0 Top 10 Links of the Week 1 29 10 – 2 4 10

This week, its exploding soup, C3PO cereal, and lessons learned, all around. Have a wonderful Super Bowl Sunday, sweet readers. Have a beer or five.

1) The Kitchn: Why Does Soup Explode Out of My Blender?
I can’t tell you how often I’ve done this. How many more long-sleeved t-shirts must die?

2) Dark Roasted Blend: Weird Festivals and Strange Celebrations
From tomato tossing to cheese rolling to the Great Belgian Orange Throw of ’09, this collection of bizarre carnivals will amaze your friends, impress your parents, and possibly shoop.

3) Lifehacker: Store Brand Foods that Save You Money Without Sacrificing Taste
Consumer Reports just did a study comparing brand named groceries to generics. And? The generics, which cost an average of 27% less, did as well or better in most tests (except barbecue sauce, which … granted).

4) LA Times: With Master Cleanse, Clarity Gained – With a Twist
The Master Cleanse (for which you eat nothing but maple-and-cayenne spiked lemonade for ten days) supposedly clears your mind, revs up your appetite, and helps you lose weight. Writer Jessica Gelt tried it. This is her light-headed, calorie-deprived story.

5) Money Saving Mom: Lessons I’ve Learned from the Pantry Challenge
Recently, MSM readers took the Pantry Challenge, in which they cooked for a week using their pre-existing stocks of food. Guest poster Jennifer learned a ton in the process, and her observations should help any burgeoning frugalist.

6) New York Times: Six Meaningless Claims on Food Labels
In which the Gray Lady confirms that “All Natural” (and five other dastardly claims) mean absolutely nothing, like a Kate Hudson movie or promises from your landlord.

7) Ellen: Ellen is Sugar-free - Day 4
Ms. DeGeneres and one of her writers are going sans sugar for an entire week, and keeping a video diary about the ordeal. Ellen’s a vegan, so I don’t expect this to affect her too much, but the writer is having headaches and sleeping issues. Writers: oh, how we suffer.

8) Cavalcade of Awesome: The Grocery Aisle of Long Forgotten Breakfast Cereals
Go for the sweet pics of vintage cereal boxes like Waffle-Os and C3POs, but stay for the best blog banner EVAH.

9) Casual Kitchen: Mindful Chewing – How to Cut Your Calorie Intake in Half Without Feeling Hungry
Remember the olden days of yore, when your grandparents told you to chew each piece of food 20 to 30 times before you swallowed? Turns out, they were right. They were right about EVERYTHING. (Except the War of the Worlds debacle. Oh, New Jersey. You so crazy.)

10) MSN Smart Spending: Would you pay more for less Coke?
You know those new mini Coke cans? The 8-ounce dealies that supposedly restrict your calorie intake by restricting portion sizes? According to MSN, they’re “50% to 140% more per ounce than the regular 12-ounce cans,” not to mention TERRIBLE for birds and trees and such. And your health. There is no upside here.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Bon Appetit: The 10 Rules of Making Nachos
Who loves ya, baby?

Hide Your Arms: 200 T-Shirts for Food Lovers
Just in time for V-day! (Thanks to the Kitchn for the link. Speaking of which...)

The Kitchn:

Making Smoothies Easy – Tips from Alton Brown
Raw to Sweet – How to Change the Intensity of Onions
What are Light and Savory Ways to Use Canned Pumpkin?
Another week, another spectacular collection of posts from the Kitchn. These are but a few of mah favorites.

Lifehacker: Repurpose Your Rice Cooker to Make Tasty One Pot Meals
Short, sweet starter article on the beauty of the rice cooker, The Husband-Elect loves his more than he loves Batman. Which is a lot.

New York Post: Manhattan Snack Lack
Big Apple-ites are thin because we/they don’t snack. I thought it was from the constant beatings.

Slashfood: Budweiser Launches 55-calorie Beer
Yay?

