For The Love of Food

Texas & Tea

Before I list off my favorite food and health articles of the week, I have a few announcements to make.

First, I’m leaving today for Austin, TX for the South By Southwest conference. If you’re going to be out there feel free to email or tweet me, I’d love to meet you. While I’m gone we’ll have a farmers market update from a good friend of mine in Portland, OR. I hope you enjoy it!

Also, I’m thrilled to announce that Samovar Tea Lounge is offering a special 20% discount for Summer Tomato readers on all online purchases from now until March 31. If you are familiar with Samovar, you know how awesome this is. If you don’t know about Samovar but love tea or are looking to explore it further, this is a great opportunity to indulge a little. They also have some great gift sets if you’re looking to get your Mother’s Day shopping out of the way early.

Discount is applied at checkout with coupon code: summertea

Links of the week

• Salty, sweet: study says fat is the sixth “taste” <<To a neuroscientist this is really exciting news. Taste really happens in the brain, ya know. This means our taste element tally now includes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami (protein) and fat. Maybe this explains why we all love bacon so much. (Reuters)
• Women Who Drink Gain Less Weight <<Um, happy Friday! (New York Times)
• Obesity: Food kills, flab protects <<BS of the week. The reasoning in this article is very specious. Just because body fat may not be a direct cause of (it is certainly correlated with) heart disease doesn’t mean it might not play a direct role in other diseases (like breast cancer). I left a comment on this article expressing my frustration. (New Scientist)
• Study Finds Link Between Red Wine, Letting Mother Know What You Really Think <<Hahaha, it’s funny because it’s true. (The Onion)
• My Ketogenic Mediterranean Diet and Low-Carb Eating: Six-Month Summary <<Dr. Steve Parker had been doing a low-carb, ketogenic experiment on himself and has now published his 6 month summary. If you haven’t followed along I highly recommend going back and reading through his experiences on his blog. Thanks for the shout-out Steve! (Diabetic Mediterranean Diet Blog)
• Breast-Milk Cheese ― The Ultimate in Local Sourcing? <<Why? Just why. (SF Weekly)
• For a long sex life, stay healthy <<If the promise of avoiding heart disease isn’t enough to get you to the farmers market every week, maybe this will help motivate you. (Los Angeles Times)
• Aloo Gobi <<Cauliflower is exquisite right now, which means I will be making this Indian recipe for cauliflower and potato from [No Recipes] as soon as I get back from Austin.
• Colbert Warns of Contaminated Pringles <<This is a must watch. The video is pretty short and Stephen Colbert makes a brilliant point about how many flavors of pressed potato dust sweepings you can make if you set your mind to it. (The Colbert Report)
  

  The Colbert Report	Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
  Consumer Alert – Pringles
  www.colbertnation.com
  http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:267053
  Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Skate Expectations

• Dan Barber: How I fell in love with a fish <<Now that I have your attention, please do yourself and the world a favor and watch Dan Barber’s TED talk. Personally I like it a lot more than Jamie Oliver’s talk (though I enjoyed his very much). This video makes it perfectly clear why farmers, foodies and environmentalists are (or at least should be) all on the same team.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

Enjoy and have a lovely weekend.

I read many more wonderful articles than I post here each week. If you’d like to see more or just don’t want to wait until Friday, be sure to follow me on Twitter (@summertomato) or the Summer Tomato Facebook fan page. For complete reading lists join me on the social bookmarking sites StumbleUpon and Delicious. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you there. (Note: If you want a follow back on Twitter introduce yourself with an @ message).

For The Love of Food

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

For some reason the New York Times was brimming with great food and health articles this week. I particularly like the expose of meaningless food labels and the article on the wonders of the pressure cooker. And if you feel like giggling, find out why Stephen Colbert thinks being skinny is un-American.

I read many more wonderful articles than I post here each week. If you’d like to see more or just don’t want to wait until Friday, be sure to follow me on Twitter (@summertomato) or the Summer Tomato Facebook fan page. For complete reading lists join me on the social bookmarking sites StumbleUpon and Delicious. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you there. (Note: If you want a follow back on Twitter introduce yourself with an @ message).

