Anti-Inflammatory Pineapple Fried Rice

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The 10almonds Team

Fried rice is not most people’s go-to when one thinks of health food, but this one is. It’s packed with plenty of nutrients, many of which are anti-inflammatory, but the real star is the pineapple (with its high bromelain content and thus particularly potent benefits).

You will need

  • 2½ cups cooked wholegrain basmati rice (you can use our Tasty Versatile Rice recipe if you don’t already have leftovers to use)
  • 1 cup pineapple chunks
  • ½ red onion, diced
  • 1 red bell pepper, diced
  • ½ cup sweetcorn
  • ½ peas
  • 3 green onions, chopped
  • 2 serrano peppers, chopped (omit if you don’t care for heat)
  • 2 tbsp coconut oil
  • 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
  • 1 tbsp black pepper, coarse ground

Method

(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

1) Fry the red onion, serrano peppers, and ginger in the coconut oil over a medium heat, stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes.

2) Add the pineapple, bell pepper, sweetcorn, peas, and black pepper, stirring frequently, for about another 3 minutes.

3) Add the rice, stirring gently but thoroughly, until fully reheated and mixed in.

4) Serve, garnishing with the green onions.

Enjoy!

Want to learn more?

For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

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  • Rethinking Diabetes – by Gary Taubes

    The 10almonds Team

    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’ve previously reviewed this author’s “The Case Against Sugar” and “Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It“. There’s an obvious theme, and this book caps it off nicely:

    By looking at the history of diabetes treatment (types 1 and 2) in the past hundred years, and analysing the patterns over time, we can see how:

    • diabetics have been misled a lot over time by healthcare providers
    • we can learn from those mistakes going forwards

    Happily, he does this without crystal-balling the future or expecting diet to fix, for example, a pancreas that can’t produce insulin. But what he does do is focus on the “can” items rather than the “can’t” items.

    In the category of criticism, one of the strategies he argues for is basically the keto diet, which is indeed just fine for diabetes but often not great for the heart in the long-term (it depends on various factors, including genes). However, even if you choose not to implement that, there is plenty more to try out in this book.

    Bottom line: whether you have diabetes, love someone who does, or just plain like to be on top of your glycemic health, this book is full of important insights and opportunities to improve things progressively along the way.

    Click here to check out Rethinking Diabetes, and rethink diabetes!

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  • Aging Is Inevitable… Or is it?

    The 10almonds Team

    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.

    Aging is inevitable… Or is it?

    We’ve talked before about how and why aging happens. We’ve also talked about the work to tackle aging as basically an engineering problem, with the premise that our bodies are biological machines, and machines can be repaired. We also recommended a great book about this, by the way. But that’s about interfering with the biological process of aging. What about if the damage is already done?

    “When the damage is done, it’s done”

    We can do a lot to try to protect ourselves from aging, and we might be able to slow down the clock, but we can’t stop it, and we certainly can’t reverse it… right?

    Wrong! Or at least, so we currently understand, in some respects. Supplementation with phosphatidylserine, for example, has shown promise for not just preventing, but treating, neurodegeneration (such as that caused by Alzheimer’s disease). It’s not a magic bullet and so far the science is at “probably” and “this shows great promise for…” and “this appears to…”

    Phosphatidylserene does help slow neurodegeneration

    …because of its role in allowing your cells to know whether they have permission to die.

    This may seem a flippant way of putting it, but it’s basically how cell death works. Cells do need to die (if they don’t, that’s called cancer) and be replaced with new copies, and those copies need to be made before too much damage is accumulated (otherwise the damage is compounded with each new iteration). So an early cell death-and-replacement is generally better for your overall health than a later one.

    However, neurons are tricky to replace, so phosphatidylserine effectively says “not you, hold on” to keep the rate of neuronal cell death nearer to the (slow) rate at which they can be replaced.

    One more myth to bust…

    For the longest time we thought that adults, especially older adults, couldn’t make new brain cells at all, that we grew a certain number, then had to hang onto them until we died… suffering diminished cognitive ability with age, on account of losing brain cells along the way.

    It’s partly true: it’s definitely easier to kill brain cells than to grow them… Mind you, that’s technically true of people, too, yet the population continues to boom!

    Anyway, new research showing that adults do, in fact, grow new braincells was briefly challenged by a 2018 study that declared: Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults after all, never mind, go back to your business.

    So was adult neurogenesis just a myth to be busted after all? Nope.

    It turned out, the 2018 study had a methodological flaw!

    To put it in lay terms: they had accidentally melted the evidence.

    A 2019 study overcame this flaw by using a shorter fixation time for the cell samples they wanted to look at, and found that there were tens of thousands of “baby neurons” (again with the lay terms), newly-made brain cells, in samples from adults ranging from 43 to 87.

