For The Love of Food

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

This week how your nose fools your brain, why olive oil is better than canola, and the secret to perfectly cooked veggies.

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.

Some truly fantastic articles this week including new data that farmers markets aren’t as expensive as you think, how to cut calories with a knife, and one of my favorite go-to recipes ever.

Want to see all my favorite links? Be sure to follow me on on Digg. I also share links at 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

• New Study Compares Prices at Farmers’ Markets and Supermarkets. The Results Might Surprise You. <<Turns out when you actually do the comparison farmers markets are pretty affordable, particularly for organics. (Politics of the Plate)
• The “No Nitrites Added” Hoax <<Speaking of nutritionism, here it is at it’s worst. Just because it is natural, doesn’t make it nitrite free–if that even matters. Great investigative work by Michael Ruhlman.
• Do Cooking Shows Make You Fat? <<BS of the week. Though the article does a decent job of exploring the pros and cons, the idea that the popularization of food and cooking could be a bad thing makes me nauseated. We’d all be better served by embracing a stronger food culture. (Fox News)
• Rethinking Saturated Fat? <<I had the great pleasure of meeting Dr. Weil this week, and was struck by how thoughtfully he fields questions. Interesting to see his take on saturated fat evolve. (Dr. Weil)
• Is sodium a dietary red herring for the effects of processed foods? <<Totally agree with Yoni on this one. Interesting to see where the great salt debate finally lands. (Weighty Matters)
• How to Make Your Herbs Last Longer <<Just in time for spring! I have a lot of trouble keeping herbs fresh, so am excited to try these tricks. (Serious Eats)
• Cutting calories could be as easy as cutting up your food <<All these little behavioral tricks to cut calories can add up. Grab a knife. (Los Angeles Times)
• A Fresh Food Diet Rapidly Reduces Bisphenol-A Content Of Your Body <<Worried about BPA? Good news, it’s easy to cut your levels with a healthy diet. (TreeHugger)
• The Antidote to Fructose Fears <<Great perspective here for those of you who are now worried about fruit being dangerous because of the fructose it contains. (Nutrition Overeasy)
• Easiest Bean or Grain Salad on the Planet <<I love this because I seriously eat a variety of this several times a week, usually for lunch. Try using miso in place of the dijon mustard on occasion. (Mark Bittman)

What inspired you this week?

Photo by Daryl Marquardt

People trying to cut calories and refined carbohydrates out of their diet often turn to deli meats as a high protein, low fat alternative. But is this really a good idea?

While refined carbohydrates increase your risk of diabetes and heart disease, so do processed meats including sausage, bacon and deli meats. It is unlikely to be the fat (or even the saturated fat) in these products that do the damage, since processed meats are consistently shown to be more dangerous than saturated fat alone.

In fact, what the food manufacturers replace the fat with often ends up being much more risky.

What’s in them?

Take a quick look at the ingredients of a Louis Rich turkey variety pack:

Smoked White Turkey: White Turkey, Water, Salt, Contains less than 2% of Modified Corn Starch, Sodium Lactate, Sugar, Sodium Phosphates, Sodium Erythorbate (Made From Sugar), Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Nitrite, Garlic Powder.

Smoked Turkey Ham: Turkey Thigh Meat, Water, Contains less than 2% of Salt, Sodium Lactate, Sugar, Sodium Phosphates, Sodium Erythorbate (Made From Sugar), Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Nitrite, Flavor.

Turkey Bologna: Turkey Ingredients (Mechanically Separated Turkey, Turkey), Water, Modified Corn Starch, Contains less than 2% of Salt, Sodium Lactate, Corn Syrup, Dextrose, Flavor, Enzyme Modified Skim Milk, Sodium Phosphates, Sodium Erythorbate (Made From Sugar), Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Nitrite, Extractives of Paprika.

Turkey Cotto Salami: Turkey Ingredients (Turkey, Mechanically Separated Turkey), Water, Turkey Hearts, Contains less than 2% of Salt, Sodium Lactate, Sugar, Sodium Phosphates, Spice, Sodium Erythorbate (Made From Sugar), Garlic Powder, Sodium Diacetate, Sodium Nitrite, Flavor.

What exactly is “flavor”? I’ll let you ponder that one.

These meats are pumped full of starch, sugar, salt, preservatives and other random ingredients. Given the quality of the meat they use (“mechanically separated turkey”?) it’s not hard to understand why. All that added “flavor” is needed to make these products taste like juicy meat again.

The low fat versions are even worse, containing higher amounts sugar and salt to make up for the lack of natural fat flavor.

Why is this bad?

The extra starch and sugar are not good since they are, after all, the processed carbohydrates we want to avoid. However these are still a relatively small contribution to total calories. The bigger issues with processed meats are the added sodium and preservatives.

Processed meats have been associated with increased risk of several cancers, particularly those of the digestive system. It has been suggested that the presence of nitrates and nitrates used in the preservation methods are a potential cause, however the data remains inconclusive. Confusing the matter further is that vegetables are the primary source of nitrates in the human diet and some have suggested that in this context they may be a beneficial nutrient.

Heart disease has also been clearly associated with consumption of processed meat, though the reason for the connection is still unknown.

Then there’s the issue of quality. There are a lot of questionable ingredients in highly-processed deli meats like these from Louis Rich. It is unclear if the health risks are the same whether the meats are cured and preserved with high-quality ingredients (charcuterie vs. standard deli meat) or when the meat is preserved without the use of nitrates and nitrites.

What to do

Though it is difficult to point to the exact reason processed meats are dangerous, there is enough evidence associating them with serious health problems to warrant limiting them in your diet. Most of the studies that found associations with processed meats and cancer considered 5 or more servings a week to be a high dose.

To be on the safe side I recommend limiting your intake of processed meats to less than 4 servings per week.

For alternative snack ideas check out Healthy Snacking 101.