Celery vs Lettuce – Which is Healthier?

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Our Verdict

When comparing celery to lettuce, we picked the lettuce.

Why?

Let us consider the macros first: lettuce has 2x the protein, but of course the numbers are tiny and probably nobody is eating this for the protein. Both of these salad items are roughly comparable in terms of carbs and fiber, being both mostly water with just enough other stuff to hold their shape. Nominally this section is a slight win for lettuce on account of the protein, but in realistic practical terms, it’s a tie.

In terms of vitamins, celery has more of vitamins B5 and E, while lettuce has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, B7, B9, C, K, and choline. An easy win for lettuce here.

In the category of minerals, celery has more calcium, copper, and potassium, while lettuce has more iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. So, a fair win for lettuce.

Adding up the sections makes for an overall win for lettuce; of course, enjoy both, though!

Want to learn more?

You might like to read:

Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Fiber (And How To Fix It)

Take care!

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  • The Plant-Based Athlete – by Matt Frazier and Robert Cheeke

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    If you’re already a seasoned plant-based athlete yourself, you can probably skip this book; the 60 recipes at the end would still provide value, but there is the “No Meat Athlete Cookbook” that you could hop straight to, in any case.

    For most readers, there will be plenty of value from start to finish. We get a quick ground-up tour of nutrition basics, before getting into restructuring diet to optimize it for performance.

    There is less in the way of “Vegans struggle with…” and more in the way of “People think vegans struggle with…” and explanations of what vegan athletes actually eat. The book does include science, but isn’t too science-heavy, and relies more on modelling what plant-based superathletes enjoy on a daily basis.

    To that end,if the book has a weak point, it’s perhaps that it could have stood to include more science. The book comes recommended by Dr. Michael Greger, whose nutritional approach is incredibly science-heavy and well-referenced, and this book is obviously compatible with that (so they could have!), but in this case Frazier and Cheeke leave us to take their word for it.

    Nevertheless, the science is good whether they cite it or not, and this book is quite a comprehensive primer of plant-based athleticism.

    Bottom line: if you’re wondering how to optimize the two goals of “eating plants” and “being a powerful athlete”, then this one’s the book for you.

    Click here to check out The Plant-Based Athlete and upgrade your health and athletic performance!

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  • Rethinking Exercise: The Workout Paradox

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    The notion of running a caloric deficit (i.e., expending more calories than we consume) to reduce bodyfat is appealing in its simplicity, but… we’d say “it doesn’t actually work outside of a lab”, but honestly, it doesn’t actually work outside of a calculator.

    Why?

    For a start, exercise calorie costs are quite small numbers compared to metabolic base rate. Our brain alone uses a huge portion of our daily calories, and the rest of our body literally never stops doing stuff. Even if we’re lounging in bed and ostensibly not moving, on a cellular level we stay incredibly busy, and all that costs (and the currency is: calories).

    Since that cost is reflected in the body’s budget per kg of bodyweight, a larger body (regardless of its composition) will require more calories than a smaller one. We say “regardless of its composition” because this is true regardless—but for what it’s worth, muscle is more “costly” to maintain than fat, which is one of several reasons why the average man requires more daily calories than the average woman, since on average men will tend to have more muscle.

    And if you do exercise because you want to run out the budget so the body has to “spend” from fat stores?

    Good luck, because while it may work in the very short term, the body will quickly adapt, like an accountant seeing your reckless spending and cutting back somewhere else. That’s why in all kinds of exercise except high-intensity interval training, a period of exercise will be followed by a metabolic slump, the body’s “austerity measures”, to balance the books.

    You may be wondering: why is it different for HIIT? It’s because it changes things up frequently enough that the body doesn’t get a chance to adapt. To labor the financial metaphor, it involves lying to your accountant, so that the compensation is not made. Congratulations: you’re committing calorie fraud (but it’s good for the body, so hey).

