Black Beans vs Soy Beans – 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 black beans to soy beans, we picked the soy.
Why?
Quite some heavyweights competing here today, as both have been the winners of other comparisons!
Comparing these two’s macros first, black beans have 3x the carbs and slightly more fiber, while soy has more than 2x the protein. We’ll call this a win for soy.
As a tangential note, it’s worth remembering also that soy is a complete protein (contains a full set of the amino acids we need), whereas black beans… Well, technically they are too, but in practicality, they only have much smaller amounts of some amino acids.
In terms of vitamins, black beans have more of vitamins B1, B3, B5, B9, and E, while soy beans have more of vitamins A, B2, B6, C, K, and choline. A marginal win for soy here.
In the category of minerals, however, it isn’t close: black beans are not higher in any minerals, while soy beans are higher in calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. An overwhelming win for soy.
It should be noted, however, that black beans are still very good for minerals! They just look bad when standing next to soy, that’s all.
So, enjoy either or both, but for nutritional density, soy wins the day.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Plant vs Animal Protein: Head to Head
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
Wheat Belly, Revised & Expanded Edition – by Dr. William Davis
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.
This review pertains to the 2019 edition of the book, not the 2011 original, which will not have had all of the same research.
We are told, by scientific consensus, to enjoy plenty of whole grains as part of our diet. So, what does cardiologist Dr. William Davis have against wheat?
Firstly, not all grains are interchangeable, and wheat—in particular, modern strains of wheat—cannot be described as the same as the wheat of times past.
While this book does touch on the gluten aspect (and Celiac disease), and notes that modern wheat has a much higher gluten content than older strains, most of this book is about other harms that wheat can do to us.
Dr. Davis explores and explains the metabolic implications of wheat’s unique properties on organs such as our pancreas, liver, heart, and brain.
The book does also have recipes and meal plans, though in this reviewer’s opinion they were a little superfluous. Wheat is not hard to cut out unless you are living in a food desert or are experiencing food poverty, in which case, those recipes and meal plans would also not help.
Bottom line: this book, filled with plenty of actual science, makes a strong case against wheat, and again, mostly for reasons other than its gluten content. You might want to cut yours down!
Click here to check out Wheat Belly, and see if skipping the wheat could be good for you!
Share This Post
The CBT Workbook for Mental Health – by Dr. Simon Rego & Sarah Fader
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.
We have often reviewed psychology books here with a note saying “and no, it’s not just a book of the standard CBT techniques that you probably already know”.
So today, this one’s for anyone who was ever thinking “but I don’t know the standard CBT techniques and I would like to know them!”.
The authors outline specific solutions to many common quantifiable problems, with simple exercises that are well-explained and easy to implement.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is not a panacea, but for the things it can be used for, it’s very effective and is a very good “first thing to reach for” to see if it works, because its success rate for a lot of problems is very high.
What kinds of things is this book most likely to help with? A lot of common forms of stress, anxiety, self-esteem issues, cravings, shame, and relationship issues. Other things too, but we can’t list everything and that list already covers a lot of very high-incidence stuff.
Bottom line: if CBT isn’t something already in your toolbox, this book will help you add all its best tips and tricks.
Click here to check out The CBT Workbook for Mental Health, and get tooled up!
Share This Post
How To April Fool Yourself Into Having A Nutrient-Dense Diet!
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.
These nutrient-dense foods pack such a punch you only need a bit added to your meal…
- “Have 5 servings of fruit per day”—popular wisdom in the West
- “Have 7 servings of fruit per day!”—generally held as the norm in Japan
- “Have these 12 things that are mostly fruit & veg & nuts each day”—Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen
- “Does the pickle that comes with a burger count?”—an indication of how much many people struggle.
For what it’s worth: pickles are a good source of some minerals (and some healthy gut bacteria too), but are generally too high in sodium to be healthy for most people beyond in the most modest moderation.
But! It can be a lot easier, and without sitting down to a salad buffet every day!
