Brussels Sprouts vs Broccoli – Which is Healthier?

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Our Verdict

When comparing sprouts to broccoli, we picked the sprouts.

Why?

First let’s note that we have an interesting comparison today, because these two plants are the exact same species (and indeed, also the exact same species as cabbage, cauliflower. and kale)—just a different cultivar. All of these plants and more are simply cultivars of Brassica oleracea.

Them being the same species notwithstanding, there are nutritional differences:

In terms of macros, sprouts have slightly more protein, carbohydrates, and fiber, whereas broccoli has slightly more water weight. An easy win for sprouts here.

In the category of vitamins, sprouts have more of vitamins A, B1, B3, B6, C, E, and K, while broccoli has more of vitamins B2 and B5. Another easy win for sprouts.

When it comes to minerals, sprouts again lead with more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and potassium, while broccoli has more calcium and selenium.

A note on oxalates: while oxalates are not a problem for most people, it is important to be mindful of them if one has kidney problems. You may know that spinach (a fellow green vegetable high in vitamins and minerals, as well as being a fellow oleracea, albeit of a different genus, so not the same species for once) is high in oxalates, but these two Brassica oleracea we compared today are amongst the lowest in oxalates (source 1 | source 2), making them an ideal way to get vitamins, minerals, and fiber on an oxalate-controlled diet.

Since both are also high in polyphenols, especially kaempferol and quercetin, we’ll mention that sprouts have more lignans while broccoli has more flavonoids. In short: they’re both very good, just different.

As ever, enjoy both! But if you’re going to pick one for total best nutritional density, it’s sprouts.

Want to learn more?

You might like to read:

Sprout Your Seeds, Grains, Beans, Etc ← sprout your Brassica oleracea, too!

Take care!

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  • In This Oklahoma Town, Most Everyone Knows Someone Who’s Been Sued by the Hospital

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    McALESTER, Okla. — It took little more than an hour for Deborah Hackler to dispense with the tall stack of debt collection lawsuits that McAlester Regional Medical Center recently brought to small-claims court in this Oklahoma farm community.

    Hackler, a lawyer who sues patients on behalf of the hospital, buzzed through 51 cases, all but a handful uncontested, as is often the case. She bantered with the judge as she secured nearly $40,000 in judgments, plus 10% in fees for herself, according to court records.

    It’s a payday the hospital and Hackler have shared frequently over the past three decades, records show. The records indicate McAlester Regional Medical Center and an affiliated clinic have filed close to 5,000 debt collection cases since the early 1990s, most often represented by the father-daughter law firm of Hackler & Hackler.

    Some of McAlester’s 18,000 residents have been taken to court multiple times. A deputy at the county jail and her adult son were each sued recently, court records show. New mothers said they compare stories of their legal run-ins with the medical center.

    “There’s a lot that’s not right,” Sherry McKee, a dorm monitor at a tribal boarding school outside McAlester, said on the courthouse steps after the hearing. The hospital has sued her three times, most recently over a $3,375 bill for what she said turned out to be vertigo.

    In recent years, major health systems in Virginia, North Carolina, and elsewhere have stopped suing patients following news reports about lawsuits. And several states, such as Maryland and New York, have restricted the legal actions hospitals can take against patients.

    But with some 100 million people in the U.S. burdened by health care debt, medical collection cases still clog courtrooms across the country, researchers have found. In places like McAlester, a hospital’s debt collection machine can hum away quietly for years, helped along by powerful people in town. An effort to limit hospital lawsuits failed in the Oklahoma Legislature in 2021.

    In McAlester, the lawsuits have provided business for some, such as the Adjustment Bureau, a local collection agency run out of a squat concrete building down the street from the courthouse, and for Hackler, a former president of the McAlester Area Chamber of Commerce. But for many patients and their families, the lawsuits can take a devastating toll, sapping wages, emptying retirement accounts, and upending lives.

    McKee said she wasn’t sure how long it would take to pay off the recent judgment. Her $3,375 debt exceeds her monthly salary, she said.

    “This affects a large number of people in a small community,” said Janet Roloff, an attorney who has spent years assisting low-income clients with legal issues such as evictions in and around McAlester. “The impact is great.”

    Settled more than a century ago by fortune seekers who secured land from the Choctaw Nation to mine coal in the nearby hills, McAlester was once a boom town. Vestiges of that era remain, including a mammoth, 140-foot-tall Masonic temple that looms over the city.

