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.
Michael Pollan thinks food community is essential, organic eggs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and UCSF scientists help the military figure out what’s killing bees. I also found a cool mythbuster about the best way to clean your produce.
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
- The 36-Hour Dinner Party <<Who knew Michael Pollan and Google had so much in common? In line with my post this week about food community at Google, Michael Pollan’s new NYTimes Magazine piece explores the value of good food in fostering good will.
- Is Your Favorite Organic Egg Brand a Factory Farm in Disguise? <<I personally don’t get excited about “organic” eggs at the grocery store, for exactly this reason. I get mine directly from farms I trust. It’s a lot more expensive, so I buy less and appreciate them more. (Mother Jones)
- The Glutton’s Diet: Five Tips from a Food Writer <<BS of the week. Why am I not surprised this dude has trouble losing weight?
- Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery <<This isn’t directly food related, but it’s a cool story and is definitely critical for the future of agriculture in America. Oh, and the scientists are from UCSF 🙂 (New York Times)
- New York City says no to using Food Stamps for sodas <<Finally, a step in the right direction. But Marion Nestle thinks more can be done to promote healthy food choices. (Food Politics)
- Want to lose more fat weight? Get more sleep, study says <<Apparently your quality of sleep reflects the kind of weight you lose. (Los Angeles Times)
- The Claim: A Soap-and-Water Rinse Gets Produce Cleanest <<Nope, water is just as good–so long as you scrub. (New York Times)
- `Early introduction` to egg is best <<Preventing children from being exposed to common food allergens seems to make them more susceptible, not less. Expose them early. (The Sydney Morning Herald)
- Bento Art: Fantastically Geeky Lunches <<Geek alert. Who wouldn’t want to eat Darth Vadar for lunch? (SFWeekly)
- Skirt steak salad with blue cheese <<Someone accused me of being vegan this week (ha!), so here’s an amazing looking steak salad to chew on. (Smitten Kitchen)
What inspired you this week?
I am always astound when you say something like
” It’s a lot more expensive, so I buy less and appreciate them more. ”
because here it is the opposite way. by directly from a farmer and you get a better price. makes one wonder why that is (greedy SF farmers? ;))
There are many reasons, but the main one is that our government massively subsidizes corn and soy, making industrial feed and farming practices much, much cheaper than doing it the real way. So grocery store eggs are artificially cheap, and real egg farms are very difficult to scale in this economy. Thus real eggs are a specialty commodity.
hm, i might have something to do with the fact you buy it at a SF farmer’s market rather than at their farm. can’t imagine that the farmer’s market rent is low? besides, it might be harder to cheat taxes if you have a fixed booth on the farmers market. which is the good foundation for every farmer 😉
The guy in your BS story DID in fact lose weight. He lost 22 pounds and from what he wrote, it seemed pretty easy!
I agree this most likely isn’t a healthy way to do it but the dude wrote it because he DIDN’T have trouble losing weight his way. He also knew it wasn’t a healthy way and even wrote that in the article which I found humorous. Thanks for including it. 🙂
Firstly, that food critic’s dieting story was vile. Disliked the attitude big time, gotta admit.
Secondly, those bento boxes looked amazing. That’d be an interesting idea to start trying out for lunches. So many yummy veggies in there!
Really awesome list, Darya! I’m thinking steak salad for dinner now. 🙂
The BS of the week isn’t the guy and his diet, which — as Karen mentioned — seems to be working. It’s what his doctor told him: “But you’re still eating an unhealthy, high-fat, high-protein diet.”
Excuse me, doc? That’s exactly why he’s losing weight, and his cholesterol and blood pressure have both dropped. Isn’t a diet healthy or not based on whether it makes you healthier? That’s what his is doing. It’s working. What other criteria is supposed to be more important than that?
I thought the food writer displayed an admirable amount of self-awareness. He knows how much will power he has. (None, apparently.) He knows what changes he can stick to and does it. Good for him.
I worked in a grocery store when I was in high school, and was always stunned (and a little horrified) at the amount of pop, candy, chips, sugary cereal, and other junk that could be purchased with food stamps. I remember one family that would come in and get two carts – one they would completely fill with pop, the other their groceries. You could buy so much FOOD for the price of all that pop!
Now, I’m not sure I’d want to see pop and other not-so-great things completely banned – if it’s your kid’s birthday, and you want to get some pop and Doritos as a treat, you should be able to. But maybe it would be good to limit it; say, 10% max of your allotment can go toward pop and junk food.
I was always a fan of the WIC program, because it spelled out exactly what could be purchased – whole grain cereals, real dairy products, canned fish, nut butter, etc. All good things.