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 | Dec 5, 2014
For The Love of Food
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
This week the shocking benefits of prescribing vegetables, how meat actually impacts your heart, and the value of “cheat” meals.
Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app I just discovered to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!
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. (Yes, I took that picture of the pepper heart myself.)
Links of the week
- Prescribing Vegetables, Not Pills <<One of the most inspiring health intervention studies I’ve seen. I hope to see programs like this more widely adopted. (NY Times)
- The Power of Delay <<In Foodist, I talk about the science behind this “I can have it later” approach to having stronger willpower. (Zen Habits)
- Is Meat Unhealthy? Part III <<Blogger Stephan Guyenet is doing a fantastically thorough series of articles on the impact of meat eating on health. Part III specifically addresses the role of meat in cardiovascular disease, and it is well worth reading if the idea of meat and your heart ever worries you. I also recommend Part IV where he addresses the impact of meat consumption on body weight. (For the record I eat red meat on most days, but also tons of vegetables, some grains and legumes, and very, very small amounts of flour and sugar. I also exercise daily. My BMI is 19, and cholesterol ratio is 1.9:1.) (Whole Health Source)
- Kids who eat the same food as their parents are healthier <<I always cringe when I see parents order their kids pizza, chicken fingers or buttered pasta at a restaurant. You may avoid a fight, but at what price? (Treehugger)
- A New (Surprising) Reason to Eat More Vegetables <<This isn’t surprising to me at all, but it underlines the idea that we really have no idea why vegetables are so good for us and processed foods are so bad. We have some interesting hypotheses (like this one), but all that really matters is the results. (Stone Soup)
- Should You Eat Periodic “Cheat” Meals? <<While I hate the word “cheat,” I’m a big fan of periodic rational indulgences. Here’s an excellent recap of why there’s no need to try to be a saint. (Mark’s Daily Apple)
- Run to Stay Young <<Having trouble reaching 10,000 steps per day? Try squeezing in more by running a bit. Besides, walking might not be enough. (NY Times)
- Another case against the midnight snack: Researchers tinker with a time-restricted diet in mice and find that it’s remarkably forgiving <<Interesting new data on fasting that seems far more realistic to implement than some of the other crazy IF regimens I’ve seen. (ScienceDaily)
What inspired you this week?
Excellent links.m thanks for the great reading!
Thank you as always for these links, Darya. I love them and look forward to them!
I love your term of “periodic rational indulgences”and I totally support that concept. For example, I have nostalgia around a specific bakery from my childhood, and I still enjoy the experience of eating their cookies, so when I visit my family, I’m mostly okay with those indulgences.
But some my indulgences do feel “irrational.” I have developed a knowledge that some foods containing sugar and/or wheat in a certain amount or “dose” lead to short-term negative outcomes for me such as an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach or digestive system, itchy skin, bad sleep, decreased energy levels, hindered ability to focus (I’m a doctoral student, so focus is important!), and guilt, which is perhaps the most difficult short-term outcome with which I have to cope, but that’s due to my own approach to eating, and I’m trying to free myself of guilt when it comes to indulgence.
In these cases, it’s difficult to assess whether or not such an indulgence is “worth it” or “rational,” and that second term in general can be quite complex. Do you have any experience in or knowledge on these kinds of situations?
Yes, great point. For me it really comes down to weighing what it costs to do it vs NOT do it. Sometimes it’s just not worth the fight.
E.g. at certain times of the month I just need a bit of chocolate, or a glass of wine. Normally it’s easy to decide, but in these moments it feels hard. I’ve found ways to indulge without going crazy (like purchasing one medium sized chocolate bar that I already know I love, and sharing it with my husband). Would I prefer not to have these moments? Sure. But do I feel bad about them? No.
The secret to letting to of the guilt is making the decision beforehand and being OK with it. Then when it comes you can just enjoy it for what it’s worth––even if it’s not the absolute most amazing experience ever.
Thank you, Darya!!! Enjoy the holidays. =]
Interesting articles. I particularly like “The power of delay”.