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: The problem with the new labels, a huge listeria outbreak, and how to make bread healthy again
by Darya Rose | May 27, 2016
For the Love of Food
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
This week the problem with the new labels, a huge listeria outbreak, and how to make bread healthy again.
Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app I just discovered to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!
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
- The Number to Avoid on the New Nutrition Labels <<You’ve probably heard by now that the FDA finally approved new nutrition labels featuring added sugars and highlighting calorie intake. While there’s stuff about the changes that is fantastic (oh hai trans fat!), there’s still a sense of putting lipstick on a pig. Thanks to James Hamblin for this brilliant critique of the new labels, echoing what I’ve been saying for years: that there’s only one place you should be looking to know if your food is healthy. (The Atlantic)
- Can You Carbo-Load Your Way to Good Health? <<The title is incredibly misleading. This article is in fact an excellent exploration of the value of freshly milled grains for making bread rather than commercial flours. I really hope this is the future. (WSJ)
- Huge Recall of Frozen Fruits and Vegetables After Listeria Outbreak <<FYI. Yes, Trader Joe’s is on the list. (NY Times)
- Boosting productivity at work may be simple: Stand up <<Standing desks, they’re not just for weight loss anymore. (ScienceDaily)
- You’d Be Surprised at How Many Foods Contain Added Sugar <<Following up a bit on the food label thing, sugar is a big deal. And sadly most people have literally no idea they eat the equivalent of 5-6 desserts per day. (NY Times)
- 5 Things We Can Learn About Lunch from the French <<Wisdom. (The Kitchn)
- 6 Reasons to Look Forward to Growing Old <<I love this. For myself I’ve certainly found that the older I get the happier I am, and I look forward to this continuing for decades to come. (Mark’s Daily Apple)
- Your beliefs are wrong. Are you willing to change? <<Yep, we’re all wrong all the time. The question is how do you become less wrong? (Nerd Fitness)
- Sorry, There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast <<In my experience, the best reason to eat breakfast is that it helps you make better decisions throughout the day. If that isn’t true for you (be honest with yourself), there’s no reason to force it. (NY Times)
- Moroccan Spiced Grilled Chicken Kebabs <<Summer is coming! (David Lebovitz)
What inspired you this week?
I tried to find the official rules on what will be considered ‘added sugars’ but wasn’t able to find anything officially related to this. I started looking because Hamblin said that fruit juice and agave could be added to “everything” and not be considered added sugar. But the NYTimes article supplies a long list of added sugars, which includes honey, agave, etc. That author also mentions juice concentrates. All that the FDA clarified was that the sugars were added after the food was processed.. so I would assume something like Larabars, then, which include whole dates, would not have “added sugar”?
I keep thinking about a discussion I had with someone recently.. he was on a semi-weird diet, and I was trying to humor him and find a snack at the grocery store that was part of his plan. He said he was allowed to eat nuts, or trail mix if it just had dried fruits and nuts. I noticed that Larabars were on clearance, a lot cheaper than trail mix, and so I suggested he get one of those. So he points to the nutrition facts and says, “Nope, this has 15 grams of sugar.” So I started going to added sugar and it was like he just couldn’t even understand what I was talking about. Now, don’t get me wrong, dried fruit isn’t the best snack in the world to start with, but this “diet” didn’t even give him enough information to see that a larabar was the same as trail mix.
So, in a way, I can see the “added sugars” helping people. But we’ll see. Honestly, I can already think of a few products that it would be helpful for, for me personally. I don’t like spaghetti/pizza sauces with even a hint of sweetness, and looking at the “added sugars” line will make it easier for me to select a sauce without having to scan the tiny-type ingredients list. But I can also see plenty of problems with it.. sigh.
The link about standing up at work to boost productivity actually goes to an article about prenatal fruit consumption. . .I want to stand at work and I need a link to help make my case. Can you fix it, please?
All fixed, thanks for the heads up 👍🏼
I think the new labels should carry include health warning on processed foods, perhaps something like “Overconsumption of processed foods can seriously damage your health. This product should be consumed in moderation. Wherever possible, choose unprocessed options such as vegetables, fruits, intact grains and legumes, instead.”
Excellent range of issues and additional information. I have found that switching to sour dough breads has made a big difference in digestion, no bloating. Wholemeal Spelt flour is a great find. As an old grain, it is non-gm, and has very low gluten levels naturally.