    That doesn’t mean other kinds of exercise are useless (or worse, necessarily counterproductive), though! Just, that we must acknowledge that other forms of exercise are great for various aspects of physical health (strengthening the body, mobilizing blood and lymph, preventing disease, enjoying mental health benefits, etc) that don’t really affect fat levels much (which are decided more in the kitchen than the gym—and even in the category of diet, it’s more about what and how and when you eat, rather than how much).

    For more information on metabolic balance in the context of exercise, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

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    Take care!

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  • Peace Is Every Step – by Thích Nhất Hạnh

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    Mindfulness is one of the few practices to make its way from religion (in this case, Buddhism) into hard science. We’ve written before about its many evidence-based benefits, and many national health information outlets recommend it. So, what does this book have to add?

    Thích Nhất Hạnh spent most of his 95 years devoted to the practice and teaching of mindfulness and compassion. In this book, the focus is on bringing mindfulness off the meditation mat and into general life.

    After all, what if we could extend that “unflappability” into situations that pressure and antagonize us? That would be some superpower!

    The author offers techniques to do just that, simple exercises to transform negative emotions, and to make us more likely to remember to do so.

    After all, “in the heat of the moment” is rarely when many of us are at our best, this book gives way to allow those moments themselves to serve as immediate triggers to be our best.

    The title “Peace Is Every Step” is not a random collection of words; the goal of this book is to enable to reader to indeed carry peace with us as we go.

    Not just “peace is always available to us”, but if we do it right: “we have now arranged for our own peace to automatically step in and help us when we need it most”.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to practice mindfulness, or practice it more consistently, this book offers some powerful tools.

    Click here to check out Peace Is Every Step, and carry yours with you!

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Related Posts

  • Tilapia vs Cod – Which is Healthier?
  • We looked at 700 plant-based foods to see how healthy they really are. Here’s what we found

    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.

    If you’re thinking about buying plant-based foods, a trip to the supermarket can leave you bewildered.

    There are plant-based burgers, sausages and mince. The fridges are loaded with non-dairy milk, cheese and yoghurt. Then there are the tins of beans and packets of tofu.

    But how much is actually healthy?

    Our nutritional audit of more than 700 plant-based foods for sale in Australian supermarkets has just been published. We found some products are so high in salt or saturated fat, we’d struggle to call them “healthy”.

    We took (several) trips to the supermarket

    In 2022, we visited two of each of four major supermarket retailers across Melbourne to collect information on the available range of plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy products.

    We took pictures of the products and their nutrition labels.

    We then analysed the nutrition information on the packaging of more than 700 of these products. This included 236 meat substitutes, 169 legumes and pulses, 50 baked beans, 157 dairy milk substitutes, 52 cheese substitutes and 40 non-dairy yoghurts.

    Plant-based meats were surprisingly salty

    We found a wide range of plant-based meats for sale. So, it’s not surprising we found large variations in their nutrition content.

    Sodium, found in added salt and which contributes to high blood pressure, was our greatest concern.

    The sodium content varied from 1 milligram per 100 grams in products such as tofu, to 2,000mg per 100g in items such as plant-based mince products.

    This means we could eat our entire daily recommended sodium intake in just one bowl of plant-based mince.

    An audit of 66 plant-based meat products in Australian supermarkets conducted in 2014 found sodium ranged from 316mg in legume-based products to 640mg in tofu products, per 100g. In a 2019 audit of 137 products, the range was up to 1,200mg per 100g.

    In other words, the results of our audit seems to show a consistent trend of plant-based meats getting saltier.

    Plant-based meat on supermarket shelves
    Looking for plant-based meat? Check the label for the sodium content.
    Michael Vi/Shutterstock

    What about plant-based milks?

    Some 70% of the plant-based milks we audited were fortified with calcium, a nutrient important for bone health.

    This is good news as a 2019-2020 audit of 115 plant-based milks from Melbourne and Sydney found only 43% of plant-based milks were fortified with calcium.