    Now, there was still a difference: the samples from the youngest adult had 30% more newly-made braincells than the 87-year-old, but given that previous science thought brain cell generation stopped in childhood, the fact that an 87-year-old was generating new brain cells 30% less quickly than a 43-year-old is hardly much of a criticism!

    As an aside: samples from patients with Alzheimer’s also had a 30% reduction in new braincell generation, compared to samples from patients of the same age without Alzheimer’s. But again… Even patients with Alzheimer’s were still growing some new brain cells.

    Read it for yourself: Adult hippocampal neurogenesis is abundant in neurologically healthy subjects and drops sharply in patients with Alzheimer’s disease

    In a nutshell…

    • We can’t fully hit pause on aging just yet, but we can definitely genuinely slow it
    • We can also, in some very specific ways, reverse it
    • We can slow the loss of brain cells
    • We can grow new brain cells
    • We can reduce our risk of Alzheimer’s, and at least somewhat mitigate it if it appears
    • We know that phosphatidylserine supplementation may help with most (if not all) of the above
    • We don’t sell that (or anything else) but for your convenience, here it is on Amazon if you’re interested

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  • Tilapia vs Cod – Which is Healthier?

    The 10almonds Team

    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 tilapia to cod, we picked the tilapia.

    Why?

    Another case of “that which is more expensive is not necessarily the healthier”!

    In terms of macros, tilapia has more protein and fats, as well as more omega-3 (and omega-6). On the downside, tilapia does have relatively more saturated fat, but at 0.94g/100g, it’s not exactly butter.

    The vitamins category sees that tilapia has more of vitamins B1, B3, B5, B12, D, and K, while cod has more of vitamins B6, B9, and choline. A moderate win for tilapia.

    When it comes to minerals, things are most divided; tilapia has more copper, iron, phosphorus, potassium, manganese, and selenium, while cod has more magnesium and zinc. An easy win for tilapia.

    One other thing to note is that both of these fish contain mercury these days (and it’s worth noting: cod has nearly 10x more mercury). Mercury is, of course, not exactly a health food.

    So, excessive consumption of either is not recommended, but out of the two, tilapia is definitely the one to pick.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Farmed Fish vs Wild Caught: Know The Health Differences

    Take care!

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  • What Your Hands Can Tell You About Your Health

    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.

    The 10almonds Team

    Dr. Siobhan Deshauer tells us what our hands say about our health—she’s not practicing palmistry though; she’s a rheumatologist, and everything here is about clinical signs of health/disease.

    The signs include…

    “Spider fingers” (which your writer here has; I always look like I’m ready to cast a spell of some kind), and that’s really the medical name, or arachnodactyly for those who like to get Greek about it. It’s about elongated digits. Elongated other bones too, typically, but the hands are where it’s most noticeable.

    The tests:

    • Make a fist with your thumb inside (the way you were told never to punch); does your thumb poke out the side notably past the edge of your hand, unassisted (i.e., don’t poke it, just let it rest where it goes to naturally)?
    • Take hold of one of your wrists with the fingers of the other hand, wrapping them around. If they reach, that’s normal; if there’s a notable overlap, we’re in Spidey-territory now.

    If both of those are positive results for you, Dr. Deshauer recommends getting a genetic test to see if you have Marfan syndrome, because…

    Arachnodactyly often comes from a genetic condition called Marfan syndrome, and as well as the elongated digits of arachnodactyly, Marfan syndrome affects the elastic fibers of the body, and comes with the trade-off of an increased risk of assorted kinds of sudden death (if something goes “ping” where it shouldn’t, like the heart or lungs).

    But it can also come from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome!

    EDS is characterized by hypermobility of joints, meaning that they are easily flexed past the normal human limit, and/but also easily dislocated.

    The tests:

    • Put your hand flat on a surface, and using your other hand, see how far back your fingers will bend (without discomfort, please); do they go further than 90°?
    • Can you touch your thumb to your wrist* (on the same side?)

    *She says “wrist”; for this arachnodactylic writer here it’s halfway down my forearm, but you get the idea

    For many people this is a mere quirk and inconvenience, for others it can be more serious and a cause of eventual chronic pain, and for a few, it can be very serious and come with cardiovascular problems (similar to the Marfan syndrome issues above). This latter is usually diagnosed early in life, though, such as when a child comes in with an aneurysm, or there’s a family history of it. Another thing to watch out for!

    Check out the video for more information on these, as well as what our fingerprints can mean, indicators of diabetes (specifically, a test for diabetic cheiroarthropathy that you can do at home, like the tests above), carpal tunnel syndrome, Raynaud phenomenon, and more!

    She covers 10 main medical conditions in total:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to read more?

    Take care!

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  • Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?

    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.

    The 10almonds Team

    How old do you want to be?

    We asked you how old you are, and got an interesting spread of answers. This wasn’t too surprising; of course we have a general idea of who our readership is and we write accordingly.

