Apple vs Pear – Which is Healthier?

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Our Verdict

When comparing apple to pear, we picked the pear.

Why?

Both are great! But there’s a category that puts pears ahead of apples…

Looking at their macros first, pears contain more carbs but also more fiber. Both are low glycemic index foods, though.

In the category of vitamins, things are moderately even: apples contain more of vitamins A, B1, B6, and E, while pears contain more of vitamins B3, B9, K, and choline. That’s a 4:4 split, and the two fruits are about equal in the other vitamins they both contain.

When it comes to minerals, pears contain more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. A resounding victory for pears, as apples are not higher in any mineral.

In short, if an apple a day keeps the doctor away, a pear should keep the doctor away for about a day and a half, based on the extra nutrients ← this is slightly facetious as medicine doesn’t work like that, but you get the idea: pears simply have more to offer. Apples are still great though! Enjoy both! Diversity is good.

Want to learn more?

You might like to read:

From Apples To Bees, And High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

Take care!

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  • The Truth About Vaccines

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    The Truth About Vaccines

    Yesterday we asked your views on vaccines, and we got an interesting spread of answers. Of those who responded to the poll, most were in favour of vaccines. We got quite a lot of comments this time too; we can’t feature them all, but we’ll include extracts from a few in our article today, as they raised interesting points!

    Vaccines contain dangerous ingredients that will harm us more than the disease would: True or False?

    False, contextually.

    Many people are very understandably wary of things they know full well to be toxic, being injected into them.

    One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are poison, and/or are some manner of conspiracy ” wrote:

    ❝I think vaccines from 50–60 years ago are true vaccines and were safer than vaccines today. I have not had a vaccine for many, many years, and I never plan to have any kind of vaccine/shot again.❞

    They didn’t say why they personally felt this way, but the notion that “things were simpler back in the day” is a common (and often correct!) observation regards health, especially when it comes to unwanted additives and ultraprocessing of food.

    Things like aluminum or mercury in vaccines are much like sodium and chlorine in table salt. Sodium and chlorine are indeed both toxic to us. But in the form of sodium chloride, it’s a normal part of our diet, provided we don’t overdo it.

    Additionally, the amount of unwanted metals (e.g. aluminum, mercury) in vaccines is orders of magnitude smaller than the amount in dietary sources—even if you’re a baby and your “dietary sources” are breast milk and/or formula milk.

    In the case of formaldehyde (an inactivating agent), it’s also the dose that makes the poison (and the quantity in vaccines is truly miniscule).

    This academic paper alone cites more sources than we could here without making today’s newsletter longer than it already is:

    Vaccine Safety: Myths and Misinformation

    I have a perfectly good immune system, it can handle the disease: True or False?

    True! Contingently.

    In fact, our immune system is so good at defending against disease, that the best thing we can do to protect ourselves is show our immune system a dead or deactivated version of a pathogen, so that when the real pathogen comes along, our immune system knows exactly what it is and what to do about it.

    In other words, a vaccine.

    One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are important but in some cases the side effects can be worse ” wrote:

    ❝In some ways I’m vacd out. I got COVid a few months ago and had no symptoms except a cough. I have asthma and it didn’t trigger a lot of congestion. No issues. I am fully vaccinated but not sure I’ll get one in fall.❞

    We’re glad this subscriber didn’t get too ill! A testimony to their robust immune system doing what it’s supposed to, after being shown a recent-ish edition of the pathogen, in deactivated form.

    It’s very reasonable to start wondering: “surely I’m vaccinated enough by now”

    And, hopefully, you are! But, as any given pathogen mutates over time, we eventually need to show our immune system what the new version looks like, or else it won’t recognize it.

    See also: Why Experts Think You’ll Need a COVID-19 Booster Shot in the Future

    So why don’t we need booster shots for everything? Often, it’s because a pathogen has stopped mutating at any meaningful rate. Polio is an example of this—no booster is needed for most people in most places.

    Others, like flu, require annual boosters to keep up with the pathogens.

    Herd immunity will keep us safe: True or False?

    True! Ish.

