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

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This week willpower is obsolete, running extends your life, and banning trans fat saves lives. 

Too busy to read them all? Try this awesome free speed reading app to read at 300+ wpm. So neat!

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Links of the week

• Against Willpower – The concepts of willpower and ego-depletion, both of which I discuss extensively in Foodist, have been under a lot of heat the past few years. This is an excellent article describing some of the latest thinking around the concept. Hat tip to reader René for sending it to me. (Nautilus)
• Designer sugar is here – but just what are we sacrificing for healthier sweets? < One of the concepts I hope you learn from Summer Tomato is that the notion of “healthier” versions of industrially processed foods are not healthier, even if they target some nutrient that’s been making the news. Read articles like this with caution and skepticism. (The Guardian)
• Vitamins and the Failure of Free-Market Health – Essential reading for Americans and anyone one else interested in parsing out the difference between pharmaceuticals, supplements, and functional foods, and how they are handled legally. (The Atlantic)
• An Hour of Running May Add 7 Hours to Your Life – Kinda shocked at the impact here. Super interesting. (NY Times)
• This 75-Year Harvard Study Found the 1 Secret to Leading a Fulfilling Life – What I love about this is that it emphasizes the difference between quality and quantity of personal relationships, that fact that building quality ones is a skill you can develop (through personal growth practices), and that it’s the #1 thing you can do to be happy. Pretty cool, right? (Inc.)
• Trans Fat Bans Tied to Fewer Heart Attacks and Strokes – Solid evidence that regulation of dangerous processed food products can lead to meaningful improvements in public health, which saves all of us money. And does anyone actually miss trans fat? (NY Times)
• The Antidote to Self-Harshness & Resentment – Speaking of personal growth, being more nuanced in how you judge humans (including yourself) helps alleviate unhelpful negative thought patterns. (Zen Habits)
• How Yoga Transformed My Relationship with Food – It’s not uncommon for mindful practices like yoga to translate into mindful eating habits that help undo destructive relationships with food and body image. (The Kitchn)
• As kids’ weight climbs, power of healthy fat supplements drops – I’ve never considered the possibility that body composition could influence how you respond to certain nutrients, but it makes sense when you think about it. Just when you thought health and nutrition couldn’t get any more complex, right? (ScienceDaily)
• roasted carrots with hazelnut dukkah and feta – Holy smokes this looks so delicious. (Crunchy Radish)

What inspired you this week?