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: Plastics turn up in seafood and sea salt, Mary’s chicken outed as a factory farm, and NOT dieting helps with weight loss
by Darya Rose | Sep 22, 2017
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
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This week plastics turn up in seafood and sea salt, Mary’s chicken outed as a factory farm, and NOT dieting helps with weight loss.
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Links of the week
- Silly Rabbit! Original Trix With Artificial Colors Is Back After Customers Revolt – When preserving your memories matters more than preserving your health. SMH. (WSJ)
- Guess What’s Showing Up In Our Shellfish? One Word: Plastics – And it isn’t just shellfish (see below). This is a disturbing trend, and it isn’t a problem you can shop your way out of. (NPR)
- Sea salt around the world is contaminated by plastic, studies show – Personally I try to avoid plastics (especially for food and beverage storage) whenever possible, but it is incredibly difficult. Keep in mind that the inside of most cans are also lined with plastics. (The Guardian)
- From Coal to Kale: Saving Rural Economies with Local Food – I love the idea of local farms reviving local economies, disrupting the industrial food system and making us healthier in the process. Yes please! (Civil Eats)
- WHOLE FOODS “FREE-RANGE” CHICKEN SUPPLIER SAID TO ACTUALLY RUN FACTORY FARM – This is exactly why we need more small farms. Mary’s chicken is a staple of Whole Foods and fancy restaurants, and it appears they have been lying about how their birds are raised. Ethical food doesn’t scale well and demand is greater than supply at the moment. (The Intercept)
- Want to fix America’s health care? First, focus on food – 100%. (The Conversation)
- French parents know how to teach their kids to love food without overeating – French parents are my spirit animals. (Quartz)
- Here Are 10 Pictures of Your Daily Recommended Servings of Fruits & Vegetables – It’s likely less than you think. The bar is pretty low, still hardly anyone reaches it. (The Kitchn)
- Taking a break from dieting may improve weight loss – I have a better idea: stop dieting altogether and find incremental ways to eat healthier without sabotaging your metabolism. (ScienceDaily)
- Your stools reveal whether you can lose weight – Interesting new data suggests why some people may have a harder time losing weight than others eating the same foods. Generally gut bacteria is something you can change with a better diet (though it takes awhile), so this is actually good news. (ScienceDaily)
- JAMAICAN JERK EGGPLANT STEAKS – Wow, this sounds delicious and perfect for the season. (Dishing Up the Dirt)
What inspired you this week?
This is an amen to the article Want to fix America’s ….! A great place to start would be in the school lunch programs. I teach in the suburbs of Chicago. What the lunch company calls heathy and in compliance with national lunch regulations is so disturbing. A juice box counts as a fruit and vegetable and a “fun lunch” (served in a bag many lunches) consists of one very sugary Trix yogurt, a processed chocolate chip muffin, a bag of Goldfish, and (the only no sugar item) a cheese stick. How can our country get to better health serving this to our children? Oh and this is served after a breakfast of the same muffins and sugary cereals being served.
I’m a bit surprised by your take on Trix going back to artificial colors. Is Trix with the original artificial colors significantly worse for you than the Trix with natural colors? (Neither is a very healthy option, of course, and not something a “foodist” would eat very often.)
Any particular coloring agent *could* have negative health effects, but once a molecule is extracted or synthesized and purified, it really doesn’t matter whether it’s “artificial” or derived from a natural source.
I know there have been some suggestions that some artificial colors can negatively affect behaviour in children, but my understanding is that belief is based primarily on anecdotes and small, not very well-controlled studies. My guess is that most of those anecdotes come from people whose perception is biased by a general way of thinking that “natural” = good and “artificial” = bad, when of course it’s not that simple. If there really is solid research showing I’m wrong about this, I’d definitely like to know though because it’s not a topic I’ve researched in detail.
You’re right, there is no healthy version of Trix. I’m more in awe by the psychology behind the backlash.
That’s true, the psychology of it all is interesting! I don’t think I’ve ever actually had Trix, but there are some things I do eat on occasion that are totally unnatural colors and I’m okay with that. For example, every year at Christmas for as long as I can remember, my mom has made whipped shortbread cookies topped with pieces of those bright red and green candied cherries. Somehow they just wouldn’t be the same without the bright colors!
I’m so disappointed by Mary’s, if the article is reporting the truth and not somehow selectively twisting it (Direct Action Everywhere is a pretty extreme group.) I rave about Mary’s chickens to customers everyday but I guess if it’s too good to be true, it’s not real. Some of my co workers have also noted that the quality of Mary’s chickens has declined as their production has increased. I may just email Mary and see what her response is.
Unfetteted capitalism has unfortunately lead to massive ethical issues in all sectors as it prioritizes growth above everything else.
Ugh, I know. Please let me know if you learn anything. Mary’s has always been my last resort, but it was a last resort I used often because sometimes it’s all there is. I’ve been finding my self eat vegetarian more often lately because of issues like this. Fish is just heartbreaking.