    But it doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it means. For example, in the UK, “herd immunity” was the strategy promoted by Prime Minister of the hour, Boris Johnson. But he misunderstood what it meant:

    • What he thought it meant: everyone gets the disease, then everyone who doesn’t die is now immune
    • What it actually means: if most people are immune to the disease (for example: due to having been vaccinated), it can’t easily get to the people who aren’t immune

    One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are critical for our health; vax to the max! ” wrote:

    ❝I had a chiropractor a few years ago, who explained to me that if the general public took vaccines, then she would not have to vaccinate her children and take a risk of having side effects❞

    Obviously, we can’t speak for this subscriber’s chiropractor’s children, but this raises a good example: some people can’t safely have a given vaccine, due to underlying medical conditions—or perhaps it is not available to them, for example if they are under a certain age.

    In such cases, herd immunity—other people around having been vaccinated and thus not passing on the disease—is what will keep them safe.

    Here’s a useful guide from the US Dept of Health and Human Services:

    How does community immunity (a.k.a. herd immunity) work?

    And, for those who are more visually inclined, here’s a graphical representation of a mathematical model of how herd immunity works (you can run a simulation)!

    Stay safe!

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  • Super Gut – 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.

    You may be wondering: what sets this book apart from the other gut health books we’ve reviewed? For this one, mostly it’s depth.

    This is the most scientifically dense book we’ve reviewed on gut health, so if you’re put off by that, this might not be one for you. However, you don’t need prior knowledge, as he does explain things as he goes. The advice in this book is not just the usual “gut health 101” stuff, either!

    A particular strength of this book is that it looks at a wide variety of gut- and gut-related disorders, and ways certain readers may need to do different things than others, to address those problems on the path to good gut health.

    The style, for all its hard science content, is quite sensationalist, and that may take some getting used to for non-Americans. However, it doesn’t affect the content!

    Bottom line: if you just want simple basic advice, then probably best to skip this one. However, if you are sincerely serious about gut health (or just like reading this sort of thing because learning is satisfying), then this book is packed with relevant and detailed information.

    Click here to check out Super Gut, and get to know and improve yours!

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  • Clean Needles Save Lives. In Some States, They Might Not Be Legal.

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    Kim Botteicher hardly thinks of herself as a criminal.

    On the main floor of a former Catholic church in Bolivar, Pennsylvania, Botteicher runs a flower shop and cafe.

    In the former church’s basement, she also operates a nonprofit organization focused on helping people caught up in the drug epidemic get back on their feet.

    The nonprofit, FAVOR ~ Western PA, sits in a rural pocket of the Allegheny Mountains east of Pittsburgh. Her organization’s home county of Westmoreland has seen roughly 100 or more drug overdose deaths each year for the past several years, the majority involving fentanyl.

    Thousands more residents in the region have been touched by the scourge of addiction, which is where Botteicher comes in.

    She helps people find housing, jobs, and health care, and works with families by running support groups and explaining that substance use disorder is a disease, not a moral failing.

    But she has also talked publicly about how she has made sterile syringes available to people who use drugs.

    “When that person comes in the door,” she said, “if they are covered with abscesses because they have been using needles that are dirty, or they’ve been sharing needles — maybe they’ve got hep C — we see that as, ‘OK, this is our first step.’”

    Studies have identified public health benefits associated with syringe exchange services. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says these programs reduce HIV and hepatitis C infections, and that new users of the programs are more likely to enter drug treatment and more likely to stop using drugs than nonparticipants.

    This harm-reduction strategy is supported by leading health groups, such as the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and the International AIDS Society.

    But providing clean syringes could put Botteicher in legal danger. Under Pennsylvania law, it’s a misdemeanor to distribute drug paraphernalia. The state’s definition includes hypodermic syringes, needles, and other objects used for injecting banned drugs. Pennsylvania is one of 12 states that do not implicitly or explicitly authorize syringe services programs through statute or regulation, according to a 2023 analysis. A few of those states, but not Pennsylvania, either don’t have a state drug paraphernalia law or don’t include syringes in it.

    Those working on the front lines of the opioid epidemic, like Botteicher, say a reexamination of Pennsylvania’s law is long overdue.

    There’s an urgency to the issue as well: Billions of dollars have begun flowing into Pennsylvania and other states from legal settlements with companies over their role in the opioid epidemic, and syringe services are among the eligible interventions that could be supported by that money.

