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: LaCroix slapped with lawsuit, Roundup linked to bee deaths, and low-carb studies are bunk
by Darya Rose | Oct 5, 2018
Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.
This week LaCroix slapped with lawsuit, Roundup linked to bee deaths, and low-carb studies are bunk.
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Links of the week
- Think You Don’t Need A Flu Shot? Here Are 5 Reasons To Change Your Mind – 80,000 people died of the flu last year. I’m definitely making my entire family get a flu shot this time around. (NPR)
- What is the essence of pamplemousse? LaCroix still won’t tell us. – Those flavors sure don’t taste natural to me, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily bad. (Vox)
- How Dan Barber helped Sweetgreen get a new squash on its menu – Gosh I miss Sweetgreen. I’m not sure I’ve tried this Robin’s Koginut squash, but I’ve definitely had the honeynut from the same breeder and it is unreal. Yay for flavor! (Fast Company)
- Is Butter a Healthy Fat? – I use it. (Quick and Dirty Tips)
- Study: Roundup Weed Killer Could Be Linked To Widespread Bee Deaths – Another reason to boycott Monsanto and buy organic. (NPR)
- Meta-Analysis Of Low-Carb Meta-Analyses Finds The Ones Most Excited About Low-Carb Diets Are Of “Critically Low Quality” – There’s nothing particularly special about low-carb diets, and the healthiest people in the world eat relatively high-carb (but unprocessed) diets. The science for virtually every weight loss diet is underwhelming, so the best path is still to try to eat as natural as you can and figure out what works best for yourself. (Weighty Matters)
- The Farm Bill Expired—Now What? – Gawd I’m sick of politics. Le sigh. (Mother Jones)
- Buying new running shoes? Forget minimalist or maximalist, and try on a bunch. – Some surprisingly practical advice. (Washington Post)
- We Slow as We Age, but May Not Need to Slow Too Much – Very cool. (NY Times)
- Coconut Red Lentil Soup Recipe – Yum yum yum yum yum. These flavors are so wonderful this time of year. (101 Cookbooks)
What inspired you this week?
Daryn – where is the LaCroix article? I could not click through anywhere to the story?
Not sure what you mean, the link works for me.
Darya
2nd bullet under Links of the Week. “What is the essence of . . .”
Great flu shot article! I just wish they would of also brought up the fact that many people don’t get the flu shot because the misconception of putting “chemicals” in their body. I feel that’s the argument I hear most often and it drives me nuts. We need to discredit this global fear to allow more people to get vaccinated!
The article in regards to the Flu shot fails to mention that the figure of 80,000 people with the Flu is also lumped in with individuals who display flu-like symptoms such as pneumonia. While pneumonia can result from the Flu there are many other things that can cause it and only a test can verify the Flu.
Laura, Do you know what is in a Flu shot? For starters, they contain Formaldehyde, Aluminum salts, Gelatin and antibotics such as gentamicin or neomycin. Depending on the research and the shot you get it may or may not contain Thimerosal. Sure they contain such a small amount that it supposedly isn’t harmful but none the less you are injecting chemicals into your body.
I find it ironic that this site is all about natural food and getting those pesticides and harmful food additives out of your daily life yet encourages you to do the opposite in other aspects of life. I could probably produce some articles and studies that say roundup doesn’t kill bees but most of those studies were most likely paid for by Monsanto.
Anyway, back on subject the last thing I find interesting is there is no real long term study on the effects of getting a yearly vaccination against the flu. here is a link to the closet one and it suggests getting a flu shot year after year decreases your effectiveness.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/59/10/1375/2895694
Hello Matt,
Yes, I do know what is in flu shots, anybody can look up the ingredients in the formulations. Yes, the most common ones do contain neomycin or some other old antibiotic to help ensure bacteria don’t grow in the liquid and get introduced in your body. What’s so scary about an antibiotic? Antibiotics are one of the greatest inventions and save lives everyday. They also don’t cause cancer.
The most popular used formulations also contain formaldehyde which is in the air, your body, and all over the planet every second of the day. It’s a natural occurring organic compound. Yes, in high concentrations it can cause clinical symptoms and even cancer, but these high concentrations aren’t used in the flu shot. This is where the very important subject of toxicology comes in – the safety profile of any substance is determined not just by its chemical structure but also how it interacts and it’s concentration. It’s way to black and white to just say formaldehyde is a “chemical” and is therefore harmful. It’s produced naturally in our own bodies in similar proportions as what’s it the flu shot.
Yes, some flu shots contain Thimerosal, a preservative that contains mercury. Obviously that’s not ideal but I’m also a fan of tuna and know I’m safe to eat it if I’m not pregnant or trying to get pregnant. However, the use of thimerosal in vaccines has drastically decreased because of this fear. So if a minuscule amount of mercury is unacceptable to you, it’s pretty easy to get a forumulatipn without it.
I think this article is very much in line with the values of Summer Tomato. There is currently a global fear of “chemicals” in the flu shot that is adding to the poor vaccination rates. In order to dispel this fear, we must think like scientists and not black and white. It’s way too easy to just say “I’m not getting the flu shot because of the the “chemicals.” But what are we actually afraid of? Do we know what these “chemicals” actually are and what concentrations are being used? Do the benefits outweigh the risks? Are there any risks at all?
The Coconut Red Lentil soup is fantastic! I made it in the Instant Pot.
Thanks for posting it.