The Power Foods Diet – by Dr. Neal Barnard
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First, what this is not: it’s not a cookbook. There are recipes, more than a hundred if we consider such things as “barbecue sauce” as a standalone recipe, and if we overlook such things as how “perfect hot oatmeal” is followed on the next page by a recipe for “perfect hot oatmeal with berries”.
However, as we say, it’s not a cookbook; it’s first and foremost an educational text on the topic of nutrition.
Here we will learn about good eating for general health, which foods are natural appetite-suppressants, which foods reduce our body’s absorption of sugars from foods (not merely slowing, but flushing them away so they cannot be absorbed at all), and which foods actually boost metabolism for a few hours after the meal.
Dr. Barnard also talks about some foods that are more healthy, or less healthy, than popularly believed, and how to use all this information to craft a good, optimized, dietary plan for you.
Bottom line: there’s a lot of good information here, and the recipes are simply a bonus.
Click here to check out The Power Foods Diet, and optimize yours!
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Olive Oil vs Coconut Oil – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing extra virgin olive oil to cold-pressed coconut oil, we picked the olive oil.
Why?
While the cold-pressed coconut oil may offer some health benefits due to its lauric acid content, its 80–90% saturated fat content isn’t great for most people. It’s a great oil when applied topically for healthy skin and hair, though!
The extra virgin olive oil has a much more uncontroversially healthy blend of triglycerides, and (in moderation) is universally recognized as very heart-healthy.
Your local supermarket, most likely, has a good extra virgin olive oil, but if you’d like to get some online, here’s an example product on Amazon for your convenience.
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Master Your Core – by Dr. Bohdanna Zazulak
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In the category of “washboard abs”, this one isn’t particularly interested in how much or how little fat you have. What it’s more interested in is a strong, resilient, and stable core. Including your abs yes, but also glutes, hips, and back.
Nor is the focus on superhuman feats of strength, though certainly one could use these exercises to work towards that. Rather, here we see importance placed on functional performance, mobility, and stability.
Lest mobility and stability seem at odds with each other, understand:
- By mobility we mean the range of movement we are able to accomplish.
- By stability, we mean that any movement we make is intentional, and not because we lost our balance.
Functional performance, meanwhile, is a function of those two things, plus strength.
How does the book deliver on this?
There are exercises to do. Exercises of the athletic kind you might expect, and also exercises including breathing exercises, which gets quite a bit of attention too. Not just “do abdominal breathing”, but quite an in-depth examination of such. There are also habits to form, and lifestyle tweaks to make.
Of course, you don’t have to do all the things she suggests. The more you do, the better results you are likely to get, but if you adopt even some of the practices she recommends, you’re likely to see some benefits. And, perhaps most importantly, reduce age-related loss of mobility, stability, and strength.
Bottom line: a great all-rounder book of core strength, mobility, and stability.
Click here to check out Master Your Core and enjoy the more robust health that comes with it!
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Stevia vs Acesulfame Potassium – Which is Healthier?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Our Verdict
When comparing stevia to acesulfame potassium, we picked the stevia.
Why?
You may be wondering: is acesulfame potassium a good source of potassium?
And the answer is: no, it is not. Obviously, it does contain potassium, but let’s do some math here:
- Acesulfame potassium is 200x sweeter than sugar
- Therefore replacing a 15g teaspoon of sugar = 75mg acesulfame potassium
- Acesulfame potassium’s full name is “potassium 6-methyl-2,2-dioxo-2H-1,2λ6,3-oxathiazin-4-olate”
- That’s just one potassium atom in there with a lot of other stuff
- Acesulfame potassium has a molar mass of 201.042 g/mol
- Potassium itself has a molar mass of 39.098 g/mol
- Therefore acesulfame potassium is 100(39.098/201.042) = 19.45% potassium by mass
- So that 75mg of acesulfame potassium contains just under 15mg of potassium, which is less than 0.5% of your recommended daily amount of potassium. Please consider eating a fruit instead.
So, that’s that, and the rest of the nutritional values of both sweeteners are just a lot of zeros.