AND ALSO

Axecop
Written by a five-year-old and drawn by his 29-year-old brother, Axecop is the story of a cop with an axe. Also, Unibaby, the baby with a unicorn head. Hilarious and excellent. If you read nothing else this week...

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0 Exercise Does a Body – and a Mind – Good

We’ve heard it time and time again: exercise is good for us. And it’s not just good for physical health – research shows that daily physical activity can also boost our mental health. But what actually accounts for the association between exercise and mental health?

A new article in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, explores whether certain psychosocial factors may help to explain the benefits of daily physical activity for adolescents’ mental health.

Karin Monshouwer of the Trimbos Institute in the Netherlands and colleagues at Trimbos and VU University Medical Center specifically wanted to examine two existing explanations for the link between exercise and mental health. The self-image hypothesis suggests that physical activity has positive effects on body weight and body structure, leading to positive feedback from peers and improved self-image, and ultimately improving mental health. The social interaction hypothesis, on the other hand, holds that it’s the social aspects of physical activity – such as social relationships and mutual support among team members – that contribute to the positive effects of exercise on mental health.

Monshouwer and her colleagues surveyed over 7000 Dutch students, ages 11 to 16. The adolescents completed validated surveys aimed at assessing their physical activity, mental health problems, body weight perception, and participation in organized sports. The researchers also gathered data on the adolescents’ age, gender, and socioeconomic status; whether they lived at home with their parents; and whether they lived in an urban area.

The researchers found that adolescents who were physically inactive or who perceived their bodies as either “too fat” or “too thin” were at greater risk for both internalizing problems (e.g., depression, anxiety) and externalizing problems (e.g., aggression, substance abuse). Adolescents who participated in organized sports, on the other hand, were at lower risk for mental health problems.

Confirming both the self-image hypothesis and the social interaction hypothesis, adolescents’ body weight perception (i.e., “too heavy,” “good,” or “too thin”) and sports club membership each partially accounted for the relationship between physical activity and mental health, even after taking adolescents’ backgrounds into account.

These results suggest that certain psychosocial factors – body image and social interaction – may help to explain at least part of the connection between physical activity and mental health. The researchers acknowledge, however, that other factors, such as the physiological effects of exercise, are probably also at work.

“We think that these findings are important for policymakers and anyone who works in healthcare or prevention. Our findings indicate that physical activity may be one effective tool for the prevention of mental health problems in adolescence,” says Monshouwer.

Monshouwer and her colleagues hope that future studies will be able to examine similar questions while following participants over time. Such longitudinal studies could help researchers to understand how physical activity type and context might influence the relationship between exercise and mental health.

0 Top 10 Links of the Week 7 16 10 – 7 22 10

We’re coming to the home stretch of No-Cook Month, sweet readers. Just two more dishes and a giant recipe rundown (coming Wednesday) to go. But first, before we get there, we must experience THE LINKS.

From Getcrafty.com.

1) Casual Kitchen: Dont Pay Up For That Cookbook! How to Spend Next to Nothing on a Great Recipe Collection
Fabulous post about saving big dough on recipe tomes. Between libraries, the interwebs, and your pals, there’s almost no need to buy cookbooks at all. (Except for Cook’s Illustrated books. We must always support Chris Kimball. We MUST.)

2) Salon: My new grandmothers cooking changed me forever
This is the second piece from Riddhi Shah we’ve linked to in the last few weeks, because she’s just a wonderful writer. This essay, about discovering her grandmother-in-law’s culture and traditional cuisine after some regionally-induced apprehension, is gorgeous. Please read.

3) Good Eater: Are Large-Scale Grass-Fed Beef Operations Feasible?
The answer: a surprising “yes.” The La Cense Ranch in Montana raises several thousand cows humanely, making CAFOs seems less necessary than ever.

