Top Ten Links of the Week: 10/15/10 – 10/21/10

Sweet readers! This week, the links are all about solutions. Okay, and some alarming facts about obesity and food waste. But mostly, it's the solutions thing. Behold! And start solving things!

1) New York Times: Op-chart – Lunch Line Redesign
Wow! Solution-based, super-neat interactive graphic shows how to optimize school cafeteria lunches for healthy eating. Parents! Educators! People who love solution-based, super-neat interactive graphics! Take a look at this thing!

2) Money Saving Mom: Buying Special Diet Foods on a Budget
A one-two punch of practical advice and inspiring you-can-do-it-iveness, this piece on cooking for a family with food limitations of varying severity could be the most useful thing you read all year. Besides your IKEA bed assembly instructions. Those are good, too.

3) Lifehacker
Eat Your Way to a High-Energy Workday
Five Best Recipe Search Tools
How to Freeze and Thaw Your Food the Right Way
Three solid leftovers from Lifehacker’s Food Week. Read 'em and eat.

4) Nation’s Restaurant News: Picking out local food not so easy
In an informal taste test of supermarket and farmer’s market foods, three experienced chefs usually couldn’t detect a difference in flavor or quality. Which brings up the question: Is locavorism just hype?

5) 20 Favorite Dirt Cheap Meals
This reader-generated list of cheapo breakfasts, lunches, and dinners is a solid resource for those times when you’re gazing blankly into the abyss of your Frigidaire. Also, it will familiarize you with the words “Skint pie,” which don’t mean what you would assume they mean.

6) Treehugger: Walmart's Newest Sustainability Initiative Focuses on Local Produce, Small Farmers
Man, I want to be all cynical and hipster-like and Brooklynesque here, but I just can’t. “Supporting farmers and their communities, producing more food with fewer resources and less waste,” are some noble, innoventive goals, and I really hope the Walton family can pull it off.

7) New York Times: Going on a Diet? Start Paying in Cash.
Bring some Hamiltons on your next grocery trip, everybody. Why? “Paying with credit or debit cards makes people more likely to make impulsive, unhealthy food purchases, according to a new study in The Journal of Consumer Research.”

8) The Kitchn: What’s the Difference? Yellow, White, and Red Onions
Finally, someone explains the ongoing existence of the seemingly extraneous white onion. Now, how about tackling yams vs. sweet potatoes?

9) HuffPo: Why We Waste So Much
Last week, we learned that we U.S. citizens chuck about 25% of our food. This week, American Wasteland author Jonathan Bloom explains why, boiling it down to two things: “because we take it for granted,” and “because we can.” Cue sad trombone.

10) The Kitchn: Ways to Improve Store-bought Broth
Confession: I go through stock so quickly, there’s no time to make enough at home. Fotunately, College Inn has always been there for me, and here, The Kitchn lists ways to improve its flavor.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

The Kitchn: 5 Quick Tips for Choosing Winter Squash
In Soviet Russia, winter squash chooses YOU.

Lifehacker: Carry Drinks in a Muffin Tin
Oh. Muh. Gawrsh. Why didn’t I think of this? Goes perfectly with Tuesday’s Ask the Internet.

Neatorama: 15 Cool and Creepy Halloween Party Foods
Delight your children, terrify your parents. Especially with the Rat on a Stick thing.

stonesoup: 7 Golden Rules of Freezing Food
Solid guidelines for optimal icing.

USA Today: Obesity Costs $168 Billion, Study Finds
Can you believe an estimated 17% of our health care spending is obesity-related? If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, $168 billion will buy him Liechtenstein.

Wallet Pop: 9 Top Ways We Waste Money 2010
High-end coffee, bottled water, brand name products, and eating out make up over half this list. Sounds about right.

Weird Worm: 6 Poisonous Foods We Still Eat
You might have known about Absinthe and puffer fish, but what about potatoes, almonds, and nutmeg? Here’s a fun fact: one of them contains cyanide. Actual cyanide! Happy Halloweeeeeen!

AND ALSO

Joel Burns: It Gets Better
It starts with a list of teens – children, really - who recently committed suicide after being bullied for being or "acting" gay. It continues with a testimonial from Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns, himself a gay man, that will alternately move you and fill you with sadness. Parents, please don’t let your kids be jerks.



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