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 | Oct 5, 2012
For The Love of Food
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
And we’re back! Sorry for the hiatus, I had to spend a few weeks finishing up a big project I’m working on. Keep calm and carry on.
This week lard is making a comeback, salt may improve your coffee, and why we aren’t eating more GMO animals.
Want to see all my favorite links? Be sure to follow me on on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato, Google+ and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you. (And yes, I took that pepper heart pic myself).
Links of the week
- So There’s Arsenic in Our Rice—Now What? <<This is a bit terrifying, and a great reminder of how dangerous it can be when we don’t respect our environment. (The Atlantic)
- LARD MAKING A COMEBACK <<Did you think lard was bad for you? Think again. (Dr. Weil)
- Scientists fret over FDA slowness on genetically altered animals <<BS of the week. Why anyone besides corporations would want genetically modified animals to enter our food chain faster is beyond me. They claim they can make “meat with healthier fat” (see previous article) and can remove allergens from milk (while inadvertently increasing others—as described in this article). But as these examples illustrate, we don’t understand nutrition well enough to pretend we can improve upon nature just yet. Related: If you’re in CA, vote Yes on 37. (LA Times)
- Use a Pinch of Salt to Keep Veggies Bright and Green (and Other Creative Uses for Salt) <<This is cool and worth reading. Salt supposedly improves bitter coffee and the consistency of scrambled eggs, in addition to preserving color and adding flavor. (Lifehacker)
- F.A.D.-Free Tuna Comes to Safeway – Affordably <<Good news for tuna lovers. (NY Times)
- Fish linked to heart failure risk, omega-3 results mixed <<The headline is sort of confusing, but the take home message is that eating fish is helpful while taking supplements may not be. (Medline)
- BUILD STAMINA WITH STAIR CLIMBING <<Taking the stairs is an underrated way to improve fitness. (Dr. Weil)
- Exposure to Herbicide May Increase Risk of Rare Disorder <<Yet another reason to avoid herbicides and pesticides, particularly if you’re pregnant. (ScienceDaily)
- ChefSteps Offers Free Online Culinary Lessons from Modernist Cuisine Alumni <<This looks beyond awesome. I can’t wait. (Lifehacker)
- SPICED LENTIL SOUP WITH COCONUT MILK <<Looks like a delicious fall dish. Lentils and coconut pair beautifully together. (Sprouted Kitchen)
What inspired you this week?
I’ll build my stamina with stair climbing and I’ll pass on that fatty (probably delicious) lentil soup! …. Oh lard… What does health science now say about white margarine that is used as lard alternative?
Happy Friday!
Hi Darya,
I sent you and email because I thought this was part of your subscription membership and didn’t realize it was a blog post. I’m hoping you can direct me to the referenced science Dr. Weil speaks of in his Lard article, since he did not provide it. Greatly appreciate it thanks!
I’m glad for the love of food is back! I look forward to it every Friday.
“it may be best to eat fish instead of taking individual omega-3 fatty acids in supplement form”
No surprise there–real food is always better than a crappy diet plus supplements!
You’d be surprised how often I need to tell people this.
Hi, Darya! Thanks for your links of the week, as always. What has been your average weekly (or monthly) rice intake, and based on this new report on arsenic contamination, how do you think you might alter your intake, if at all?
Jeez. I eat rice maybe once or twice a week. I purposely didn’t order paella at a restaurant last night, because I doubted the quality. I’ll probably start paying more attention to sources. Hopefully someone (besides me) will compile a list of the best options. I’ll definitely share it here if I find anything out.
Arsenic data on various products of rice and rice-containing foods, with red font used on which products exceed the arsenic limit proposed by the EPA in New Jersey, is found here: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/arsenic1112.htm#Arsenic_in_food
A more detailed report can be downloaded here:
http://www.consumerreports.org/content/dam/cro/magazine-articles/2012/November/Consumer%20Reports%20Arsenic%20in%20Food%20November%202012_1.pdf
Slightly good news from the consumer reports statement at the bottom claims “research has shown that rinsing and using more water removes about 30 percent of the rice’s inorganic arsenic content.”
I follow Darya’s recipe for rice, which calls for rinsing 4-5 times and using more water than is absorbed, since you strain it at the end. Thanks Darya! PS – your recipe comes out perfect everytime, and my freezer is full of rice balls haha. Although, I’ll probably limit my intake of rice after this report. Scary stuff.
Throughout that movie, they’re traveling from place to place, but is that really safe. Who’s
gonna keep ’em down. (see next point).