    The opioid settlements reached between drug companies and distributors and a coalition of state attorneys general included a list of recommendations for spending the money. Expanding syringe services is listed as one of the core strategies.

    But in Pennsylvania, where 5,158 people died from a drug overdose in 2022, the state’s drug paraphernalia law stands in the way.

    Concerns over Botteicher’s work with syringe services recently led Westmoreland County officials to cancel an allocation of $150,000 in opioid settlement funds they had previously approved for her organization. County Commissioner Douglas Chew defended the decision by saying the county “is very risk averse.”

    Botteicher said her organization had planned to use the money to hire additional recovery specialists, not on syringes. Supporters of syringe services point to the cancellation of funding as evidence of the need to change state law, especially given the recommendations of settlement documents.

    “It’s just a huge inconsistency,” said Zoe Soslow, who leads overdose prevention work in Pennsylvania for the public health organization Vital Strategies. “It’s causing a lot of confusion.”

    Though sterile syringes can be purchased from pharmacies without a prescription, handing out free ones to make drug use safer is generally considered illegal — or at least in a legal gray area — in most of the state. In Pennsylvania’s two largest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, officials have used local health powers to provide legal protection to people who operate syringe services programs.

    Even so, in Philadelphia, Mayor Cherelle Parker, who took office in January, has made it clear she opposes using opioid settlement money, or any city funds, to pay for the distribution of clean needles, The Philadelphia Inquirer has reported. Parker’s position signals a major shift in that city’s approach to the opioid epidemic.

    On the other side of the state, opioid settlement funds have had a big effect for Prevention Point Pittsburgh, a harm reduction organization. Allegheny County reported spending or committing $325,000 in settlement money as of the end of last year to support the organization’s work with sterile syringes and other supplies for safer drug use.

    “It was absolutely incredible to not have to fundraise every single dollar for the supplies that go out,” said Prevention Point’s executive director, Aaron Arnold. “It takes a lot of energy. It pulls away from actual delivery of services when you’re constantly having to find out, ‘Do we have enough money to even purchase the supplies that we want to distribute?’”

    In parts of Pennsylvania that lack these legal protections, people sometimes operate underground syringe programs.

    The Pennsylvania law banning drug paraphernalia was never intended to apply to syringe services, according to Scott Burris, director of the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University. But there have not been court cases in Pennsylvania to clarify the issue, and the failure of the legislature to act creates a chilling effect, he said.

    Carla Sofronski, executive director of the Pennsylvania Harm Reduction Network, said she was not aware of anyone having faced criminal charges for operating syringe services in the state, but she noted the threat hangs over people who do and that they are taking a “great risk.”

    In 2016, the CDC flagged three Pennsylvania counties — Cambria, Crawford, and Luzerne — among 220 counties nationwide in an assessment of communities potentially vulnerable to the rapid spread of HIV and to new or continuing high rates of hepatitis C infections among people who inject drugs.

    Kate Favata, a resident of Luzerne County, said she started using heroin in her late teens and wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for the support and community she found at a syringe services program in Philadelphia.

    “It kind of just made me feel like I was in a safe space. And I don’t really know if there was like a come-to-God moment or come-to-Jesus moment,” she said. “I just wanted better.”

    Favata is now in long-term recovery and works for a medication-assisted treatment program.

    At clinics in Cambria and Somerset Counties, Highlands Health provides free or low-cost medical care. Despite the legal risk, the organization has operated a syringe program for several years, while also testing patients for infectious diseases, distributing overdose reversal medication, and offering recovery options.

    Rosalie Danchanko, Highlands Health’s executive director, said she hopes opioid settlement money can eventually support her organization.

    “Why shouldn’t that wealth be spread around for all organizations that are working with people affected by the opioid problem?” she asked.

    In February, legislation to legalize syringe services in Pennsylvania was approved by a committee and has moved forward. The administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, supports the legislation. But it faces an uncertain future in the full legislature, in which Democrats have a narrow majority in the House and Republicans control the Senate.

    One of the bill’s lead sponsors, state Rep. Jim Struzzi, hasn’t always supported syringe services. But the Republican from western Pennsylvania said that since his brother died from a drug overdose in 2014, he has come to better understand the nature of addiction.