    Recent times have been tougher for McAlester, now home by one count to 12 marijuana dispensaries and the state’s death row. The downtown is pockmarked by empty storefronts, including the OKLA theater, which has been dark for decades. Nearly 1 in 5 residents in McAlester and the surrounding county live below the federal poverty line.

    The hospital, operated by a public trust under the city’s authority, faces its own struggles. Paint is peeling off the front portico, and weeds poke up through the parking lots. The hospital has operated in the red for years, according to independent audit reports available on the state auditor’s website.

    “I’m trying to find ways to get the entire community better care and more care,” said Shawn Howard, the hospital’s chief executive. Howard grew up in McAlester and proudly noted he started his career as a receptionist in the hospital’s physical therapy department. “This is my hometown,” he said. “I am not trying to keep people out of getting care.”

    The hospital operates a clinic for low-income patients, whose webpage notes it has “limited appointments” at no cost for patients who are approved for aid. But data from the audits shows the hospital offers very little financial assistance, despite its purported mission to serve the community.

    In the 2022 fiscal year, it provided just $114,000 in charity care, out of a total operating budget of more than $100 million, hospital records show. Charity care totaling $2 million or $3 million out of a $100 million budget would be more in line with other U.S. hospitals.

    While audits show few McAlester patients get financial aid, many get taken to court.

    Renee Montgomery, the city treasurer in an adjoining town and mother of a local police officer, said she dipped into savings she’d reserved for her children and grandchildren after the hospital sued her last year for more than $5,500. She’d gone to the emergency room for chest pain.

    Dusty Powell, a truck driver, said he lost his pickup and motorcycle when his wages were garnished after the hospital sued him for almost $9,000. He’d gone to the emergency department for what turned out to be gastritis and didn’t have insurance, he said.

    “Everyone in this town probably has a story about McAlester Regional,” said another former patient who spoke on the condition she not be named, fearful to publicly criticize the hospital in such a small city. “It’s not even a secret.”

    The woman, who works at an Army munitions plant outside town, was sued twice over bills she incurred giving birth. Her sister-in-law has been sued as well.

    “It’s a good-old-boy system,” said the woman, who lowered her voice when the mayor walked into the coffee shop where she was meeting with KFF Health News. Now, she said, she avoids the hospital if her children need care.

    Nationwide, most people sued in debt collection cases never challenge them, a response experts say reflects widespread misunderstanding of the legal process and anxiety about coming to court.

    At the center of the McAlester hospital’s collection efforts for decades has been Hackler & Hackler.

    Donald Hackler was city attorney in McAlester for 13 years in the ’70s and ’80s and a longtime member of the local Lions Club and the Scottish Rite Freemasons.

    Daughter Deborah Hackler, who joined the family firm 30 years ago, has been a deacon at the First Presbyterian Church of McAlester and served on the board of the local Girl Scouts chapter, according to the McAlester News-Capital newspaper, which named her “Woman of the Year” in 2007. Since 2001, she also has been a municipal judge in McAlester, hearing traffic cases, including some involving people she has sued on behalf of the hospital, municipal and county court records show.

    For years, the Hacklers’ debt collection cases were often heard by Judge James Bland, who has retired from the bench and now sits on the hospital board. Bland didn’t respond to an inquiry for interview.

    Hackler declined to speak with KFF Health News after her recent court appearance. “I’m not going to visit with you about a current client,” she said before leaving the courthouse.

    Howard, the hospital CEO, said he couldn’t discuss the lawsuits either. He said he didn’t know the hospital took its patients to court. “I had to call and ask if we sue people,” he said.

    Howard also said he didn’t know Deborah Hackler. “I never heard her name before,” he said.

    Despite repeated public records requests from KFF Health News since September, the hospital did not provide detailed information about its financial arrangement with Hackler.

    McAlester Mayor John Browne, who appoints the hospital’s board of trustees, said he, too, didn’t know about the lawsuits. “I hadn’t heard anything about them suing,” he said.

    At the century-old courthouse in downtown McAlester, it’s not hard to find the lawsuits, though. Every month or two, another batch fills the docket in the small-claims court, now presided over by Judge Brian McLaughlin.

    After court recently, McLaughlin, who is not from McAlester, shook his head at the stream of cases and patients who almost never show up to defend themselves, leaving him to issue judgment after judgment in the hospital’s favor.

    “All I can do is follow the law,” said McLaughlin. “It doesn’t mean I like it.”

    About This Project

    “Diagnosis: Debt” is a reporting partnership between KFF Health News and NPR exploring the scale, impact, and causes of medical debt in America.

