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Is sugar or fat more dangerous to your diet?

Food for thought about the relative danger of sugar versus fat.

This doesn’t mean you should eat steak for every meal. Most of your diet should still be vegetables, with some fruit, too. Real fruit, with fiber, not fruit juice.

It does mean that most people don’t need to eat refined starches, such as bread, pasta, and rice, which quickly turn into sugar in your gastrointestinal tract.  Whole-grain products like whole-grain breads with lots of fiber are preferable because they smooth out that sugar spike, but you can safely skip those, too, if you want.

Humane, pasture-raised meat? That word, I do not think it means what you think it means

This MW article does a decent job of explaining why food industry labels do not mean as much as you might think, such as “pasture raised,” and there’s long been a problem with how “free range” can mean basically opening a door and theoretically allowing chickens to roam free. Which usually they don’t do.

Is Chromium (Chrome-Plated Steel) Safe or Unsafe?

Seville Classics Stainless Steel Professional Kitchen Cart. The wire basket has a flat perimeter edge that simply rests on two simple rails on either side. The company rates it up to 50 pounds carrying capacity if the weight is equally distributed.
Chrome-plated steel

Chrome Plating is very shiny and hard and is often applied along with a base layer of nickel to bare steel. If you bang into chrome plating with something hard enough times, the chrome plating can wear through and expose the underlying steel, which can rust. As long as you’re not too careless, though, this finish can last for a very long time and is a favorite material for commercial establishments ranging from kitchens to warehouses to retail stores.

Unfortunately chromium has gotten a bad rap from association with its pollutant.  In the film Erin Brockovich, actress Julia Roberts starred as a do-gooder who helped sue a gas and electric utility company for polluting groundwater near a small California town with hexavalent chromium.

So is chromium toxic?  Is chromium plating toxic?  Is stainless steel toxic, since it is comprised of 18% chromium?

[Read more…]

Is Microban / Triclosan Safe or Unsafe?

Rubbermaid Pan Organizer - Coated with Microban-embedded Plastic
Rubbermaid Pan Organizer – Coated with Microban-embedded Plastic

What is Microban?

Microban is a company (Microban International) as well as a product brand name (Microban®) for an antibacterial system that may contain triclosan, a general-purpose antibacterial, and other substances applied to solid plastics and fibers. That system dates back to 1969 and was first used in industrial and medical industries, with introduction to consumer products starting in 1994.

[Read more…]

What counts is not how many calories are in the food–but how many you absorb

This Ars Technica article is in the same vein as another article I linked to several months ago.  The number of calories your body absorbs depends on how the food was processed (if it was processed at all) as well as your individual body chemistry, like what bacteria are in your gastrointestinal tract, or your genes.  So read the calorie counts on nutrition labels with a skeptical eye.

 

What kind of pot boils water fastest? All-Clad? Disc Base? Copper?

Thermometer for testing pot boiling speed
Thermometer for testing pot boiling speed

One question I get a lot is “what kind of pot boils water the fastest?” Here’s the answer.

[Read more…]

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