud the use of genetically modified fruits, vegetables and now animals, as long as it is done in a manner that respects the magnitude of the possible consequences.
Instead of seeing a general uproar at the use of genetically modified foods, I would prefer to see a concern in creating and implementing the procedures and policies that will guide us as researchers and as consumers to develop the food products that will contribute to our optimal health as individuals and as a society. There simply is not enough research being done on how to best develop and enhance the food industry.
Food science needs to advance, our understanding of biochemistry needs to advance, and I hope that these advances help us to develop more beneficial products that can provide healthy food to the growing population of our world in an economical manner. Food science and processed foods are not the enemy, the specific food industry practices and policies of governments that are harmful to health – as well as our lack of understanding regarding these issues – are the enemy.
I’m hardly opposed to organic and natural foods – and given the state of the science and industry – I feel that it is currently the safest way to incorporate an optimally nutritional diet if you have the time, energy, knowledge and money. However, it seems to me that the food situation is much more complex than that, and despite the many people who embrace the practice of eating healthy foods, there will be an even larger number that simply want to consume food in as simple and efficient manner as possible. It is our obligation as food scientists and nutritionists to understand this reality and to work on developing the products that will meet all of these demands in a healthy manner.
You bring up some good points William, but you should read the articles. I agree there may be potential use for GMOs in food. Disease resistance genes, for example, might be a good idea. But in the case of salmon there are a number of problems. First, we are talking about growth hormones, which are scary business. Hormones are associated with cancer and can disrupt the human endocrine system. Also, with GMOs there is a risk of messing up an ecosystem. According to a link in one of the articles the salmon are supposed to be infertile, but a very serious 5-10% of the eggs may indeed be fertile. If these GMOs were to somehow get into the environment it is impossible to predict the consequences, but they would not likely be good and may deplete our wild salmon stocks. It is a shame that most people don’t know what they’re talking about when they argue one way or another against this issue. But personally I think we are too eager to push this kind of stuff though the FDA without sufficient data to determine safety.