Here are some sneaky tips:
(call it our nod to April Fool’s Day, because tricking yourself into eating more healthily is a top-tier prank)
Beyond soups and smoothies
Soups and smoothies are great, because we can take a lot of nutrients that way without actually oing much eating. And if we’ve a want or need to hide something, blending it does a fine job. However, we’re confident you already know how to make soups and smoothies. So…
Sauces are another excellent place to put nutrients—and as a bonus, homemade sauces will mean skipping on the store-bought sauces whose ingredients all-too-often look something like “sugar, water, spirit vinegar, glucose-fructose syrup, modified maize starch, maltodextrin, salt…”
Top things to use as a main base ingredient in sauces:
- Tomato purée—so much lycopene, and great vitamins too! Modest flavour, but obviously only sensible for what you intend to be a tomato-based sauce. Use it to make anything from marinara sauce to ketchup, sweet-and-sour to smoky barbecue.
- Lentils/beans—if unsure, red lentils or haricot beans have a very mild taste, and edamame beans are almost not-there, flavor-wise. But cooked and blended smooth, these are high-protein, iron-rich, flavonoid-heavy, and a good source of fiber too. Can be used as the base of so many savory creamy sauces!
- Corn—that yellow color? It’s all the lutein. Home-made creamed corn goes great as a dipping sauce! Added spices optional.
Vegetables that punch above their weight
Sometimes, you might not want to eat much veg, but a small edible side-dish could be appealing, or even a generous garnish. In those cases, if you choose wisely, you can have a lot of nutrients in a tiny portion. Here are some that have an absurd nutrient-to-size ratio:
Cacao nibs—one for the dessert-lovers here, but can also garnish a frothy coffee, your morning overnight oats, or if we’re honest, can also just be snacked on! And they keep for ages. Botanically technically a fruit, but we’re going to throw it in here. As for health qualities? Where to begin…
They:
- are full of antioxidants and fight inflammation
- boost immune health
- help control blood sugar levels
- improve vascular function and heart health
- and even fight cancer, which is a many-headed beast, but for example:
…which is starting to look like a pattern, isn’t it? It’s good against cancer.
Brussels sprouts—if your knee-jerk reaction here wasn’t one of great appeal, then consider: these are delicious if done right.
Buy them fresh, not frozen (nothing nutritionally wrong with frozen if you like them—we’re just doing the extra-level tastiness here). Wash them and peel them, then cut twice from the top to almost-the-bottom, to quarter them in a way that they still stay in one piece. Rub them (or if you’re going easier on the fats, spray them) with a little olive oil, a tiny touch of lemon juice, and sprinkle a little cracked black pepper. Sautée them. We know people will advise roasting, which is also great, but try the sautée approach, and thank us later.
Four sprouts is already a sufficient daily serving of cruciferous vegetables, and provides so many health benefits, with not just a stack of vitamins and minerals, but also have anti-cancer properties, are great for your heart in multiple ways, and reduce inflammation too. They’re literally one of the healthiest foods out there and you only need a tiny portion to benefit.
Kale—Don’t like the taste/texture? That’s OK, read on… No surprises here, but it’s crammed with vitamins and minerals.
- If you don’t care for the bitter taste, cooking it (such as by steaming it) takes that away.
- If you don’t care for the texture, baking it with a little sprayed-on olive oil changes that completely (and is how “kale chips” are made).
- If you don’t care for either? Do the “kale chips” thing mentioned above, but do it on a lower heat for longer—dry it out, basically. Then either blend it in a food processor, or by hand with a pestle and mortar (it turns to powder very easily, so this won’t be hard work), and you now have a very nutrient-dense powder that tastes of very little. While fries are not a health food, an example here is that you can literally dust fries with it and they won’t taste any different but you got a bunch of vitamins and minerals added from a whole food source.
- If going for the above approach, do it in batch and make yourself a jar of it to keep handy with your seasonings collection!
Bell peppers—Working hard to justify their high prices in the grocery store, these are very high in vitamins, especially rich in carotenoids, including lutein, and as a bonus, they’re also full of antioxidants. So, slice some and throw them at whatever else you’re cooking, and you’ve added a lot of nutrients for negligible effort.
Garlic—once you’ve done the paperwork, garlic not only makes bland meals delicious, but is also a treasure trove of micronutrients. It has a stack of vitamins and minerals, and also contains allicin. If you’ve not heard of that one, it’s the compound in garlic that is so good for blood pressure and heart health. See for example:
- Lipid-lowering effects of time-released garlic
- Garlic extract lowers blood pressure in patients with hypertension
- Garlic extract reduces blood pressure in hypertensives
If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, just imagine what a bulb of garlic can do (come on, we can’t be the only ones who measure garlic by the bulb instead of by the clove, right?)!
