From Prevention Magazine: The 7 foods experts won't eat and 11 health food impostors

Ran across these two interesting lists recently, both from Prevention:

The 7 foods experts won't eat

Some of the 7:

- Canned tomatoes (due to the danger of bisphenol A -- why haven't companies just taken the BPA out of the damn cans already? For more on BPA, see Marion Nestle's BPA posts.)

- Microwave popcorn (due to chemicals that vaporize and go into the popcorn during microwaving)

- Non-organic potatoes (The article says:"Try this experiment: Buy a conventional potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won't," says Moyer, who is also farm director of the Rodale Institute (also owned by Rodale Inc., the publisher of Prevention). "I've talked with potato growers who say point-blank they would never eat the potatoes they sell. They have separate plots where they grow potatoes for themselves without all the chemicals.")

- Non-organic apples (also due to high rate of pesticide absorption)

(Potatoes and apples are both on the Environmental Working Group's "Dirty Dozen" list - the 12 fruits and vegetables for which EWG says it's worth the money to buy organic.)

The other interesting list from Prevention is 11 Health Food Impostors, which include:

- vitamin water (yay, zero-calorie water with lots of calories added in!)

- spinach wraps

-"calorie-free" spray margarine (labeling loophole means it does have calories)

The margarine one got my attention because I like cooking with olive oil, but sometimes trying to drizzle it (for example, over potatoes before roasting them) yields pretty uneven results. So, as the article recommended, I bought a Misto sprayer last weekend and so far, so good. The Misto cost $8 plus tax at Bed Bath and Beyond (original price $10, before one of the 20% coupons they often mail or include in the newspaper).

And it even appears to be American-made -- "assembled" in the USA at least, according to the box.

Prevention says "Olive oil lessens inflammation throughout the body, which helps your heart and lowers cancer risk, thanks to monounsaturated fatty acids." Good to know, although taking a cue from Michael Pollan and others, I think it's still important not to overemphasize a nutrient out of its original context in whole foods (What's next? "hey, this Easy Cheese includes omega-3s!" Why do I crack wise about Easy Cheese? It was recently included in an article on "The 6 Weirdest, Scariest Processed Foods.")

Openers

I've decided to start blogging about food and cooking, inspired in part by the Julie & Julia movie and the books that inspired it, as well as a friend doing the same and some books I've been reading recently, including Food Matters by Mark Bittman and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.

(However, I have no expectation of getting a book deal like Julie Powell did. Not that I'd mind. :-)

Food-related blogs I read often include:

Marion Nestle's Food Politics (her book by the same name has the subtitle "How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health")

The Bitten food blog by Mark Bittman of the New York Times

Bittman wrote something very interesting a while back -- if you have time to watch other people cook on TV, then you have time to actually cook for yourself. Makes sense to me and I've been trying to do more of that.

The Well health blog by Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times, which often includes "Recipes for Health"

I occasionally tweet about food and cooking, although my Twitter feed also includes posts on Pennsylvania and national politics, as well as gay issues (and other random thoughts).

Since this is a food blog, and this is my first post (kind of like an "aperitif"?), I'll close by mentioning something funny another friend said recently: "I'll bet this is the first time boilo and 'aperitif' have been mentioned in the same sentence."