    The series draws on original polling by KFF, court records, federal data on hospital finances, contracts obtained through public records requests, data on international health systems, and a yearlong investigation into the financial assistance and collection policies of more than 500 hospitals across the country. 

    Additional research was conducted by the Urban Institute, which analyzed credit bureau and other demographic data on poverty, race, and health status for KFF Health News to explore where medical debt is concentrated in the U.S. and what factors are associated with high debt levels.

    The JPMorgan Chase Institute analyzed records from a sampling of Chase credit card holders to look at how customers’ balances may be affected by major medical expenses. And the CED Project, a Denver nonprofit, worked with KFF Health News on a survey of its clients to explore links between medical debt and housing instability. 

    KFF Health News journalists worked with KFF public opinion researchers to design and analyze the “KFF Health Care Debt Survey.” The survey was conducted Feb. 25 through March 20, 2022, online and via telephone, in English and Spanish, among a nationally representative sample of 2,375 U.S. adults, including 1,292 adults with current health care debt and 382 adults who had health care debt in the past five years. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full sample and 3 percentage points for those with current debt. For results based on subgroups, the margin of sampling error may be higher.

    Reporters from KFF Health News and NPR also conducted hundreds of interviews with patients across the country; spoke with physicians, health industry leaders, consumer advocates, debt lawyers, and researchers; and reviewed scores of studies and surveys about medical debt.

    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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  • Quercetin Quinoa Probiotic Salad

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    This quercetin-rich salad is a bit like a tabbouleh in feel, with half of the ingredients switched out to maximize phenolic and gut-healthy benefits.

    You will need

    • ½ cup quinoa
    • ½ cup kale, finely chopped
    • ½ cup flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
    • ½ cup green olives, thinly sliced
    • ½ cup sun-dried tomatoes, roughly chopped
    • 1 pomegranate, peel and pith removed
    • 1 preserved lemon, finely chopped
    • 1 oz feta cheese or plant-based equivalent, crumbled
    • 1 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
    • 1 tbsp capers
    • 1 tbsp chia seeds
    • 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

    Note: you shouldn’t need salt or similar here, because of the diverse gut-healthy fermented products bringing their own salt with them

    Method

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

    1) Rinse the quinoa, add the tbsp of chia seeds, cook as normal for quinoa (i.e. add hot water, bring to boil, simmer for 15 minutes or so until pearly and tender), carefully (don’t lose the chia seeds; use a sieve) drain and rinse with cold water to cool. Shake off excess water and/or pat dry on kitchen paper if necessary.

    2) Mix everything gently but thoroughly.

    3) 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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  • Intermittent Fasting In Women

    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.

    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

    ❝Does intermittent fasting differ for women, and if so, how?❞

    For the sake of layout, we’ve put a shortened version of this question here, but the actual wording was as below, and merits sharing in full for context

    Went down a rabbit hole on your site and now can’t remember how I got to the “Fasting Without Crashing” article on intermittent fasting so responding to this email lol, but was curious what you find/know about fasting for women specifically? It’s tough for me to sift through and find legitimate studies done on the results of fasting in women, knowing that our bodies are significantly different from men. This came up when discussing with my sister about how I’ve been enjoying fasting 1-2 days/week. She said she wanted more reliable sources of info that that’s good, since she’s read more about how temporary starvation can lead to long-term weight gain due to our bodies feeling the need to store fat. I’ve also read about that, but also that fasting enables more focused autophagy in our bodies, which helps with long-term staving off of diseases/ailments. Curious to know what you all think!

    ~ 10almonds subscriber

    So, first of all, great question! Thanks for asking it

    Next up, isn’t it strange? Books come in the format:

    • [title]
    • [title, for women]

    You would not think women are a little over half of the world’s population!

    Anyway, there has been some research done on the difference of intermittent fasting in women, but not much.

    For example, here’s a study that looked at 1–2 days/week IF, in other words, exactly what you’ve been doing. And, they did have an equal number of men and women in the study… And then didn’t write down whether this made a difference or not! They recorded a lot of data, but neglected to note down who got what per sex:

    Intermittent fasting two days versus one day per week, matched for total energy intake and expenditure, increases weight loss in overweight/obese men and women

    Here’s a more helpful study, that looked at just women, and concluded:

    ❝In conclusion, intermittent fasting could be a nutritional strategy to decrease fat mass and increase jumping performance.

    However, longer duration programs would be necessary to determine whether other parameters of muscle performance could be positively affected by IF. ❞

    ~ Dr. Martínez-Rodríguez et al.

