Health
Habits
Food
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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 | May 27, 2011
For The Love of Food
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
This week I found a surprisingly in depth and thoughtful piece on genetically modified foods, an even more impressive food commitment by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and a few good signs that the politics of food labels are headed in the right direction—truth.
Also, for you geeks my thesis work is finally published. Here’s the deets.
Want to see all my favorite links? Be sure to follow me on on Digg. I also share links at Twitter (@summertomato) and the Summer Tomato Facebook fan page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.
Links of the week
- With no labeling, few realize they are eating genetically modified foods <<Excellent analysis of the politics of GMO. Of course labeling is a good idea. (Los Angeles Times)
- Mark Zuckerberg’s new challenge: Eating only what he kills (and yes, we do mean literally…) <<I’m really impressed with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg‘s commitment to own his food choices this year. As someone who has killed many animals (lab research), I think the experience is invaluable for appreciating our modern food chain. (CNN)
- Study Questions Treatment Used in Heart Disease <<Turns out drugs that raise HDL cholesterol aren’t as valuable as everyone hoped. But HDL is still an excellent predictor of heart disease. Seems like you’ll have to raise it the old fashioned way, with diet and exercise. (New York Times)
- Red Meat and Colon Cancer: Beyond the Headlines <<Insightful analysis of the latest news about red meat and colon cancer. Read before you eat. (Nutrition Over Easy)
- Groups Sue FDA Over Use of Certain Antibiotics in Animal Feed <<This is awesome, and I hope it forces some action from our government to fight the dangerous antibiotic resistant bacteria that are being bred in industrial farms. (Wall Street Journal)
- Is That “Organic” Egg A Good Egg? <<I always struggle to convey the degrees of “healthy” in different eggs. Now there’s a handy scorecard to help out. (Consumerist)
- POM Wonderful Health Claims for Juice Lack Scientific Support, U.S. Says <<And this is why I always take immediate action whenever a POM ad happens to slip onto this site pretending to be healthy. I’m not cool with that. (Bloomberg)
- Loading up on calcium won’t eliminate osteoporosis risk, study says <<It also raises risk of heart disease and prostate cancer. Please don’t go nuts with the supplements. (Los Angeles Times)
- Quinoa with Currants, Dill, and Zucchini Recipe <<I only recently discovered how well dill and grains go together. Very much looking forward to trying this recipe. (101 Cookbooks)
- Food Is Political Says Outspoken Chef Alice Waters <<Alice Waters sometimes biffs it for the food movement, but this time she nails it. Definitely worth a watch. (Wall Street Journal)
http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/VideoPlayerMain.swf
What inspired you this week?
I saw that cholesterol link and had a few thoughts.
Maybe not, but a whole lot of people suspect they know why. They just can’t get the funding to prove it.
What if cholesterol was not the causative agent but a marker for the causative agent? This is exactly where we get the analogy of fighting fires by disabling fire alarms.
How does that count as “working”? Oh right, the drug companies said that it raised H.D.L., which of course had to be good, right? Except that no one has ever proved that conjecture. Studies showing a correlation had always been observational studies.
That’s absolutely right, and it seems they’re going out of their way to prove it. It’s also why I don’t pay attention to studies that impact biomarkers in unnatural ways. Without endpoints that directly effect health, and not numbers, we still don’t understand the disease.
I love the mark zuckerberg article. It’s great when high profile people use their influence to get other peole thinking about what they eat. And not just “don’t eat meat”. I came across the cornucopia institute in looking for reviews about organic valley milk. Darya, do you think the cornucopia institute is reputable? The website was really helpful but you never know who you can trust.
Great question, and I actually haven’t been following them long enough to give you a good answer. Feel free to send me any thing specific you see from them and I’m happy to look it over.
I share similar concerns about the Cornucopia Institute. Their decision to rank farms that refused to participate in their project with the lowest rating is unfortunate. Also, from the main page of their site it’s clear they have a major agenda: “Seeking economic justice for the family-scale farming community.” Given that, it seems virtually impossible that they’d treat anything other than small family farms in a fair manner. I’m not making any judgments about right and wrong here, just observing that their published rankings deserve to be taken with a massive dose of skepticism.
If you have room for an outdoor garden, definitely do it! Nothing like growing your own veggies and fruits. You don’t have to put up with the chemicals and additives in your food. Homegrown is the best! Good video, thanks.
Regards,
Jared Blake
[link removed]
Just about half way through the Alice Waters interview. I love her, but wish she didn’t come off so ditsy. The heart of what she says is right, but it’s going to take a complete paradigm shift in the mentality of family life and our entire culture (as a whole). Attacking the problem at the school system level (or at childhood obesity) will never do it. The parents are the number one cause of childhood obesity. In Italy, my friend’s children are served a beautiful school lunch with a first and second course. But, it reflects the culture and slow food movement (invented there) as a whole.
Timely article on organic eggs. I bought my first and last dozen at trader joe’s just this week, (having missed my trip to the market).
Thanks for the recipe I’ve had a Mason Jar full of Quinoa in the pantry for years, but was never able to make anything good enough to bother cooking it. It was a hit at several parties this weekend and very easy to make.