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 the folly in calorie counting, sardine population down 95%, and Dow Chemical asks EPA to ignore science on pesticides.

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

I also share links on Twitter @summertomato and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

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For The Love of Food

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

This week skim milk spikes controversy, how to feed your gut microbiome and how your alarm clock impacts body weight.

Want to see all my favorite links? (There’s lots more). Be sure to follow me on on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato,  Google+ and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you. (And yes, I took that pepper heart pic myself).

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For The Love of Food

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

This week fish oil is linked to prostate cancer, how chronic cardio can kill you, and the truth about grass-fed beef.

Want to see all my favorite links? (There’s lots more). Be sure to follow me on on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato,  Google+ and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you. (And yes, I took that pepper heart pic myself)

Read the rest of this story »

For The Love of Food

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

This week vitamin C fights colds for real, working out less may be more and why you’re eating more than you realize.

Want to see all my favorite links? Be sure to follow me on on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato,  Google+ and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you. (And yes, I took that pepper heart pic myself).

Links of the week

• Vitamin C Is Beneficial Against the Common Cold, Review Suggests <<Finally the science is consistently supporting something I’ve suspected for awhile: vitamin C does appear to help with colds. It seems it reduces cold incidence in stressed people, and shortens the duration in some cases. (ScienceDaily)
• Confessions of a recovering diet food junkie <<This story is very much like my own, except that I lost 15 pounds when I stopped dieting. (Washington Post)
• Why Four Workouts a Week May Be Better Than Six <<Interesting new study about  how overexercising may have unintended negative consequences. Four workouts per week seems to be the happy medium, at least for busy older adults. (New York Times)
• Dark Chocolate and Red Wine the Food of Love and Health <<No really, Valentine’s Day can be healthy. (ScienceDaily)
• How Advertising Targets Our Children <<Have kids? This will make you want to unplug the TV for good. (New York Times)
• Yet another food worry? Nanoparticles. <<Looks like the FDA is ignoring another mystery substance that is now in our foods and other products. Should be a fun ride. (Food Politics)
• Infant Gut Microbiota Influenced by Cesarean Section and Breastfeeding Practices; May Impact Long-Term Health <<Very interesting new data on the importance of gut bacteria, and how they are shaped at birth and as an infant. (ScienceDaily)
• What’s the Right Way to Season a Cast Iron Skillet? <<I learned a lot from this. Smart stuff. (Lifehacker)
• egg salad with pickled celery and coarse dijon <<Egg salad is one of my favorite foods, and now I’m dying to try it with pickled celery. (smitten kitchen)
• Calorie Detective <<Although I’m no fan of counting calories, I’m also not a fan of lying about them. Keep in mind that if you’re eating pre-made or packaged foods, you’re almost certainly eating more than you realize. (New York Times)

What inspired you this week?

For The Love of Food

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

This week’s top 10 require careful reading and a little extra thinking, but it’s worth it. Learn why daily activity is more important than formal exercise, how habits can affect your food intake, some encouraging news from the USDA and more.

Want to see all my favorite links? Be sure to follow me on on Digg. I also share links on Twitter (@summertomato) and the Summer Tomato Facebook fan page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you.

Links of the week

• Routine Chores Might Help Keep Dementia at Bay <<This title is misleading, because the most interesting part of this story is that daily activity is more effective than formal exercise for burning calories. Also, this preserves your mind. (Medline)
• People eat out of habit, a study finds, even when food is stale <<This is exactly why I’m always encouraging you to eat mindfully. Interestingly, in this study even eating with your non-dominant hand seemed to help. (Los Angeles Times)
• Nutrition: A Low-Calorie Meal Is Shown to Pay Off <<BS of the week. I’m all for eating less and I think you can be successful at it, but this is a poorly designed study using junk food as a meal and it only lasted 2 weeks. How that can be considered “effective” is beyond me. (New York Times)
• USDA seeks method to compensate farmers for GM contamination <<Remember in the movie Food Inc. when Monsanto sues an organic farmer because their seeds contaminated his crop? Hopefully this works out and puts and end to ridiculous things like that. (Food Politics)
• Why I never eat breakfast cereal. <<Breakfast cereal isn’t really food, and my friend Yoni who works with obesity patients for a living thinks it may also prevent weight loss. Worth considering. (Weighty Matters)
• Eating purple potato may lower blood pressure for the overweight <<This really isn’t necessarily restricted to purple potatoes. What it shows is that at least some potatoes aren’t as bad for you as bread. (Los Angeles Times)
• Helpful Gut Microbes May Differ Based on Diet <<I find this new area of research absolutely fascinating. This study shows heavy meat eaters have different microbial gut patterns than herbivores. At this point there’s no reason to prefer one to the other, but down the line it may help explain why dietary patterns are more important to your health than short-term changes. (Medline)
• Vitamin D levels tied to colon cancer risk <<Yet another reason to be sure your vitamin D levels are in a healthy range. Mine weren’t until I started taking supplements. (Medline)
• Hyperinsulinemia: Cause or Effect of Obesity? <<For geeks’ eyes only. Understanding this article requires a fairly sophisticated understanding of human metabolism and biochemistry, but if you have those things and are interested in exploring some of the fallacies of Gary Taubes’ carb argument, you’ll love this one. (Whole Health Source)
• roasted tomato and thyme soup <<A beautiful looking recipe, though I would personally leave out the sugar since tomatoes are so sweet right now. (the sophisticated gourmet)

What inspired you this week?