    Read in full: Effect of High-Intensity Interval Training and Intermittent Fasting on Body Composition and Physical Performance in Active Women

    Those were “active women”; another study looked at just women who were overweight or obese (we realize that “active women” and “obese or overweight women” is a Venn diagram with some overlap, but still, the different focus is interesting), and concluded:

    ❝IER is as effective as CER with regard to weight loss, insulin sensitivity and other health biomarkers, and may be offered as an alternative equivalent to CER for weight loss and reducing disease risk.❞

    ~ Dr. Michelle Harvie et al.

    Read in full: The effects of intermittent or continuous energy restriction on weight loss and metabolic disease risk markers: a randomised trial in young overweight women

    As for your sister’s specific concern about yo-yoing, we couldn’t find studies for this yet, but anecdotally and based on books on Intermittent Fasting, this is not usually an issue people find with IF. This is assumed to be for exactly the reason you mention, the increased cellular apoptosis and autophagy—increasing cellular turnover is very much the opposite of storing fat!

    You might, by the way, like Dr. Mindy Pelz’s “Fast Like A Girl”, which we reviewed previously

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • Stevia vs Acesulfame Potassium – Which is Healthier?
  • 5 Ways to Beat Menopausal Weight Gain!

    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.

    As it turns out, “common” does not mean “inevitable”!

    Health Coach Kait’s advice

    Her 5 tips are…

    • Understand your metabolism: otherwise you’re working the dark and will get random results. Learn about how different foods affect your metabolism, and note that hormonal changes due to menopause can mean that some food types have different effects now.
    • Eat enough protein: one thing doesn’t change—protein helps with satiety, thus helping to avoid overeating.
    • Focus on sleep: prioritizing sleep is essential for hormone regulation, and that means not just sex hormones, but also food-related hormones such as insulin, ghrelin, and leptin.
    • Be smart about carbs: taking a lot of carbs at once can lead to insulin spikes and thus metabolic disorder, which in turn leads to fat in places you don’t want it (especially your liver and belly). Enjoying a low-carb diet, and/or pairing your carbs with proteins and fats, does a lot to help avoid insulin spikes too. Not mentioned in the video, but we’re going to mention here: don’t underestimate fiber’s role either, especially if you take it before the carbs, which is best for blood sugars, as it gives a buffer to the digestive process, thus slowing down absorption of carbs.
    • Build muscle: if trying to avoid/lose fat, it’s tempting to focus on cardio, but we generally can’t exercise our way out of having fat, whereas having more muscle increases the body’s metabolic base rate, burning fat just by existing. So for this reason, enjoy muscle-building resistance exercises at least a few times per week.

    For more information on each of these, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It

    Take care!

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  • 52 Ways to Walk – by Annabel Streets

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    Most of us learned to walk at a very young age and probably haven’t thought much about it since, except perhaps in a case where some injury made it difficult.

    Annabel Streets provides a wonderful guide to not just taking up (or perhaps reclaiming) the joy of walking, but also the science of it in more aspects than most of us have considered:

    • The physical mechanics of walking—what’s best?
    • Boots or shoes? Barefoot?
    • Roads, grass, rougher vegetation… Mud?
    • Flora & fauna down to the microbiota that affect us
    • How much walking is needed, to be healthy?
    • Is there such a thing as too much walking?
    • What are the health benefits (or risks) of various kinds of weather?
    • Is it better to walk quickly or to walk far?
    • What about if we’re carrying some injury?
    • What’s going on physiologically when we walk?
    • And so much more…

    Streets writes with a captivating blend of poetic joie-de-vivre coupled with scientific references.

    One moment the book is talking about neuroradiology reports of NO-levels in our blood, the impact of Mycobacterium vaccae, and the studied relationship between daily steps taken and production of oligosaccharide 3′-sialyllactose, and the next it’s all:

    “As if the newfound lightness in our limbs has crept into our minds, loosening our everyday cares and constraints…”

    And all in all, this book helps remind us that sometimes, science and a sense of wonder can and do (and should!) walk hand-in-hand.

    Treat yourself to “52 Ways to Walk” from Amazon today!

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  • The Sweet Truth About Glycine

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    Make Your Collagen Work Better

    This is Dr. James Nicolantonio. He’s a doctor of pharmacy, and a research scientist. He has a passion for evidence-based nutrition, and has written numerous books on the subject.

