Health
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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: Ignorance motivates gluten science, how to build a reliable exercise habit, and how much you need to lose to prevent diabetes
by Darya Rose | May 26, 2017
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
Next week’s Mindful Meal Challenge will start again on Monday. Sign up now to join us!
This week ignorance motivates gluten science, how to build a reliable exercise habit, and how much you need to lose to prevent diabetes.
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Links of the week
- Science Has Begun Taking Gluten Seriously – But not for the reason you think. If you’ve been curious or concerned about the gluten in your diet this is a great read. (The Atlantic)
- Fitness Bands Fail on Calorie Counts – Duh. And this isn’t just a problem with fitness trackers, it’s all exercise machines and food labels that are inaccurate. I’ve written before that if you’ve had success via calorie counting it is certainly NOT because your numbers are accurate. I’m a fan of tracking behaviors and finding a balance that works for you, but math isn’t likely to help you much before the technology improves. (Scientific American)
- Rethinking nutrition labelling: Food is not just the sum of its nutrients – Again, the methods we use for tracking nutrition in foods don’t give an accurate picture of the health or caloric value. Eat Real Food and you’re 90% there. (ScienceDaily)
- Five Secrets for Steadier Workouts – Now this is some good advice for building an exercise habit. (WSJ)
- New ‘Blue Card’ Proposal Would Protect Farmworkers from Deportation – It’s easy to be dismissive about people and things you don’t understand, but migrant farm workers are the backbone of agriculture in the US and the system would come to a screeching halt without them. I’m happy to see that lawmakers are working on methods to build a realistic path to citizenship for these hard working families. (Civil Eats)
- No food or drink will turn you into a calorie-burning machine. But these can help. – This is less crazy than I expected it to be. Some real talk on metabolism boosting foods. (Washington Post)
- Two things I’ve changed my mind about, part II: Phytic acid – I’m happy to see some thought leaders in the Paleo community coming around to a more reasonable assessment of foods that are obviously not harmful when prepared properly, like beans and grains. If you’ve been told tho avoid these foods because of “anti-nutrients,” here’s why you needn’t worry. (Stephan Guyenet)
- How Much Weight Do I Need to Lose to Prevent Diabetes? – Maybe less than you think. (NY Times)
- Another reason to exercise: Burning bone fat a key to better bone health – Super interesting new research on how exercise builds stronger bones. (ScienceDaily)
- The Cost of Avocado Toast, Explained by a Restaurateur – Hipster indignation at the cost of quality food is hypocritical privilege at best, motivated ignorance at worst. Educate yourself before you complain. (Eater)
- broccoli rubble farro salad – I love recipes like this. Simple, nutritious and delicious. (smitten kitchen)
What inspired you this week?
The gluten article was super interesting, in how it looked at the disconnect between patients, doctors, and science. I live in a hippie capital of the world, where people are constantly taking alternative health ideas to the extreme. I can’t tell you how often that I am the only one at the table WITHOUT a dietary restriction (although I do prefer to eat plenty of vegetables at every meal). I think it’s important that doctors come to realize the influences on their patients, and learn how to speak to them in a language they can relAte to (rather than just brushing off some theory, listening and taking seriously the concern, and giving them real, scientifically-informed feedback).
It’s also important that doctors recognize where their knowledge is lacking. Given all we are learning about the connection between diet and genetics, and given that most chronic disease is, at least, related to diet (as in the food we eat) and exercise, it’s crazy how little time is spent on nutrition (which I suppose could be pretty simple: eat REAL food) and behavioral change in medical training.
Thanks for sharing, Darya! And welcome back to California!
Agreed on all fronts. And thank you!
I suspect part of the reason gluten-free diets are so popular now is the American approach to healthcare. Speaking as a Canadian who’s lived in the US for the last 6 years, it seems like a lot of Americans are suspicious of doctors and have the mindset that they need to take charge of their medical issues on their own. Lacking medical degrees, junk science promoting fad diets is an easy answer for their health problems. This isn’t necessarily their fault- in Canada, I felt like doctors were a lot more interested in helping me and providing preventive care than doctors here in the US. (I listen to doctors here too, of course- they went to medical school, duh.) I also noticed that unlike doctors in Canada, doctor’s offices here advertise a lot of expensive services (supplements, etc.) and the overall relationship feels more like client-business than patient-doctor.
Mind, this is assuming that gluten-free diets haven’t taken off in Canada the they have here, which I have no idea about.
Wish I could read the Wall Street Journal article, but it’s behind a paywall. 🙁
Good info Darya,I agree with the electronic feedback devices like calorie counters and pedometers. They don’t seem overly accurate. Accountability may be its best asset.:)
Cheers
I love the gluten-free article. I honestly struggle to understand certain food hypes, I feel a bit lost certain times.
“In fact, not only does gluten not cause heart disease in the general population, but people who go gluten-free seem to actually be putting themselves at an increased risk of heart disease” – I will share this one will all my friends who do not have a celiac disease and just eat gluten-free because it’s “healthier”.
Daily exercise is the key to keeping diabetes under control. If you don’t have diabetes then daily exercise can definitely prevent it. Also a low carb high healthy fat diet helps in managing your sugar levels. Thanks, Kenny 🙂