But in seriousness: measure garlic with your heart—have lots or a little, per your preference. The whole point here is that even a little of these superfoods can make a huge difference to your health!
Share This Post
Related Posts
Needle Pain Is a Big Problem for Kids. One California Doctor Has a Plan.
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.
Almost all new parents go through it: the distress of hearing their child scream at the doctor’s office. They endure the emotional torture of having to hold their child down as the clinician sticks them with one vaccine after another.
“The first shots he got, I probably cried more than he did,” said Remy Anthes, who was pushing her 6-month-old son, Dorian, back and forth in his stroller in Oakland, California.
“The look in her eyes, it’s hard to take,” said Jill Lovitt, recalling how her infant daughter Jenna reacted to some recent vaccines. “Like, ‘What are you letting them do to me? Why?’”
Some children remember the needle pain and quickly start to internalize the fear. That’s the fear Julia Cramer witnessed when her 3-year-old daughter, Maya, had to get blood drawn for an allergy test at age 2.
“After that, she had a fear of blue gloves,” Cramer said. “I went to the grocery store and she saw someone wearing blue gloves, stocking the vegetables, and she started freaking out and crying.”
Pain management research suggests that needle pokes may be children’s biggest source of pain in the health care system. The problem isn’t confined to childhood vaccinations either. Studies looking at sources of pediatric pain have included children who are being treated for serious illness, have undergone heart surgeries or bone marrow transplants, or have landed in the emergency room.
“This is so bad that many children and many parents decide not to continue the treatment,” said Stefan Friedrichsdorf, a specialist at the University of California-San Francisco’s Stad Center for Pediatric Pain, speaking at the End Well conference in Los Angeles in November.
The distress of needle pain can follow children as they grow and interfere with important preventive care. It is estimated that a quarter of all adults have a fear of needles that began in childhood. Sixteen percent of adults refuse flu vaccinations because of a fear of needles.
Friedrichsdorf said it doesn’t have to be this bad. “This is not rocket science,” he said.
He outlined simple steps that clinicians and parents can follow:
- Apply an over-the-counter lidocaine, which is a numbing cream, 30 minutes before a shot.
- Breastfeed babies, or give them a pacifier dipped in sugar water, to comfort them while they’re getting a shot.
- Use distractions like teddy bears, pinwheels, or bubbles to divert attention away from the needle.
- Don’t pin kids down on an exam table. Parents should hold children in their laps instead.
At Children’s Minnesota, Friedrichsdorf practiced the “Children’s Comfort Promise.” Now he and other health care providers are rolling out these new protocols for children at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland. He’s calling it the “Ouchless Jab Challenge.”
If a child at UCSF needs to get poked for a blood draw, a vaccine, or an IV treatment, Friedrichsdorf promises, the clinicians will do everything possible to follow these pain management steps.
“Every child, every time,” he said.
It seems unlikely that the ouchless effort will make a dent in vaccine hesitancy and refusal driven by the anti-vaccine movement, since the beliefs that drive it are often rooted in conspiracies and deeply held. But that isn’t necessarily Friedrichsdorf’s goal. He hopes that making routine health care less painful can help sway parents who may be hesitant to get their children vaccinated because of how hard it is to see them in pain. In turn, children who grow into adults without a fear of needles might be more likely to get preventive care, including their yearly flu shot.
In general, the onus will likely be on parents to take a leading role in demanding these measures at medical centers, Friedrichsdorf said, because the tolerance and acceptance of children’s pain is so entrenched among clinicians.
Diane Meier, a palliative care specialist at Mount Sinai, agrees. She said this tolerance is a major problem, stemming from how doctors are usually trained.
“We are taught to see pain as an unfortunate, but inevitable side effect of good treatment,” Meier said. “We learn to repress that feeling of distress at the pain we are causing because otherwise we can’t do our jobs.”
During her medical training, Meier had to hold children down for procedures, which she described as torture for them and for her. It drove her out of pediatrics. She went into geriatrics instead and later helped lead the modern movement to promote palliative care in medicine, which became an accredited specialty in the United States only in 2006.
Meier said she thinks the campaign to reduce needle pain and anxiety should be applied to everyone, not just to children.
“People with dementia have no idea why human beings are approaching them to stick needles in them,” she said. And the experience can be painful and distressing.
