For the Love of Food

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

I’m back! I’ve had a lot of catching up to do after my two weeks off the grid at a silent meditation retreat, but it’s nice to be back in the real world. I’ll write more about my retreat experience next week. In the meantime I’ll say it was amazing and illuminating and really hard.

This week happiness is overrated, low-fat diets are pointless, and red meat may or may not be worse than smoking.

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 Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Links of the week

• There’s More to Life Than Being Happy There’s More to Life Than Being Happy <<There’s a big difference between a happy life and a meaningful life. What makes your life meaningful? (The Atlantic)
• What Does the WHO Report Mean for Your Meat-Eating Habit? <<Great summary on the science that links meat consumption and cancer risk (yes, I still eat meat). (Mark’s Daily Apple)
• What I Learned Actually Reading That New Low-Fat Diets Are Dead Study <<10 years ago I did a deep dive into the research of weight loss to try and find the best diet, and ended up becoming a foodist instead. Here Yoni Freedhoff sums up what I learned in 7 tweets. (Weighty Matters)
• Count your bites, count down the pounds <<More evidence confirms that relatively moderate reductions in the volume of food you eat can lead to weight loss. The question remains, how will you actually reduce your food intake? Would you be willing to count your bites forever? (Science Daily)
• The wild salmon on your plate actually goes to bed at 9 p.m., is probably farmed <<This is disappointing, but not surprising given how much processing is done in China, where mislabeling foods seems to be standard practice. Fortunately you can see and taste the difference between farmed and wild salmon, and the difference is dramatic. Wild salmon is dark read and tastes clean, farmed is light pink and tastes murky. (Grist)
• Bread Is Broken <<Fascinating read on the history and destruction of American wheat, and what might be done to save it. (NY Times)
• What Weight Gain Really Means <<Please read this. It’s important. (Huffington Post)
• Access to a supermarket improves eating habits, study says, but not for the reason you’d think <<Interesting data suggest that culture and policy may have a bigger impact on behavior change than access to healthy foods. (LA Times)
• Should You Work Out In The Morning Or Evening? An Investigation. <<This is worth glancing at for the gifs alone. (Huffington Post)
• IMPORTANCE OF MISE EN PLACE (AND EASY TURKEY STOCK) <<I’m not the biggest fan of roasted turkey on Thanksgiving, but to me it’s worth it for the turkey stock. If you haven’t tried it, you must. (Ruhlman)

What inspired you this week?