    Controversy! Dr. DiNicolatonio’s work has included cardiovascular research, in which field he has made the case for increasing (rather than decreasing) the recommended amount of salt in our diet. This, of course, goes very much against the popular status quo.

    We haven’t reviewed that research so we won’t comment on it here, but we thought it worth a mention as a point of interest. We’ll investigate his claims in that regard another time, though!

    Today, however, we’ll be looking at his incisive, yet not controversial, work pertaining to collagen and glycine.

    A quick recap on collagen

    We’ve written about collagen before, and its importance for maintaining… Well, pretty much most of our body, really, buta deficiency in collagen can particularly weaken bones and joints.

    On a more surface level, collagen’s also important for healthy elastic skin, and many people take it for that reason alone,

    Since collagen is found only in animals, even collagen supplements are animal-based (often marine collagen or bovine collagen). However, if we don’t want to consume those, we can (like most animals) synthesize it ourselves from the relevant amino acids, which we can get from plants (and also laboratories, in some cases).

    You can read our previous article about this, here:

    We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of

    What does he want us to know about collagen?

    We’ll save time and space here: first, he’d like us to know the same as what we said in our article above

    However, there is also more:

    Let’s assume that your body has collagen to process. You either consumed it, or your body has synthesized it. We’ll skip describing the many steps of collagen synthesis, fascinating as that is, and get to the point:

    When our body weaves together collagen fibrils out of the (triple-helical) collagen molecules…

    • the cross-linking of the collagen requires lysyl oxidase
    • the lysyl oxidase (which we make inside us) deanimates some other amino acids yielding aldehydes that allow the stable cross-links important for the high tensile strength of collagen, but to do that, it requires copper
    • in order to use the copper it needs to be in its reduced cuprous form and that requires vitamin C
    • but moving it around the body requires vitamin A

    So in other words: if you are taking (or synthesizing) collagen, you also need copper and vitamins A and C.

    However! Just to make things harder, if you take copper and vitamin C together, it’ll reduce the copper too soon in the wrong place.

    Dr. DiNicolantonio therefore advises taking vitamin C after copper, with a 75 minutes gap between them.

    What does he want us to know about glycine?

    Glycine is one of the amino acids that makes up collagen. Specifically, it makes up every third amino acid in collagen, and even more specifically, it’s also the rate-limiting factor in the formation of glutathione, which is a potent endogenous (i.e., we make it inside us) antioxidant that works hard to fight inflammation inside the body.

    What this means: if your joints are prone to inflammation, being glycine-deficient means a double-whammy of woe.

    As well as being one of the amino acids most key to collagen production, glycine has another collagen-related role:

    First, the problem: as we age, glycated collagen accumulates in the skin and cartilage (that’s bad; there is supposed to be collagen there, but not glycated).

    More on glycation and what it is and why it is so bad:

    Are You Eating Advanced Glycation End-Products? The Trouble Of The AGEs

    Now, the solution: glycine suppresses advanced glycation end products, including the glycation of collagen.

    See for example:

    Glycine Suppresses AGE/RAGE Signaling Pathway and Subsequent Oxidative Stress by Restoring Glo1 Function

    With these three important functions of glycine in mind…

    Dr. DiNicolantonio therefore advises getting glycine at a dose of 100mg/kg/day. So, if you’re the same size as this rather medium-sized writer, that means 7.2g/day.

    Where can I get it?

    Glycine is found in many foods, including gelatin for those who eat that, eggs for the vegetarians, and spinach for vegans.

    However, if you’d like to simply take it as a supplement, here’s an example product on Amazon

    (the above product is not clear whether it’s animal-derived or not, so if that’s important to you, shop around. This writer got some locally that is certified vegan, but is in Europe rather than N. America, which won’t help most of our subscribers)

    Note: pure glycine is a white crystalline powder that has the same sweetness as glucose. Indeed, that is how it got its name, from the Greek “γλυκύς”, pronounced /ɡly.kýs/, meaning “sweet”. Yes, same etymology as glucose.

    So don’t worry that you’ve been conned if you order it and think “this is sugar!”; it just looks and tastes the same.

    That does mean you should buy from a reputable source though, as a con would be very easy!

    this does also mean that if you like a little sugar/sweetener in your tea or coffee, glycine can be used as a healthy substitute.

    If you don’t like sweet tastes, then, condolences. This writer pours two espresso coffees (love this decaffeinated coffee that actually tastes good), puts the glycine in the first, and then uses the second to get rid of the sweet taste of the first. So that’s one way to do it.

    Enjoy (if you can!)

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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