Friday Fun! 19 March 2010 7:18 pm
Posted by Tracy in : consumerism,cookies,dessert,eating,fun,nyc,random,silly , 3 commentsHello readers! I know, long time no nothing. Such are the ways of Spring Break (wooo!) even when the earlier part of this week was mostly spent hiding from positively Oregonian-winter weather, and I maybe could have been writing instead of just watching trash TV on Hulu. But no. Spring Break! Woooo!
Today, however, the weather was lovely, and I was positively energetic, which I proved by going on my first New York City bike ride of the season. How is this at all related to TracyFood? Well, I’ll tell you: I needed this bike ride as a test drive (so to speak) for a ridiculous plan.
You see, tomorrow is Macaron Day, and a bunch of NYC bakeries are giving away said delicious treats to celebrate (and do a little self-promotion, but hey: free treats!) And because I am ridiculous, and because the weather is just that lovely, I got it in my head that maybe I could ride my bike from bakery to bakery, collect macarons from all seventeen participating locations (and if I were indeed going to eat seven almond merengue sandwiches with delicious sweet filling, I would need the bike ride to prevent myself from spontaneously combusting on account of all that sugar. So here’s how I schemed. (more…)
Ask TracyFood: should I freak out about genetically modified foods? 10 March 2010 11:05 pm
Posted by Tracy in : agriculture,books,economics,environment,food safety,food snobbery,friends,geekery,GMOs,health,history,Marion Nestle,politics,science,sustainability , 1 comment so farSo I got a message from the splendiferous Ms. Lara earlier today:
Hey, Tracy! Someone on FB is arguing that GM crops are categorically horrible and bad and whatnot. Can you send me some informative links to help educate her (and myself!)? (I seem to recall you linked to an article about the death of an agriculturalist who saved millions of lives with his crops, so of course I thought of you…)
Many thanks to my favorite foodie!!
-L
Well. How could I resist the chance to go all run-on sentence on that? (more…)
Thank You Thursday: Tara Parker-Pope 4 March 2010 8:15 am
Posted by Tracy in : diet stress is a health hazard,eating,good news,health,health at every size,media,news,nutrition,thank you Thursday , 2 commentsSeriously, youse guys, I haven’t been following Tara Parker-Pope’s Well blog for the New York Times super-closely or anything, but on several occasions now it’s been hard for me to ignore the fact that her reporting keeps taking a remarkably reasonable view of health and weight, most recently in a post that’s, well, downright critical of the all-too-popular misconception that weight changes are a simple function of calories consumed and burned—especially for a mainstream publication like the Times (albeit only on one of the paper’s blogs, not in its printed pages, but still). Here’s my favorite part, with boldface emphasis from me on the ideas that were SO EXCITING to see:
“I’m not saying throw up your hands and forget about it,” Dr. Friedman [Jeffrey Friedman, head of Rockefeller University’s molecular genetics lab] said. “Instead of focusing on weight or appearance, focus on people’s health. There are things people can do to improve their health significantly that don’t require normalizing your weight.”
What, you mean there might be more to health than body weight? (more…)
Quick Hit: Point of Order! 3 March 2010 2:44 pm
Posted by Tracy in : consumerism,convenience,eating,economics,food snobbery,geekery,health,news,nutrition,politics , add a commentToday, several news sources I follow are all about a new study comparing the effects of “junk” food taxes and subsidies on healthier food which concluded that the former is better at encouraging people to buy more “healthy” stuff. If this story goes away in less than a week, I will be very surprised, so I’m going to be watching it if only to see how long it persists, and hey, look at me responding to news in a timely manner for a change, woo!
That said, my one-word response to this study story is: AUGH. (more…)
