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.
There were more excellent stories than I could fit this week. Mindful eating hits the big leagues, Jack In The Box’s shake is made of fakin bacon and sugar is more helpful than low carb for weight loss? Won’t somebody please think of the children!
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Links of the week
- Mindful Eating as Food for Thought <<Mindful eating in the New York Times?! I think someone is finally listening!
- Bread a culprit in Americans eating too much salt <<Have high blood pressure? It might be bread’s fault. (Medline)
- Bacon milkshake contains no actual bacon <<Haha, thanks Grist for calling BS of the week on Jack In The Box’s fake bacon shake.
- New Diet: Top Off Breakfast With — Chocolate Cake? <<Interesting study suggests having a little something sweet in the morning is more effective than a low carb diet for long term weight loss. As counter intuitive as that sounds it is not entirely out of line with my personal experiences. (ScienceDaily)
- Smaller Plate Won’t Help Your Diet, Research Shows <<Honestly I think this study is flawed. They specifically asked the test subjects to eat until full. In the original studies it was a more natural environment and smaller plates resulted in less eating unconsciously, and both the small and large plate groups reported the same amount of fullness at the end. (Medline)
- The Hidden Health Hazards of Lettuce <<Though I don’t agree entirely with the logic here, I do think he’s right. “Fat isn’t bad, stupid is bad.” (Ruhlman)
- The Consumer: In New Diet Math, Subtracting Is Hard <<I might be the only one who thinks it’s funny that when Weight Watchers started equating fruits and vegetables people stopped losing weight. (New York Times)
- What a World Without Ridiculous Front of Package Health Claims Would Look Like <<It might look like food. Love this one. (Weighty Matters)
- Cream of Jerusalem Artichoke and Celeriac Soup <<Two of my favorite under-appreciated winter vegetables, together at last. (Jenn Cuisine)
- Push-ups: Michelle Obama v Ellen DeGeneres <<No matter how you feel about politics, this is badass.
What inspired you this week?
That study about higher-carb breakfasts is fascinating, thanks. The 40 pound per person difference between groups is HUGE. Even better if this approach enables people to keep the fat off in the long term. For most people, maintaining weight loss is way harder than the initial dieting process.
Ellen’s form is much better than Michelle’s. I’m a big fan of bodyweight exercises; it’s not how many push-ups you do, but rather how intense they are. Ellen is getting a more complete workout by going down until her upper arms are perpendicular to the floor. Yes, by doing that you’ll reach failure sooner, but the next day you’ll feel it in your chest and arms, letting you know that you got some good work done.
I think ellen makes 54 look amazing and michelle obama makes 48 look amazing! inpires my 40 year old ass to get movin”!!
Sometimes it seems like ‘food’ manufacturers are selling the supposed health benefits more than they’re actually selling what’s inside the container. Given some of what goes into some products these days, it’s not surprising they don’t want people to know the contents.
This sweets for breakfast story really made my day. We’ll see how the cholesterol test comes back next week though…
Loved the push up link.
Regarding the Danone link, even though there is nothing written on the packaging, there are lots of tv commercials advertising this product in Europe and it is presented as a medical supplement. People who shop remember the ads, and don’t look at the packaging… Here is what I posted on weightymatters.
I grew up in Europe and saw numerous time the Danone Actimel ad on TV. It is presented as a medical supplement, and they list all the health benefits from their product consumption. There might be laws about labeling on food packaging, but there is nothing about BS in ads on TV. Just saying.
A high carb breakfast does not bode well for me. After eating a high carb breakfast, I feel lethargic and I have trouble stopping when full. It makes me want to eat more!! When I have a high protein meal, of two eggs and some veggies, I have lots of energy and do not crave more. If I eat carbs later in the day, my body seems to handle them better, and I do not have to fight cravings.
To clarify, the experimental breakfast wasn’t low protein, it was just a big breakfast with high protein and carbohydrate. But different things work for different people. This group happened to be clinically obese but not diabetic. If you’ve found something that works for you I’d stick with that.