For The Love of Food

• Buy a Virtual Slice of Dessert…and Help Haiti <<My friend Michelle Stern is running a fund raiser for Haiti with some help from some other food bloggers. Check out what they have going. (What’s Cooking)
• Six Meaningless Claims on Food Labels <<You probably know by now that I don’t like foods with labels. Here’s a good review of why I feel that way. (New York Times)
• Calcium – The Wonder Mineral <<BS of the week. Another dose of unimaginably irresponsible and unscientific journalism from DIR. Clinical trials have shown that calcium and dairy do not protect against fractures or osteoporosis. Calcium is also linked to prostate cancer. It is definitely an important nutrient and you should be sure to get enough of it, but “wonder mineral”? I don’t think so. (Diets In Review)
• Low-carb diets may trump low-fat in lowering blood pressure <<We already know that low-fat diets are useless in weight loss and preventing heart disease. Looks like they lose the battle in lowering blood pressure too. (Los Angeles Times)
• Vitamin D May Lower Colon Cancer Risk << The case for vitamin D just keeps growing. It is the only supplement I take besides a multivitamin. (HealthDay)
• Exercise: In Women, Training for a Sharper Mind <<A new study suggest that strength training can help prevent cognitive decline in older women. Great news! (New York Times)
• Video Gaming Just Might Fight Aging <<Video games also seem to help keep brains sharp with age. (HealthDay)
• Pressure Cooking: Fast, Healthy Eating << My favorite piece of kitchen equipment finally made it into the New York Times! Read up!
• Ginger Edamame Soybean Soup (Bacon?) & How we took the photograph <<Doesn’t this recipe sound (and look) amazing? I’m so there. (White On Rice Couple)
• Colbert Report: The Word – Manifest Density <<Stephen Colbert thinks it’s un-American to be skinny, and it’s too funny to miss.

For The Love of Food

Welcome back to For The Love of Food. Thanks to everyone who sent me articles this week, I couldn’t have done it without you. We have a ton of great stuff here. I particularly love the Cheerios story, the fake “local” food from Frito-Lay and the video clip of Michael Pollan on The Colbert Report.

If you would like to see more of my favorite articles each week or just don’t want to wait until Friday, be sure to follow me on Twitter (@summertomato) or the Summer Tomato Facebook fan page.

Submissions of your own best food and health articles are also welcome, just drop me an email using the contact form.

For The Love of Food

• Killing Us Softly: Cigarettes and Industrial Food <<Wonderful essay comparing the current food industry to the old tobacco industry, from La Vida Locavore (@LocavoreBlog).

• 13 strategies for shopping a farmers market <<Great advice from the Chicago Tribune.

• The FDA is going after health claims? At last! <<Turns out Cheerios (fake whole grains) are not as effective as statins at reducing cholesterol, and the FDA is not happy about them pretending to be. Woohoo! Another gem from Marion Nestle (@marionnestle).

• When ‘Local’ Makes It Big << OH SNAP! New York Times calls out Frito-Lay and other food industry giants for pretending to sell local food. But I know you guys won’t be fooled. I love this movement because it supports the exact opposite of selling out. Big Ag would love to package, cheapen and sell “local” like they have with organic, but this time they can’t do it without looking like fools. Funny to watch them try though.

• Dietary supplements’ regulations hard to digest <<Fascinating and scary explanation of how the FDA doesn’t do enough to regulate dietary supplements, from Marion Nestle at the SF Chronicle.

• It really does help <<Great advice on how to stay inspired to cook yourself dinner when you lack motivation, from Orangette.

• Are you guilty of DWE (Driving While Eating)? <<See why it is both unhealthy and dangerous to eat and drive, from Eleanor at Make Friends With Food.

• Better Living Through Homemade Yogurt <<Who knew it could be so easy and affordable to make your own yogurt? From Good and thanks to @reverend_bunnie for the link.

• Food Companies Try, But Can’t Guarantee Safety <<Did you know frozen dinners can kill you if you do not heat them properly? From NYTimes and thanks to @sandrasay for the link.

• Michael Pollan on The Colbert Report

Let us know what you think!