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 23, 2011
For The Love of Food
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
In this week’s Top 10 I found some cool new data supporting my claim that even non-brightly colored, white fleshed fruits and vegetables have superfood potential, some sad news about the anti-aging chemical in red wine resveratrol, and a whopping two BS stories of the week.
Want to see all my favorite links? Be sure to follow me on on Digg. I also share links on 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
- An Apple a Day Really May Keep the Doctor Away <<Remember when I said that our idea of brightly colored superfoods was misguided because all natural foods are super in their own way? Here’s some data suggesting that the lowly white fleshed foods have their own super powers. (Medline)
- Thirty Years After the Original, a New Study of Organic Agriculture <<The latest research suggests organic agriculture can match the output of conventional growing, and keeps the soil in better shape as well. (GOOD)
- Kids may not be drinking enough low-fat milk, the CDC reports <<BS of the week #1. First of all, the article says kids are drinking too much full-fat milk, not lacking milk in general. Second, the claim that low-fat dairy (they only count 1% as low fat) is better than higher fat dairy is not at all supported by the scientific literature. Third, they are basing all of this on the fairly lame new USDA MyPlate. Safe to say, you can ignore it. (Los Angeles Times)
- Bachmann says food industry overregulated <<BS of the week #2. I really don’t enjoy calling BS more than once. And I really really don’t enjoy politics and do my best to avoid them, especially here on Summer Tomato. But Michelle Bachmann stepped on my turf with these ridiculously pro-industry, anti-voter claims that the food industry, which has been responsible for dozens of fatal food poisoning outbreaks (lots of innocent people died because of greed and corner-cutting) in the past 2 years, is overregulated. Please. (Boston.com)
- Once the province of how-to cooking shows, food media has extended its reach—but has it become too big? <<I enjoyed this exploration of the state of the Food Movement. I agree with Ruth Reichl‘s commentary. (AdWeek)
- DR. MARION NESTLE ON THE COMPLEXITY OF FOOD ISSUES <<Marion Nestle gives her opinion of Harvard’s challenge to the USDA’s MyPlate. (Ecosalon)
- Americans eat out about 5 times a week <<But this isn’t talking about you guys, right? You guys cook at home on weekdays and bring your lunch to work… right? (UPI)
- What’s In That Wine Glass May Not Prevent Aging After All <<Interesting new data on resveratrol and sirtuins, if you’re into the molecular biology of aging (you know I am). (NPR)
- Top 5 Food-Inspired Jewelry That You Actually Want To Wear In Public <<I didn’t expect to want all of these, but I do (hint hint: birthday approaching in November!). (LA Weekly)
- roasted eggplant with tomatoes and mint <<I can’t think of anything better to eat this time of year. Can you? (smitten kitchen)
What inspired you this week?
Regarding “BS of the Week #1,” don’t you think it’s more beneficial in the sense that kids in this relatively obese society don’t need the extra (delicious) fat?
This is more of an aside to the LA Times article because she didn’t seem to comprehend the original CDC report. I can’t say for sure though because she doesn’t even cite the report in her article.
I generally disagree with the notion that less fat is better. It’s more satisfying and not any less healthy. For kids these days, sugar is a far far far bigger problem.
I agree that sugar is definitely a far^5 greater issue, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that reducing fat from our diets is beneficial.
I also agree that it is more satiating, but from my own personal experience, once you get used to the change in diet, you find non-fat milk to be just as satisfying. Actually, I personally feel a bit gross with whole milk now.
I wouldn’t have an issue with higher fat content if I was as active as I used to be. I think kids these days aren’t nearly as active as my generation (which wasn’t very long ago…) and therefore eating similarly without the high activity level contributes to issues of becoming overweight.
PS: Not trying to fight with you here. You’re the PhD. 🙂
I personally eat a lot less now that I switched to full fat dairy and stopped avoiding cheese. (I also lost weight and have nicer hair, skin and nails. And run faster.) But people are really really brain-washed when it comes to the low fat stuff. I have friends trying to lose weight who eat pasta for dinner, sandwiches for lunch, and cereal for breakfast who maintain that they, unlike me, just cannot afford to use half and half in their coffee.
Your comment has a ton of different aspects to it, but one thing to address all of it is to say that everyone is different. Your first sentence states that you eat less now that you’ve switched, so in an over-generalized way it balances out. Of course if your friends are having carb heavy meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner it won’t help their quest for weight-loss.
My stance in all of this is just that it doesn’t hurt to trim a little bit here and there. I enjoy my cereal with non-fat milk, if I can cut out the fat (even if it’s only a tiny bit) why not? Rye bread vs white bread, kale chips vs potato chips, spinach salads vs lettuce salads, and all that stuff. If you enjoy the healthier foods, why not choose them? Isn’t that the whole idea? I think it’s far fetched to say that whole milk is as equally healthy as non-fat milk. That is literally the same as saying 30% ground beef is just as healthy as 10% ground beef.
Hey James,
Thanks for your comments, I think you make very important points. But just to clarify what I meant, the vast majority of the data tells us that people who reduce their fat content continue to eat the same amount of calories or more, because they replace the fat with carbohydrates, usually refined. I’ve never seen convincing data that 10% ground beef is healthier than 30%, or that whole milk is worse than skim. That being said, there is likely a percentage of the population that does do better with a lower overall fat intake. I think it’s a relatively smaller group (compared to those who do better with fewer carbohydrates), but i do think it exists. Everyone does need to find their own way, and small changes do make a difference. Of course the quality of the calories (processed vs. unprocessed) is always the most important point, and homogenized milk is a highly processed product.
I completely agree with all of that.
I hope I didn’t come across as a jerk or anything. I also graduated with a Molecular/Cellular Biology B.S. so I take a similarily scientific approach to my diet. I read your whole adventure towards fitness and I also found the most success when breaking it down to a science. For that reason I poke around and see what approach other people have and why they are doing it that way.
Looking foward to future posts!
Kids are sometimes brainwashed at school. My 9 yo daughter started refusing olive oil on her food because she learned, at school, that fat is bad! I told her she should rather limit her grains and add oil than fill half her plate with grains, even if they are whole grains, and skip the healthy oil. What a shame. They should teach them some basic biochemistry to illustrate how the human body turns carbs into fat…
The information age is a blessing and a curse. Educators have to keep it simple for kids, but the kids have access to unfiltered information and end up rejecting good things (like olive oil!). I highly doubt your 3rd grader (4th grader?) was told to avoid olive oil, if she was… then I’m sorry.
Whole grains are a really good source of energy though, especially for kids. I usually consume lots of whole grains in the morning and minimize it for the afternoon and evening. As long as you utilize it, it’s a great source for extra things like fiber too.
I’m sure you don’t really care what I have to say, but I’m at work and killing time. 🙂
It mystifies me that people bother drawing distinctions between whole milk, 2% and skim. I suppose I can understand fat-phobes gravitating to skim, but who cares about 8g of fat (whole) versus 5g (2%)? 3g of fat/27 calories isn’t going to make or break anybody’s diet. People should just pick whatever they prefer the taste of and not base their decision on a incorrect conception of which is more “healthy.”