    Of the fortified milks in our audit, almost three-quarters (73%) contained the recommended amount of calcium – at least 100mg per 100mL.

    We also looked at the saturated fat content of plant-based milks.

    Coconut-based milks had on average up to six times higher saturated fat content than almond, oat or soy milks.

    Previous audits also found coconut-based milks were much higher in saturated fat than all other categories of milks.

    Supermarket shelves of plant-based milks
    Some plant-based milks were healthier than others.
    TY Lim/Shutterstock

    A first look at cheese and yoghurt alternatives

    Our audit is the first study to identify the range of cheese and yoghurt alternatives available in Australian supermarkets.

    Calcium was only labelled on a third of plant-based yoghurts, and only 20% of supermarket options met the recommended 100mg of calcium per 100g.

    For plant-based cheeses, most (92%) were not fortified with calcium. Their sodium content varied from 390mg to 1,400mg per 100g, and saturated fat ranged from 0g to 28g per 100g.

    So, what should we consider when shopping?

    As a general principle, try to choose whole plant foods, such as unprocessed legumes, beans or tofu. These foods are packed with vitamins and minerals. They’re also high in dietary fibre, which is good for your gut health and keeps you fuller for longer.

    If opting for a processed plant-based food, here are five tips for choosing a healthier option.

    1. Watch the sodium

    Plant-based meat alternatives can be high in sodium, so look for products that have around 150-250mg sodium per 100g.

    2. Pick canned beans and legumes

    Canned chickpeas, lentils and beans can be healthy and low-cost additions to many meals. Where you can, choose canned varieties with no added salt, especially when buying baked beans.

    3. Add herbs and spices to your tofu

    Tofu can be a great alternative to meat. Check the label and pick the option with the highest calcium content. We found flavoured tofu was higher in salt and sugar content than minimally processed tofu. So it’s best to pick an unflavoured option and add your own flavours with spices and herbs.

    4. Check the calcium

    When choosing a non-dairy alternative to milk, such as those made from soy, oat, or rice, check it is fortified with calcium. A good alternative to traditional dairy will have at least 100mg of calcium per 100g.

    5. Watch for saturated fat

    If looking for a lower saturated fat option, almond, soy, rice and oat varieties of milk and yoghurt alternatives have much lower saturated fat content than coconut options. Pick those with less than 3g per 100g.The Conversation

    Laura Marchese, PhD Student at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University and Katherine Livingstone, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Your Brain On (And Off) Estrogen

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    This is Dr. Lisa Mosconi. She’s a professor of Neuroscience in Neurology and Radiology, and is one of the 1% most influential scientists of the 21st century. That’s not a random number or an exaggeration; it has to do with citation metrics collated over 20 years:

    A standardized citation metrics author database annotated for scientific field

    What does she want us to know?

    Women’s brains age differently from men’s

    This is largely, of course, due to menopause, and as such is a generalization, but it’s a statistically safe generalization, because:

    • Most women go through menopause—and most women who don’t, avoid it by dying pre-menopause, so the aging also does not occur in those cases
    • Menopause is very rarely treated immediately—not least of all because menopause is diagnosed officially when it has been one year since one’s last period, so there’s almost always a year of “probably” first, and often numerous years, in the case of periods slowing down before stopping
    • Menopausal HRT is great, but doesn’t completely negate that menopause occurred—because of the delay in starting HRT, some damage can be done already and can take years to reverse.

    Medicated and unmedicated menopause proceed very differently from each other, and this fact has historically caused obfuscation of a lot of research into age-related neurodegeneration.

    For example, it is well-established that women get Alzheimer’s at nearly twice the rate than men do, and deteriorate more rapidly after onset, too.

    Superficially, one might conclude “estrogen is to blame” or maybe “the xx-chromosomal karyotype is to blame”.

    The opposite, however, is true with regard to estrogen—estrogen appears to be a protective factor in women’s neurological health, which is why increased neurodegeneration occurs when estrogen levels decline (for example, in menopause).