    In the committee vote, nearly all of Struzzi’s Republican colleagues opposed the bill. State Rep. Paul Schemel said authorizing the “very instrumentality of abuse” crossed a line for him and “would be enabling an evil.”

    After the vote, Struzzi said he wanted to build more bipartisan support. He noted that some of his own skepticism about the programs eased only after he visited Prevention Point Pittsburgh and saw how workers do more than just hand out syringes. These types of programs connect people to resources — overdose reversal medication, wound care, substance use treatment — that can save lives and lead to recovery.

    “A lot of these people are … desperate. They’re alone. They’re afraid. And these programs bring them into someone who cares,” Struzzi said. “And that, to me, is a step in the right direction.”

    At her nonprofit in western Pennsylvania, Botteicher is hoping lawmakers take action.

    “If it’s something that’s going to help someone, then why is it illegal?” she said. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

    This story was co-reported by WESA Public Radio and Spotlight PA, an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds power to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania.

    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.

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  • Parsnips vs Potatoes – Which is Healthier?
  • Heart-Healthy Gochujang Noodles

    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.

    Soba noodles are a good source of rutin, which is great for the heart and blood. Additionally, buckwheat (as soba noodles are made from) is healthier in various ways than rice, and certainly a lot healthier than wheat (remember that despite the name, buckwheat is about as related to wheat as a lionfish is to a lion). This dish is filled with more than just fiber though; there are a lot of powerful phytochemicals at play here, in the various kinds of cabbage, plus of course things like gingerol, capsaicin, allicin, and piperine.

    You will need

    • 14 oz “straight to wok” style soba noodles
    • 3 bok choi (about 7 oz)
    • 3½ oz red cabbage, thinly sliced
    • 10 oz raw and peeled large shrimp (if you are vegan, vegetarian, allergic to shellfish/crustaceans, or observant of a religion that does not eat such, substitute with small cubes of firm tofu)
    • 1 can (8 oz) sliced water chestnuts, drained (drained weight about 5 oz)
    • 2 tbsp gochujang paste
    • 2 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
    • 1 tbsp sesame oil
    • 2 tsp garlic paste
    • 2 tsp ginger paste
    • 1 tbsp chia seeds
    • Avocado oil for frying (or another oil suitable for high temperatures—so, not olive oil)

    Note: ideally you will have a good quality gochujang paste always in your cupboard, as it’s a great and versatile condiment. However, you can make your own approximation, by blending 5 pitted Medjool dates, 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar, 2 tbsp tomato purée, 2 tsp red chili flakes, 1 tsp garlic granules, and ¼ tsp MSG or ½ tsp low-sodium salt. This is not exactly gochujang, but unless you want to go shopping for ingredients more obscure in Western stores than gochujang, it’s close enough.

    Method

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

    1) Mix together the gochujang paste with the sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic paste, and ginger paste, in a small bowl. Whisk in ¼ cup hot water, or a little more if it seems necessary, but go easy with it. This will be your stir-fry sauce.

    2) Slice the base of the bok choi into thin disks; keep the leaves aside.

    3) Heat the wok to the highest temperature you can safely muster, and add a little avocado oil followed by the shrimp. When they turn from gray to pink (this will take seconds, so be ready) add the sliced base of the bok choi, and also the sliced cabbage and water chestnuts, stirring frequently. Cook for about 2 minutes; do not reduce the heat.

    4) Add the sauce you made, followed 1 minute later by the noodles, stirring them in, and finally the leafy tops of the bok choi.

    5) Garnish with the chia seeds (or sesame seeds, but chia pack more of a nutritional punch), and serve:

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

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

    Take care!

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  • Morning Routines That Just FLOW

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    Morning Routines That Just FLOW

    “If the hardest thing you have to do in your day is eat a frog, eat that frog first!”, they say.

    And, broadly speaking, it is indeed good to get anything stressful out of the way early, so that we can relax afterwards. But…

    • Are we truly best at frog-eating when blurry-eyed and sleepy?
    • Is there a spoonful of sugar that could make the medicine go down better?
    • What do we need to turn eating the frog into an enjoyable activity?

    Flow

    “Flow” is a concept brought to public consciousness by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and it refers to a state in which we feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing, at a peak performance level.