    What’s interesting is the gap for “40s”.

    And, this wasn’t the case of a broken poll button, it’s something that crops up a lot in health-related sociological research. People who are most interested in taking extra care of their body are often:

    • Younger people full of optimism about maintaining this perfectly healthy body forever
    • Older people realizing “if I don’t want to suffer avoidable parts of age-related decline, now is the time to address these things”

    In between, we often have a gap whereby people no longer have the optimism of youth, but do not yet feel the pressure of older age.

    Which is not to say there aren’t 40-somethings who do care! Indeed, we know for a fact we have some subscribers in their 40s (and some in their 90s, too), just, they evidently didn’t vote in this poll.

    Anyway, let’s bust some myths…

    Aging is inevitable: True or False?

    False, probably. That seems like a bold (and fortune-telling) claim, so let’s flip it to deconstruct it more logically:

    Aging is, and always will be, unstoppable: True or False?

    That has to be “False, probably”. To say “true” now sounds like an even bolder claim. Just like “the moon will always be out of reach”.

    • When CPR was first developed, first-aiders were arrested for “interfering with a corpse”.
    • Many diseases used to be death sentences that are now “take one of these in the morning”
      • If you think this is an appeal to distant history, HIV+ status was a death sentence in the 90s. Now it’s “take one of these in the morning”.

    But, this is an appeal to the past, and that’s not always a guarantee of the future. Where does the science stand currently? How is the research and development doing on slowing, halting, reversing aging?

    We can slow aging: True or False?

    True! There’s a difference between chronological age (i.e., how much time has passed while we’ve been alive) and biological age (i.e., what our diverse markers of aging look like).

    Biological age often gets talked about as a simplified number, but it’s more complex than that, as we can age in different ways at different rates, for example:

    • Visual markers of aging (e.g. wrinkles, graying hair)
    • Performative markers of aging (e.g. mobility tests)
    • Internal functional markers of aging (e.g. tests for cognitive decline, eyesight, hearing, etc)
    • Cellular markers or aging (e.g. telomere length)
    • …and more, but we only have so much room here

    There are things we can do to slow most of those, including:

    In the case of cognitive decline particularly, check out our previous article:

    How To Reduce Your Alzheimer’s Risk

    It’s too early to worry about… / It’s too late to do anything about… True or False?

    False and False!

    Many things that affect our health later in life are based on early-life choices and events. So it’s important for young people to take advantage of that. The earlier one adopts a healthy lifestyle, the better, because, and hold onto your hats for the shocker here: aging is cumulative.

    However, that doesn’t mean that taking up healthy practices (or dropping unhealthy ones) is pointless later in life, even in one’s 70s and beyond!

    Read about this and more from the National Institute of Aging:

    What Do We Know About Healthy Aging?

    We can halt aging: True or False?

    False, for now at least. Our bodies are not statues; they are living organisms, constantly rebuilding themselves, constantly changing, every second of every day, for better or for worse. Every healthy or unhealthy choice you make, every beneficial or adverse experience you encounter, affects your body on a cellular level.

    Your body never, ever, stops changing for as long as you live.

    But…

    We can reverse aging: True or False?

    True! Contingently and with limitations, for now at least.

    Remember what we said about your body constantly rebuilding itself? That goes for making itself better as well as making itself worse.

    But those aren’t really being younger, we’ll still die when our time is up: True or False?

    False and True, respectively.

    Those kinds of things are really being younger, biologically. What else do you think being biologically younger is?

    We may indeed die when our time is up, but (unless we suffer fatal accident or incident first) “when our time is up” is something that is decided mostly by the above factors.

    Genetics—the closest thing we have to biological “fate”—accounts for only about 25% of our longevity-related health*.

    Genes predispose, but they don’t predetermine.

    *Read more: Human longevity: Genetics or Lifestyle? It takes two to tango

    (from the Journal of Immunity and Ageing)

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Trout vs Haddock – 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.

    The 10almonds Team

    Our Verdict

    When comparing trout to haddock, we picked the trout.

    Why?

    It wasn’t close.

    In terms of macros, trout has more protein and more fat, although the fat is mostly healthy (some saturated though, and trout does have more cholesterol). This category could be a win for either, depending on your priorities. But…

    When it comes to vitamins, trout has a lot more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B12, C, D, and E, while haddock is not higher in any vitamins.

    In the category of minerals, trout has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, potassium, and zinc, while haddock has slightly more selenium. Given that a 10oz portion of trout already contains 153% of the RDA of selenium, however, the same size portion of haddock having 173% of the RDA isn’t really a plus for haddock (especially as selenium can cause problems if we get too much). Oh, and haddock is also higher in sodium, but in industrialized countries, most people most of the time need less of that, not more.

    On balance, the overwhelming nutritional density of trout wins the day.

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Farmed Fish vs Wild Caught: It Makes Quite A Difference!

    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

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