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: Nutrition science is corrupted, a huge mistake in habit hacking, and lack of sleep makes you eat like a stoner
by Darya Rose | Mar 4, 2016
For the Love of Food
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
This week nutrition science is corrupted, a huge mistake in habit hacking, and lack of sleep makes you eat like a stoner.
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
- Food companies distort nutrition science. Here’s how to stop them. <<Nutrition science can be confusing and contradictory, and it isn’t entirely accidental. There’s a systemic problem that needs to be addressed. (Vox)
- Do You Make This Huge Mistake, When Trying to Help Someone (or Yourself) to Change a Habit? <<I love this. There’s a huge value in realizing that your own personality type can be (and likely is) different from other people. Keep this in mind in both giving and receiving advice, and more important, when engaging in self-talk about your own behaviors. (Gretchen Rubin)
- The Quantified Welp <<New research suggests that in some cases (but not all), measuring your performance can take the fun out of it and make you less likely to do it. In other cases, it can actually help with motivation. It’s important to recognize the difference. (The Atlantic)
- PAHO issues nutrition standards for ultraprocessed foods. Beverage Associations object. <<Finally some higher level health agencies are getting it. (Food Politics)
- It’s easier and more fun than you think to eliminate waste from your cooking <<This is a bit of an extreme example, but I do admire the spirit of the effort. Food waste is a serious problem and actually costs you a lot of money. (Grist)
- Kenyans Reacquire an Old Taste: Eating Healthier <<Whenever I hear about “world hunger” I always wonder what happened to the traditional foods that were eaten in the region and why industrialized countries feel the need to swoop in and help. According to this research most traditional foods were replaced with more industrial foods (e.g. corn, rice) and western vegetables (e.g. cabbage, kale) during colonial times, and the regional foods became a symbol of poverty and went out of fashion, despite their superior health benefits. Some scientists are calling to bring traditional foods back, and it seems to be catching on. (NY Times)
- This Is Why Millennials Actually Don’t Eat Cereal <<Hoping this is true. Millennials, I’d love to hear your thoughts. (The Kitchn)
- Lack of Sleep May Give You the ‘Munchies’ <<Not getting enough sleep makes you feel stoned? LOL. I hope this doesn’t give anyone any bright ideas. (Medline)
- How and When to Salt Your Food, According to Chef Thomas Keller <<This is probably intuitive if you cook regularly, but if you’re new to cooking it’s likely never occurred to you. (Lifehacker)
- Homemade Corned Beef <<Sounds like a fun project for St. Patrick’s Day. Nom nom. (David Lebovitz)
What inspired you this week?
Thanks for the links — very interesting information as always! 🙂
Millenial here: I actually agree about the packaged cereal. I used to eat a lot as a teen but realized it wasn’t good for me — too much sugar, not filling enough, not long-lasting enough. I suspect that people have been eating it mostly because of the huge amount of marketing done for it since the early 1900s.
What I DO eat, however, is a different kind of cereal: muesli with rolled oats and other flakes, mixed with dried fruits and nuts. Although it’s very sweet too, it has no extra sugar added and is very filling because it contains a lot of fiber. It lasts long and keeps me full until lunch.
I also love oatmeal (or other flakes/grains), cooked with milk and flavored/topped with all sort of things — I guess this counts as a cereal too. 🙂
I have a couple of quibbles with that Kitchn article on the whole Millennials & breakfast cereal thing.
First, the NYT article itself says: “Almost 40 percent of the snake people surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it.” If I’m reading that right, the respondents themselves SAID their reason for not eating it is because of the inconvenience of cleaning up — so writing a big list of the “real” reasons while people might not eat cereal for breakfast is ignoring the fact that all those respondents claim that inconvenience *is* the real reason.
Second, and the Kitchn blog post isn’t the only reaction I’ve seen like this, I think some people are totally misinterpreting both the NYT article and the whole inconvenience claim itself. Here’s another quote from the NYT article: “[Younger people] either don’t eat breakfast at all, or eat it somewhere other than home. And when they do eat breakfast, a bowl of cold cereal is often replaced by hot grains, smoothies, yogurt or breakfast sandwiches.” Giving up on cereal for breakfast because it is inconvenient is *not* necessarily about either laziness *or* health consciousness.