    Writer’s note: as a writer, for example…

    Sometimes I do not want to write, I pace to and fro near my computer, going on side-quests like getting a coffee or gazing out of the window into my garden. But once I get going, suddenly, something magical happens and before I know it, I have to trim my writing down because I’ve written too much. That magical window of effortless productivity was a state of flow.

    Good morning!

    What is a good morning, to you? Build that into your morning! Set parameters around it so you don’t get carried away timewise and find yourself in the afternoon (unless that would work for you!), but first thing in the morning is the time to light up each part of your brain with appropriate neurotransmitters.

    Getting the brain juices flowing

    Cortisol

    When we wake up, we (unless we have some neurochemical imbalance, such as untreated depression) get a spike of cortisol. Cortisol is much-maligned and feared, and indeed it can be very much deleterious to the health in cases of chronic stress. But a little spike now and again is actually beneficial for us.

    Quick Tip: if you want to artificially stimulate (or enhance) a morning cortisol spike, a cold shower is the way to go. Or even just a face-plunge into a bowl of ice-water (put ice in it, give it a couple of minutes to chill the water, then put your face in for a count of 30 seconds, or less if you can’t hold your breath that long).

    Serotonin

    Serotonin is generally thought of as “the happy chemical”, and it’s stimulated by blue/white light, and also by seeing greenery.

    Quick tip: to artificially stimulate (or enhance) a morning serotonin boost, your best friend is sunlight. Even sun through a partly-clouded sky will tend to outperform artificial lighting, including artificial sunlight lighting. Try to get sun between 08:30 and 09:00, if you can. Best of all, do it in your garden or nearby park, as the greenery will be an extra boost!

    Dopamine

    Generally thought of as “the reward chemical”, but it’s also critical for a lot of kinds of brainwork, including language processing and problem-solving.

    Quick Tip: to artificially stimulate* a dopamine surge to get you going, do something that you and/or your body finds rewarding. Examples include:

    • Exercise, especially in a vigorous burst
    • A good breakfast, a nice coffee, whatever feels right to you
    • An app that has motivational bells and whistles, a streak for you to complete, etc

    Note: another very enjoyable activity might come to mind that doesn’t even require you getting out of bed. Be aware, however, gentleman-readers specifically, that if you complete that activity, you’ll get a prolactin spike that will wipe out the dopamine you just worked up (because prolactin is antagonistic to dopamine). So that one’s probably better for a lazy morning when you can go back to sleep, than a day when you want to get up and go! Ladies, this is less of a worry for us as the physiology an orgasm driven by estrogen+progesterone rather than testosterone is different; there will not usually be a prolactin spike following the spike of dopamine; our orgasm-related dopamine spike is followed by a wave of oxytocin instead (“the cuddle chemical”), which is much more pleasant than prolactin.

    *there’s no “(or enhance)” for this one; you won’t get dopamine from doing nothing, that’s just not how “the reward chemical” works

    Flow-building in a stack

    When you’ve just woken up and are in a blurry morning haze, that’s not the time to be figuring out “what should I be doing next?”, so instead:

    • Work out the things you want to incorporate into your morning routine
    • Put them in the order that will be easiest to perform—some things will go a lot better after others!
    • Remember to also include things that are simply necessary—morning bathroom ablutions, for example

    The goal here is to have a this-and-this-and-this-and-this list of items that you can go through without any deviations, and get in the habit of “after item 1 I automatically do item 2, after which I automatically do item 3, after which…”

    Implement this, and your mornings will become practically automated, but in a joyous, life-enhancing way that sets you up in good order for whatever you want/need to do!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Eat To Beat Cancer

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    Controlling What We Can, To Avoid Cancer

    Every time a cell in our body is replaced, there’s a chance it will be cancerous. Exactly what that chance is depends on very many factors. Some of them we can’t control; others, we can.

    Diet is a critical, modifiable factor

    We can’t choose, for example, our genes. We can, for the most part, choose our diet. Why “for the most part”?

    • Some people live in a food desert (the Arctic Circle is a good example where food choices are limited by supply)
    • Some people have dietary restrictions (whether by health condition e.g. allergy, intolerance, etc or by personal-but-unwavering choice, e.g. vegetarian, vegan, kosher, halal, etc)

    But for most of us, most of the time, we have a good control over our diet, and so that’s an area we can and should focus on.