Friedrichsdorf’s techniques would likely work with dementia patients, too, she said. Numbing cream, distraction, something sweet in the mouth, and perhaps music from the patient’s youth that they remember and can sing along to.
“It’s worthy of study and it’s worthy of serious attention,” Meier said.
This article is from a partnership that includes KQED, NPR, and KFF Health News.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
USE OUR CONTENT
This story can be republished for free (details).
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
Unlock Your Menopause Type – by Dr. Heather Hirsch
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.
We featured Dr. Hirsch before, here, and mentioned this book which, at the time, we had not yet reviewed. So, here it is:
What sets this apart from a lot of menopause books is that there’s a lot less “eat these foods and your body will magically stop exhibiting symptoms of menopause” and a lot more clinical observations and then evidence-based recommendations.
Which is not to say don’t eat broccoli and almonds; by all means, they’re great foods and contain valuable nutrients that will help. But it is to say that if your doctor’s prescription is just broccoli and almonds, maybe have those as a snack while you’re looking for a second opinion.
Dr. Hirsch goes through various “menopause types”, but it’s not so much “astrology for gynecologists” and more “here are clusters of menopause symptoms set against timeline of presentation, and they can be categorized into six main ways that between them, cover pretty much all my patients, which have been many”.
So if you, dear reader, are menopausal (including peri- or post-), then the chances are very good that you will see yourself in one of those six sets.
She then goes about how to prioritize relief and safety, and personalize a treatment plan, and maintain the best menopausal care for you, going forward.
The style is easy-reading pop-science, punctuated by clinical science and 35 pages of references. She’s also, unlike a lot of authors in the genre, manifestly not invested in being a celebrity or making a personality cult out of her recommendations; she’s happy to stick to the science and put out good advice.
Bottom line: if you or someone you love is menopausal (including peri- or post-), this is a top-tier book.
Click here to check out Unlock Your Menopause Type, and get the best care for you!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
Unprocessed – by Kimberly Wilson
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.
First, what this is not: hundreds of pages to say “eat less processed food”. That is, of course, also advisable (and indeed, is advised in the book too), but there’s a lot more going on here too.
Though not a doctor, the author is a psychologist who brings a lot of data to the table, especially when it comes to the neurophysiology at hand, what forgotten micronutrients many people are lacking, and what trends in society worsen these deficiencies in the population at large.
If you only care about the broadest of take-away advice, it is: eat a diet that’s mostly minimally processed plants and some oily fish, watch out for certain deficiencies in particular, and increase dietary intake of them where necessary (with taking supplements as a respectable next-best remedy).
On which note, a point of criticism is that there’s some incorrect information about veganism and brain health; she mentions that DHA is only found in fish (in fact, fish get it from algae, which has it, and is the basis of many vegan omega-3 supplements), and the B12 is found only in animals (also found in yeast, which is not an animal, as well as various bacteria in soil, and farm animals get their B12 from supplements these days anyway, so it is arguable that we could keep things simpler by just cutting out the middlecow).
However, the strength of this book really is in the delivery of understanding about why certain things matter. If you’re told “such-and-such is good for the brain”, you’ll up your intake for 1–60 days, depending on whether you bought a supermarket item or ordered a batch of supplements. And then you’ll forget, until 6–12 months later, and you’ll do it again. On the other hand, if you understand how something is good or bad for the brain, what it does (for good or ill) on a cellular level, the chemistry and neurophysiology at hand, you’ll make new habits for life.
The style is middle-range pop-science; by this we mean there are tables of data and some long words that are difficult to pronounce, but also it’s not just hard science throughout—there’s (as one might expect from an author who is a psychologist) a lot about the psychology and sociology of why many people make poor dietary decisions, and the things governments often do (or omit doing) that affect this adversely—and how we can avoid those traps as individuals (unless we be incarcerated or such).
As an aside, the author is British, so governmental examples are mostly UK-based, but it doesn’t take a lot to mentally measure that against what the governments of, for example, the US or Canada do the same or differently.
Bottom line: there’s a lot of great information about brain health here; the strongest parts are whether the author stays within her field (psychology encompasses such diverse topics as neurophysiology and aspects of sociology, but not microbiology, for example). If you want to learn about the physiology of brain health and enjoy quite a sociopolitical ride along the way, this one’s a good one for that.
Click here to check out Unprocessed, and make the best choices for you!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