What puts stevia ahead? Simply, based on studies available so far, moderate consumption of stevia improves gut microdiversity, whereas acesulfame potassium harms gut microdiversity:
- The Effects of Stevia Consumption on Gut Bacteria: Friend or Foe?
- The Artificial Sweetener Acesulfame Potassium Affects the Gut Microbiome
Want to give stevia a try?
Here’s an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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How to Eat 30 Plants a Week – by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
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If you’re used to eating the same two fruits and three vegetables in rotation, the “gold standard” evidence-based advice to “eat 30 different plants per week” can seem a little daunting.
Where this book excels is in reminding the reader to use a lot of diverse plants that are readily available in any well-stocked supermarket, but often get forgotten just because “we don’t buy that”, so it becomes invisible on the shelf.
It’s not just a recipe book (though yes, there are plenty of recipes here); it’s also advice about stocking up and maintaining that stock, advice on reframing certain choices to inject a little diversity into every meal without it become onerous, meal-planning rotation advice, and a lot of recipes that are easy but plant-rich, for example “this soup that has these six plants in it”, etc.
He also gives, for those eager to get started, “10 x 3 recipes per week to guarantee your 30”, in other words, 10 sets of 3 recipes, wherein each set of 3 recipes uses >30 different plants between them, such that if we have each of these set-of-three meals over the course of the week, then what we do in the other 4–18 meals (depending on how many meals per day you like to have) is all just a bonus.
The latter is what makes this book an incredibly stress-free approach to more plant-diverse eating for life.
Bottom line: if you want to be able to answer “do you get your five-a-day?” with “you mean breakfast?” because you’ve already hit five by breakfast each day, then this is the book for you.
Click here to check out How To Eat 30 Plants A Week, and indeed eat 30+ different plants per week!
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DVT Risk Management Beyond The Socks
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝I know I am at higher risk of DVT after having hip surgery, any advice beside compression stockings?❞
First of all, a swift and easy recovery to you!
Surgery indeed increases the risk of deep vein thrombosis (henceforth: DVT), and hip or knee surgery especially so, for obvious reasons.
There are other risk factors you can’t control, like genetics (family history of DVT as an indicator) and age, but there are some that you can, including:
- smoking (so, ideally don’t; do speak to your doctor before quitting though, in case withdrawal might be temporarily worse for you than smoking)
- obesity (so, losing weight is good if overweight, but if this is going to happen, it’ll mostly happen in the kitchen not the gym, which may be a relief as you’re probably not the very most up for exercise at present)
- See also: Lose Weight, But Healthily
- sedentariness (so, while you’re probably not running marathons right now, please do try to keep moving, even if only gently)
Beyond that, yes compression socks, but also frequent gentle massage can help a lot to avoid clots forming.
Also, no surprises, a healthy diet will help, especially one that’s good for general heart health. Check out for example the Mediterranean DASH diet:
Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet
Also, obviously, speak with your doctor/pharmacist if you haven’t already about possible medications, including checking whether any of your current medications increase the risk and could be swapped for something that doesn’t.
Take care!
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Rose Hips vs Blueberries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing rose hips to blueberries, we picked the rose hips.
Why?
Both of these fruits are abundant sources of antioxidants and other polyphenols, but one of them stands out for overall nutritional density:
In terms of macros, rose hips have about 2x the carbohydrates, and/but about 10x the fiber. That’s an easy calculation and a clear win for rose hips.
When it comes to vitamins, rose hips have a lot more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, B6, C, E, K, and choline. On the other hand, blueberries boast more of vitamins B1 and B9. That’s a 9:2 lead for rose hips, even before we consider rose hips’ much greater margins of difference (kicking off with 80x the vitamin A, for instance, and many multiples of many of the others).
In the category of minerals, rose hips have a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc. Meanwhile, blueberries are not higher in any minerals.
In short: as ever, enjoy both, but if you’re looking for nutritional density, there’s a clear winner here and it’s rose hips.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
It’s In The Hips: Rosehip’s Benefits, Inside & Out
Take care!
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