4) Huffington Post: “Urban Homesteading”? That’ll Cost You
This account of one woman’s quest for jam jars illustrates a very important point for potential canners and aspiring jammers: start-up costs are nothing to laugh at. While you may be tempted by the plethora of beautiful, pro-homesteading blog posts, home food preservation is not an easy venture. Over time, it works out, but make sure you’re in for the long haul, or suffer the (expensive) consequences.

5) Culinate: An update on genetically engineered meat and fish
I realize genetic engineering might be impossible to escape, especially with Earth’s population growing exponentially, and food requirements increasing commensurately. But man, it makes me uncomfortable. The FDA hasn’t approved any GE animals yet, so maybe these worries are premature, but this state-of-the-industry piece makes it seem like they’re getting ever closer.

6) Eater: The Ultimate Mad Men Guide to NYC Bars and Restaurants
Draper/Holloway fans, you gotta see this. Just in time for Sunday’s Season 4 premiere, Eater created this sweet map of pubs, lounges, and various steakhouses frequented by the Sterling Cooper crew. Many don’t exist anymore, but it’s super neat to imagine the bygone era of Peggys, Rogers, and … okay, Petes.

7) Slate: 10 Tips To Reduce Your Food Waste
Sweet reader-sourced roundup of tips, guaranteed to keep your greens from wilting for just a few days longer. More suggestions in the comment thread.

8) The Kitchn: Help Me Find Healthy, Balanced Meals That Freeze Well?
If you guess what this post is about, I’ll give you ten dollars. What? What’s that you say? It’s about “balanced meals that freeze well”? Dang. What tipped it off? Oh. The title. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go take out a loan.

9) Serious Eats: How to Handle Eggplant Overload
With eggplant season upon us, you may be wondering how to handle the glorious purple bounty. Carolyn Cope has answers. Quick! Take care of it before the zucchini gets here!

10) Huffington Post: Food Magazines and Periodicals
Good summary of available foodie mags, slightly compromised by the ultra-irritating slideshow presentation. Yarg! I hate those things. (Also: mayonnaise, e-mail forwards, and FOX NY news anchor Rosanna Scotto.)

HONORABLE MENTION

Brooklyn Paper: ‘Whole’ lotta indecision! Clean-up done, but Whole Foods isn’t sure about Gowanus site
This is my neighborhood! It has to be “decontaminated” before a grocery store moves in! Um … represent?

The Epi-Log: What’s the Best Way to Get Rid of Fruit Flies?
Massive comment thread filled with suggestions. A bowl of beer works for us. They sip, they drown. Not unlike me on Super Bowl Sunday. (Im here all week, folks. Dont forget to tip your waiter.)

Food Politics: Kellogg’s drops health claims from cereal boxes (sort of)
When is a trumped-up ingredient (40% of your daily fiber!) also an implied health claim? Marion Nestle explores.

Hunter Angler Gardener Cook: Wild Plums Everywhere and Nowhere
It’s plum season! YAY! And there are such things as cherry plums? DOUBLE YAY!

The Kitchn: 10 Nerdy Kitchen Finds in Honor of Comic Con
The Empire Strikes Back space slug oven mitt is mah favorite.

Lamebook: Gouda God!
Cheese puns. They are the stuff of life.

Lifehacker: The Five-Second Rule Could Actually Apply, But Mostly Outdoors
It’s better to drop food outside than inside, as dirt germs on your food are better than chemical residue. Makes sense.

The Motherload: Freezing Blueberries in 3 Easy Steps
They forgot Step #0.5! (Do not eat all the blueberries first.)

AND ALSO

Gizmodo: Darth Vader Robbed a Bank
Only he could be so bold.

Thank you so much for visiting Cheap Healthy Good! (We appreciate it muchly). If you’d like to further support CHG, subscribe to our RSS feed! Or become a Facebook friend! Or check out our Twitter! Or buy something inexpensive, yet fulfilling via that Amazon store (on the left)! Bookmarking sites and links are nice, too. Viva la France!