    For a full rundown on this, see:

    Alzheimer’s Sex Differences May Not Be What They Appear

    It’s not about the extra X

    Dr. Mosconi examines this in detail in her book “The XX Brain”. To summarize and oversimplify a little: the XX karyotype by itself makes no difference, or more accurately, the XY karyotype by itself makes no difference (because biologically speaking, female physiological attributes are more “default” than male ones; it is only 12,000ish* years of culture that has flipped the social script on this).

    *Why 12,000ish years? It’s because patriarchalism largely began with settled agriculture, for reasons that are fascinating but beyond the scope of this article, which is about health science, not archeology.

    The topic of “which is biologically default” is relevant, because the XY karyotype (usually) informs the body “ignore previous instructions about ovaries, and adjust slightly to make them into testes instead”, which in turn (usually) results in a testosterone-driven system instead of an estrogen-driven system. And that is what makes the difference to the brain.

    One way we can see that it’s about the hormones not the chromosomes, is in cases of androgen insensitivity syndrome, in which the natal “congratulations, it’s a girl” pronouncement may later be in conflict with the fact it turns out she had XY chromosomes all along, but the androgenic instructions never got delivered successfully, so she popped out with fairly typical female organs. And, relevantly for Dr. Mosconi, a typically female brain that will age in a typically female fashion, because it’s driven by estrogen, regardless of the Y-chromosome.

    The good news

    The good news from all of this is that while we can’t (with current science, anyway) do much about our chromosomes, we can do plenty about our hormones, and also, the results of changes in same.

    Remember, Dr. Mosconi is not an endocrinologist, nor a gynecologist, but a neurologist. As such, she makes the case for how a true interdisciplinary team for treating menopause should not confined to the narrow fields usually associated with “bikini medicine”, but should take into account that a lot of menopause-related changes are neurological in nature.

    We recently reviewed another book by Dr. Mosconi:

    The Menopause Brain – by Dr. Lisa Mosconi

    …and as we noted there, many sources will mention “brain fog” as a symptom of menopause, Dr. Mosconi can (and will) point to a shadowy patch on a brain scan and say “that’s the brain fog, there”.

    And so on, for other symptoms that are often dismissed as “all in your head”, as though that’s a perfectly acceptable place for problems to be.

    This is critical, because it’s treating real neurological things as the real things they are.

    Dr. Mosconi’s advice, beyond HRT

    Dr. Mosconi notes that brain health tends to dip during perimenopause but often recovers, showing the brain’s resilience to hormonal shifts. As such, all is not lost if for whatever reason, hormone replacement therapy isn’t a viable option for you.

    Estrogen plays a crucial role in brain energy, and women’s declining estrogen levels during menopause increase the need for antioxidants to protect brain health—something not often talked about.

    Specifically, Dr. Mosconi tells us, women need more antioxidants and have different metabolic responses to diets compared to men.*

    *Yes, even though men usually have negligible estrogen, because their body (and thus brain, being also part of their body) is running on testosterone instead, which is something that will only happen if either you are producing normal male amounts of testosterone (requires normal male testes) or you are taking normal male amounts of testosterone (requires big bottles of testosterone; this isn’t the kind of thing you can get from a low dose of testogel as sometimes prescribed as part of menopausal HRT to perk your metabolism up).

    Note: despite women being a slight majority on Earth, and despite an aging population in wealthy nations, meaning “a perimenopausal woman” is thus the statistically average person in, for example, the US, and despite the biological primacy of femaleness… Medicine still mostly looks to men as the “default person”, which in this case can result in seriously low-balled estimates of what antioxidants are needed.