    Choose your animal protein wisely

    If you are vegan, you can skip this section. If you are not, then the short version is:

    • Fish: almost certainly fine
    • Poultry: the jury is out; data is leaning towards fine, though
    • Red meat: significantly increased cancer risk
    • Processed meat: significantly increased cancer risk

    For more details (and a run-down on the science behind the above super-summarized version):

    Skip The Ultra-Processed Foods

    Ok, so this one’s probably not a shocker in its simplest form:

    ❝Studies are showing us is that not only do the ultraprocessed foods increase the risk of cancer, but that after a cancer diagnosis such foods increase the risk of dying❞

    Source: Is there a connection between ultraprocessed food and cancer?

    There’s an unfortunate implication here! If you took the previous advice to heart and cut out [at least some] meat, and/but then replaced that with ultra-processed synthetic meat, then this was not a great improvement in cancer risk terms.

    Ultra-processed meat is worse than unprocessed, regardless of whether it was from an animal or was synthetic.

    In other words: if you buy textured soy pieces (a common synthetic meat), it pays to look at the ingredients, because there’s a difference between:

    • INGREDIENTS: SOY
    • INGREDIENTS: Rehydrated Textured SOY Protein (52%), Water, Rapeseed Oil, SOY Protein Concentrate, Seasoning (SULPHITES) (Dextrose, Flavourings, Salt, Onion Powder, Food Starch Modified, Yeast Extract, Colour: Red Iron Oxide), SOY Leghemoglobin, Fortified WHEAT Flour (WHEAT Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Bamboo Fibre, Methylcellulose, Tomato Purée, Salt, Raising Agent: Ammonium Carbonates

    Now, most of those original base ingredients are/were harmless per se (as are/were the grapes in wine—before processing into alcohol), but it has clearly been processed to Hell and back to do all that.

    Choose the one that just says “soy”. Or eat soybeans. Or other beans. Or lentils. Really there are a lot of options.

    About soy, by the way…

    There is (mostly in the US, mostly funded by the animal agriculture industry) a lot of fearmongering about soy. Which is ironic, given the amount of soy that is fed to livestock to be fed to humans, but it does bear addressing:

    ❝Soy foods are safe for all cancer patients and are an excellent source of plant protein. Studies show soy may improve survival after breast cancer❞

    Source: Food risks and cancer: What to avoid

    (obviously, if you have a soy allergy then you should not consume soy—for most people, the above advice stands, though)

    Advanced Glycation End-Products

    These (which are Very Bad™ for very many things, including cancer) occur specifically as a result of processing animal proteins and fats.

    Note: not even necessarily ultra-processing, just processing can do it. But ultra-processing is worse. What’s the difference, you wonder?

    The difference between “ultra-processed” and just “processed”:
    • Your average hotdog has been ultra-processed. It’s not only usually been changed with many artificial additives, it’s also been through a series of processes (physical and chemical) and ends up bearing little relation to the creature it came from.
    • Your bacon (that you bought fresh from your local butcher, not a supermarket brand of unknown provenance, and definitely not the kind that might come on the top of frozen supermarket pizza) has been processed. It’s undergone a couple of simple processes on its journey “from farm to table”. Remember also that when you cook it, that too is one more process (and one that results in a lot of AGEs).

    Read more: What’s so bad about AGEs?

    Note if you really don’t want to cut out certain foods, changing the way you cook them (i.e., the last process your food undergoes before you eat it) can also reduce AGES:

    Advanced Glycation End Products in Foods and a Practical Guide to Their Reduction in the Diet

    Get More Fiber

    ❝The American Institute for Cancer Research shows that for every 10-gram increase in fiber in the diet, you improve survival after cancer diagnosis by 13%❞

    Source: Plant-based diet is encouraged for patients with cancer

    Yes, that’s post-diagnosis, but as a general rule of thumb, what is good/bad for cancer when you have it is good/bad for cancer beforehand, too.

    If you’re thinking that increasing your fiber intake means having to add bran to everything, happily there are better ways:

    Level-Up Your Fiber Intake! (Without Difficulty Or Discomfort)

    Enjoy!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

    Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: