Tag: food
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The Brain on Food: Everyday Chemicals
Regarding all the foods that we consume as a drugs is a wondrous way to examine and comprehend the complex interactions and subtle forces behind how everything we put in our mouths affects “how our neurons behave and, subsequently, how we think and feel”. In a compelling article that suggests our shared evolutionary history with the plants…
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The Best of Mark Bittman’s The Minimalist
Earlier this year The New York Times published the last of Mark Bittman’s The Minimalist: a weekly column designed “to get people cooking simply, comfortably, and well”. To honour this occasion he reviewed the 1,000+ dishes that have appeared in his almost 700 columns, the culmination of which is a list of Mark Bittman’s favourite twenty-five recipes from thirteen…
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Food-Based Body Clock the Key to Jet Lag
The primary cause of jet lag (or desynchronosis as it’s correctly known) is the disruption of our circadian rhythms based on the daily light–dark cycles we experience. However this is only the case when food is in plentiful supply, with new research suggesting that circadian rhythms based on food availability are able to override those of the light-dark cycle. This…
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Sweetness and the Problem with Diet Sodas
The link between the sweetness of a food and its caloric content may be a trait that our bodies have evolved to recognise. By disrupting what could be a “fundamental homeostatic, physiological process” by using artificial sweeteners, we could be promoting obesity. That’s the conclusion Jonah Lehrer draws from a study that looks at how…
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Blood Sugar and the Depletion of Self-Control
Self-control is a finite resource, goes the ego depletion theory, and through various means can be “used-up”. What, exactly, depletes and builds this resource isn’t fully known but a number of studies have shown some intriguing correlations with blood glucose level (explaining, possibly, the cookie self-control study). The abstract of a study by Roy Baumeister summarises the findings…
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The Evidence on Breastfeeding
In an article the Royal Statistical Society announced as the runner-up in their annual Awards for Statistical Excellence in Journalism, Helen Rumbelow thoroughly investigates the well-debated subject of breastfeeding. The conclusion of the piece is that much of the evidence in support of breastfeeding is massively misrepresented or inherently flawed. “The evidence to date suggests…
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Seven Threats to a Sustainable ‘Food Future’
In a hugely captivating and comprehensive look at the food supply chain in Britain, Jeremy Harding provides a look at “the future of food and its supply”–including food ethics, food security and the dire need for a sustainable future. Harding’s case is the most cogent I’ve read and it offers much more than a condemnation…
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Taxes (Not Subsidies) Control Calorie Intake
It’s not surprising to discover that in an experiment looking at how taxes and subsidies can be used to influence healthier food purchases it was the taxing of unhealthy food that improved choices, not the subsidisation of healthy options. Strangely, though, it turns out that the health food subsidies actually worsened choices (the study theorises that…
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The Rise of Cooking Shows, the Fall of Cooking (and Happiness)
I almost ignored this bit-too-long piece on the rise of the TV cooking show and the simultaneous fall of the home cooked meal (via @borrodell). That decline has several causes: women working outside the home; food companies persuading Americans to let them do the cooking; and advances in technology that made it easier for them…