It is inconvenient for me, personally, because if I have time for breakfast at all it better be a granola bar or a hard boiled egg that I can down in the car on my way to work, or maybe an orange that I can peel and eat at my desk. I only know 2 people in my age group who have a sit-down breakfast most days, and they’re both SAHMs who have budget reasons for avoiding typical breakfast cereals. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but I’d guess that my peer group is fairly representative of our generation in this case.
I just hate that this article has been twisted to either support the view that Millennials are all lazy brats *or* support the idea that Millennials are just healthier/more foodie than their parents.
Sorry about the rant, I just got a little irritated with seeing this whole “Millennials are weird!” thing pop up AGAIN.
“If I’m reading that right, the respondents themselves SAID their reason for not eating it is because of the inconvenience of cleaning up — so writing a big list of the ‘real’ reasons while people might not eat cereal for breakfast is ignoring the fact that all those respondents claim that inconvenience *is* the real reason.”
I was curious what the actual REPORT said, because all I could find were references to the 40% statistic. http://store.mintel.com/hot-and-cold-cereal-us-august-2015 Look, it’s only $4000!!! I like to take consumer surveys for fun, and while I don’t think I took this one, often they will say “Select all reasons why you don’t consume cereal.” Frankly, if I had been answering this, I can totally see myself saying “Enh, compared to just stopping for Dunkin Donuts, it IS a pain to clean a bowl.”
Furthermore, without having other generations to compare to, well, we don’t know how “weird” this millennial statistic is to start with!
I’m a millennial, and I haven’t eaten cereal in at least 20 years. It’s what my parents gave me when I was a really little kid, I didn’t eat breakfast at all as a teen, and by the time I was shopping for myself, I stuck mostly to the “avoid the middle aisles” school of shopping (though I do fall victim to chips every now and again)! It’s too sugary, the box is stale by the time you finish it, it’s not portable…. etc, etc. I also find the soggy flakes thing pretty gross.
As an aside about that article – I’m a millennial and I never leave *any* dirty dishes. Cleaning the spoon/bowl is NOT the issue.
Warm nutritious oats for the win! Cereal is so ‘meh’. It’s not because I’m lazy or have no time in the morning. Indeed, I take time to cook eggs, but usually just gotta have my oats. That article is spot on!
Thanks for chiming in Millennials 🙂 I have a feeling the entire country is underestimating you guys. Prove ’em wrong.
Millenial here: I don’t eat cereal because it isn’t filling. I usually skip breakfast though.
Another millennial here:
I don’t eat cereal because its too much sugar, too processed, and I don’t actually eat breakfast at a table- I eat some fruit on my way out the door (if I eat it).
The vox article does raise some important issues regarding the funding of nutrition science work. However, the nutrition scientists I know do utilize clinicaltrials.gov, have to obtain IRB or IACUC approval for studies, and are also asked to disclose funding sources when publishing. The current definition of “conflict of interest” in nutrition science also does not encompass accepting grants, as far as I am aware.
I’m a millennial, and I don’t eat cereal anymore. It’s not filling, it’s boring, and it’s difficult to find cereal that tastes good and isn’t drenched in sugar. (Also, I have celiac, so the range of truly gluten-free cereals limits my options)
I find that eating veggies and protein for breakfast is much more filling, offers more variety, and is just as convenient as pouring a bowl of cereal. Usually it’s leftovers from dinner or some other meal that’s reimagined as breakfast.
Another millenial here. I also don’t have cereal for breakfast because it isn’t filling. I have an active job and if all I ate before work was cereal I’d be starving. Instead I usually have oatmeal loaded with fruit and nuts.
However, sometimes I have a small bowl of cereal before bedtime if I’m a little hungry. It’s just filling enough to allow me to sleep.