    In terms of supplements, therefore, she recommends:

    • Antioxidants: key for brain health, especially in women. Rich sources include fruits (especially berries) and vegetables. Then there’s the world’s most-consumed antioxidant, which is…
    • Coffee: Italian-style espresso has the highest antioxidant power. Adding a bit of fat (e.g. oat milk) helps release caffeine more slowly, reducing jitters. Taking it alongside l-theanine also “flattens the curve” and thus improves its overall benefits.
    • Flavonoids: important for both men and women but particularly essential for women. Found in many fruits and vegetables.
    • Chocolate: dark chocolate is an excellent source of antioxidants and flavonoids!
    • Turmeric: a natural neuroprotectant with anti-inflammatory properties, best boosted by taking with black pepper, which improves absorption as well as having many great qualities of its own.
    • B Vitamins: B6, B9, and B12 are essential for anti-aging and brain health; deficiency in B6 is rare, while deficiency in B9 (folate) and especially B12 is very common later in life.
    • Vitamins C & E: important antioxidants, but caution is needed with fat-soluble vitamins to avoid toxicity.
    • Omega-3s: important for brain health; can be consumed in the diet, but supplements may be necessary.
    • Caution with zinc: zinc can support immunity and endocrine health (and thus, indirectly, brain health) but may be harmful in excess, particularly for brain health.
    • Probiotics & Prebiotics: beneficial for gut health, and in Dr. Mosconi’s opinion, hard to get sufficient amounts from diet alone.

    For more pointers, you might want to check out the MIND diet, that is to say, the “Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay” upgrade to make the Mediterranean diet even brain-healthier than it is by default:

    Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet

    Want to know more from Dr. Mosconi?

    Here’s her TED talk:

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

    Enjoy!

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  • Imposter Syndrome (and why almost everyone has it)

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    Imposter Syndrome (and why almost everyone has it)

    Imposter syndrome is the pervasive idea that we’re not actually good enough, people think we are better than we are, and at any moment we’re going to get found out and disappoint everyone.

    Beyond the workplace

    Imposter syndrome is most associated with professionals. It can range from a medical professional who feels like they’ve been projecting an image of confidence too much, to a writer or musician who is sure that their next piece will never live up to the acclaim of previous pieces and everyone will suddenly realize they don’t know what they’re doing, to a middle-manager who feels like nobody above or below them realizes how little they know how to do.

    But! Less talked-about (but no less prevalent) is imposter syndrome in other areas of life. New parents tend to feel this strongly, as can the “elders” of a family that everyone looks to for advice and strength and support. Perhaps worst is when the person most responsible for the finances of a household feels like everyone just trusts them to keep everything running smoothly, and maybe they shouldn’t because it could all come crashing down at any moment and everyone will see them for the hopeless shambles of a human being that they really are.

    Feelings are not facts

    And yet (while everyone makes mistakes sometimes) the reality is that we’re all doing our best. Given that imposter syndrome affects up to 82% of people, let’s remember to have some perspective. Everyone feels like they’re winging it sometimes. Everyone feels the pressure.

    Well, perhaps not everyone. There’s that other 18%. Some people are sure they’re the best thing ever. Then again, there’s probably some in that 18% that actually feel worse than the 82%—they just couldn’t admit it, even in an anonymized study.

    But one thing’s for sure: it’s very, very common. Especially in high-performing women, by the way, and people of color. In other words, people who typically “have to do twice as much to get recognized as half as good”.

    That said, the flipside of this is that people who are not in any of those categories may feel “everything is in my favor, so I really have no excuse to not achieve the most”, and can sometimes take very extreme actions to try to avoid perceived failure, and it can be their family that pays the price.

    Things to remember

    If you find imposter syndrome nagging at you, remember these things:

    • There are people far less competent than you, doing the same thing
    • Nobody knows how to do everything themselves, especially at first
    • If you don’t know how to do something, you can usually find out
    • There is always someone to ask for help, or at least advice, or at least support

    At the end of the day, we evolved to eat fruit and enjoy the sun. None of us are fully equipped for all the challenges of the modern world, but if we do our reasonable best, and look after each other (and that means that you too, dear reader, deserve looking after as well), we can all do ok.

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