FOR THE LOVE OF FOOD: Losing weight is harder with age, performance enhancing sandwiches, and pesticides in your drinking water
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
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This week losing weight is harder with age, performance enhancing sandwiches, and pesticides in your drinking water.
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Links of the week
- The Hippies Have Won < When I was a hardcore libertarian in college I would have never guessed a headline like this would make me smile, but now it couldn’t make me happier. The hippies know how to eat, my friends. There’s some great Real Food resources in this article too. (NY Times)
- Will Trump Revive COOL and Make American Meat Great Again? < If you aren’t familiar with the Country Of Origin Label requirements this is a decent primer. If you care about transparency and knowing where your food is coming from, you should support stricter COOL regulations. It’s not like “country” is super specific, it’s the least they could tell us. (Civil Eats)
- Why Deep Breathing May Keep Us Calm < Fascinating new research about the neurons that regulate breath has shown that stopping an anxious breathing pattern has the power to cool anxiety. This may be one of the mechanisms by which meditation works to keep you zen. (NY Times)
- Is It Harder to Lose Weight When You’re Older? < Hormones make it harder to maintain your muscle mass, which controls how much energy you burn. Keep hitting the weights at the gym to offset the clock. (NY Times)
- Should you walk or run for exercise? Here’s what the science says. < Can you guess what I would say? (Vox)
- Turning Negative Thinkers Into Positive Ones < This is a life skill you can develop. (NY Times)
- The NBA’s Secret Addiction < LOL performance enhancing sandwiches. While I’m sure there’s a massive placebo effect going on here, I have no doubt that for large athletic men doing intense exercise for several hours these work as a great source of fuel. Bonus points for the teams that insist on organic. (ESPN)
- First evidence found of popular farm pesticides in drinking water < In case you were starting to question why the EPA is important. It’s for stuff like this. (Washington Post)
- SPRING LENTIL + QUINOA PILAF < This looks so springy and delicious. I can’t wait for green garlic to show up at the market. (The Year in Food)
What inspired you this week?
Hey Darya! As a lifelong (60 years) New Yorker I’m kinda bummed that you’re leaving. I sort of thought that maybe someday I’d see you at Chelsea Market or Trader Joe’s… oh well… by the way, my husband (double amputee, bk, Vietnam) suggested TRX straps for a versatile means of weight training and stretching for the woman in the wheelchair. I wish you all the best, love the podcast, links and blog💜
The articles on neonicitinoid pesticides and bees are definitely written to scare readers into believing these materials are solely responsible for bee population decline and endangering the food supply. They fail to mention factors such as varhoa mites, viral diseases, and habitat loss as more land is converted to buildings, parking lots, and lawns, all of which contribute to the decline of bees. Bee hives are even shipped around the country to pollinate various crops. This can stress the bees and make them weaker and more susceptible to various maladies. The major bee kill in Oregon a few years ago was an illegal, off-label application. Linden trees in a mall parking lot were infested with aphids which was causing honeydew to accumulate on patron’s cars. A landscape crew sprayed the trees with imidocloprid while they were in full bloom. The material’s labeling prohibits such a use. While there is much anecdotal evidence of neonics being a major factor harming bees there is little that is based in true science. Neonics are popular as they have the lowest mammalian toxicity of any insecticides. This makes them safer for humans to apply and greatly decreases the re-entry interval. If they are banned, as the articles seem to suggest, growers will have to go back to compounds with higher toxicities and longer re-entry intervals. It is no more possible to produce high quality plants, fruits, and vegetables without using any form of pesticide than it is for a doctor to treat diseases in his patients without using any form of medication. And for your information, the honeybee was imported here from Europe but there are 4000 (not a typo) species of bees native to North America.
Dan, don’t you think that you may have zeroed in on a topic you are passionate about? The article has a lot more information in it than just about bees. An article can never tell every side of every story…and this one was about water, using a reference to bees. To be honest, I’m extremely alarmed that there are more toxic chemicals being found/put into tap water. As a side note, NO form of pesticide except safe for humans to ingest should be allowed on our food. It is quite possible to grow plentiful, quality produce without the use of any toxic chemical. What we demand is what we will receive. Vote with your dollar, and the results will come. There is a ton of information out there on how to do this.