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.
This week (also includes links from last week when I was stuck on a wifi-less flight) shivering is the new running, cheap food is elitist, and one daily soda raises heart risk even if you aren’t overweight.
Want to see all my favorite links? (There’s lots more). 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
- Shivering as a Form of Exercise <<Some really cool new research shows that adults are capable of transforming fat-storing white fat into fat-burning brown fat by two similar, muscle contracting mechanisms: exercise and shivering. Cool stuff. (New York Times)
- Michael Pollan: “Our Food Is Dishonestly Priced” <<Next time you get the urge to complain about the high prices of healthy food, think about the people who are getting shafted in order to provide the ridiculously low prices of the unhealthy stuff. They are likely far worse off than you. (Moyers)
- Added Sugar in Diet Tied to Death Risk From Heart Trouble <<According to the latest research added sugar, as little as one soda a day, increases risk of dying from heart disease by one third even if you don’t overeat and aren’t over weight. The association is dose-dependent, meaning the connection is stronger than a simple correlation. But hey, sugar is still fat free! (Medline)
- Meal times could have a significant effect on the levels of triglycerides in the liver <<Fascinating new research about the interplay of circadian rhythms and meal time. It seems when you eat is more important than previously recognized. (ScienceDaily)
- Misunderstanding Orange Juice as a Health Drink <<This article didn’t turn out to be what I expected. However it is a fascinating history of OJ, it’s ascent to the top of the breakfast pyramid, then sudden plummet to the bottom of the health ladder. Definitely worth a read. (The Atlantic)
- Procrastination is a Mindfulness Problem <<I love this article and think these techniques can be applied to anything you want to do but seem to always put off. You know, stuff like healthy eating and cooking. (Zen Habits)
- 10 Simple Ways to Eat Healthy Without Thinking <<I’ve said this all before, but it never hurts to be reminded. (Entrepreneur)
- Better access to healthy foods not enough to tackle obesity <<Over and over again we see that while knowledge about and access to healthy foods are important, unless we address habits people aren’t going to eat better. (ScienceDaily)
- The Best Temperatures and Uses for Common Cooking Oils <<People love to get their panties in a bunch over cooking oils and temperatures. Here’s a handy chart so you can stop freaking out about it and start enjoying your food. (Lifehacker)
- No-Bake Granola Bars <<While calorie dense, these look both healthy and delicious. But to be honest, he had me at “no-bake.” (David Lebovitz)
What inspired you this week?
Just finished reading “Added Sugar in Diet Tied to Death Risk…” and want to thank you for the link! I’m relatively new to your blog and so glad to have found it. My hubby and I are nearly-vegan (still eating fish) and were talking just this morning about wanting to do better at removing added sugars from our diet. This is just what we needed to see!! There’s so much we can do to proactively manage the treasure of good health, but without wonderful sources like you, it’s hard to find and filter all the info out there. Thank you for providing this terrific, valuable service to your readers, and I look forward to learning much more from you!
Thanks Heidi, I’m glad you appreciate it! These Friday posts look simple but they actually require a tremendous amount of work each week.
Thanks so much for sharing these articles, week after week! The design and findings of the meal times study is a bit confusing to me. Did they increase nighttime eating from 80 to 100% while decreasing daytime eating from 20 to 0%? Any of your clarification/insight would be helpful!
That was the impression I got but I didn’t read the original study
These links are informative and valuable, as always. I found it quaint and somehow touching that David Lebovitz cites the Government of Canada as one of two sources for his No Bake Granola Bars (I live in Ottawa).
That sugar article, like all the research on how bad sugar is for you, was scary. I’d love to see a post from you with tips on how to eat less sugar for those of your readers who are complete sugar addicts (or maybe I’m the only one?). I exercise regularly and eat wonderfully healthy all day long until the clock strikes… oh, about 9 PM… then I transform into a sugar gremlin. Knowing it’s bad for me isn’t enough! Help!
I’ve written about how to break a sugar addiction.
Hi Darya,
I refer to the article titled ‘Meal times could have a significant effect on the levels of triglycerides in the liver’.
Do you think there exists ‘ideal’ time for food consumption? And is the article suggesting that night-time eating may not be ideal for humans?
Thanks!
Your body adjusts very well, so I think consistency (eating meals at about the same time each day) is more relevant than an “ideal” time. This study suggests day eating is a good place to start.
Thank you for the work you put into gathering these links for us, Darya. I appreciate it very much.
The mice/circadian rhythm study reminds me of how people used to consume most of their calories earlier in the day (eat like a prince at breakfast and a pauper for dinner.) We now tend to consume most of our calories at dinner, in the evening when we have more leisure. And that reminds me, remember Bob Greene? “No eating after 8pm!”
The article about the study was somewhat unclear–but the “wild” mice who normally consume 80% of their calories at night when forced to consume 100% developed the elevated levels of triglycerides in their blood. So, I think it is the removal of the 20% during the day that contributed to the cause of the problem. I’m not sure we can extrapolate much to humans, from this particular study, really.