For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

This week diet-pill ads make you fat, the case against positive thinking, and a scary discovery about antimicrobial soap.

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app I just discovered to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

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Links of the week

• How Diet-Pill Ads Fuel Obesity <<Fascinating psychology behind believing in a quick fix, and how it encourages reckless behavior. (The Atlantic)
• The Case Against Positive Thinking <<Thinking positive is important, but apparently you need to be a little more rational to be effective. The “mental contrasting” idea described is basically the process I use to solve my personal healthstyle conundrums. (Wall Street Journal)
• Nobody Exercises When It’s Cold <<And speaking of barriers to success it’s important to know what they are, but then you need to figure out a way around them. (The Atlantic)
• Home Cooking Helps Keep the Calories Down <<The science here is still preliminary, but it jams 100% with my experience. Eating out makes staying healthy much more difficult. (Medline)
• What 200 Calories of Every Food Looks Like <<It’s inevitably less than you think. Except vegetables, of course. (The Atlantic)
• Walk This Way: Acting Happy Can Make It So <<Most of us underestimate our ability to change our mood, but more and more evidence is pointing to how the physical can impact the mental. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Ingredient to Avoid in Soap <<This is more than a little scary. There’s also the fact that these soaps are helping fuel antibiotic resistance. You think you’re doing something good, but it may be time to find a new strategy. (The Atlantic)
• Ask Well: How Many Eggs Can I Eat? <<For what it’s worth I eat an average of two eggs per day, and at my last physical (Dec 2013) my doctor said I had “the healthiest blood work [she’s] ever seen!” (NY Times)
• No Time for Family Dinner? Try Breakfast <<I love this reframing of breakfast as the family meal. Anyone do this? (Wall Street Journal)
• CURRIED YELLOW SPLIT PEA SOUP <<It’s cold. Let’s eat soup. (Sprouted Kitchen)

What inspired you this week?