Chickpeas vs Mung Beans – Which is Healthier?

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Our Verdict

When comparing chickpeas to mung beans, we picked the chickpeas.

Why?

Both are great! But there’s a clear winner here:

In terms of macros, chickpeas have more protein, carbs, and fiber, as well as the lower glycemic index. The difference is very small, but it’s a nominal win for chickpeas.

When it comes to vitamins, chickpeas have more of vitamins A, B2, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while mung beans have more of vitamins B1, B3, and B5. Again the differences aren’t huge, but by strength of numbers they’re in chickpeas’ favor, so it’s another win for chickpeas here.

In the category of minerals, chickpeas have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while mung beans are not higher in any mineral. An easy win for chickpeas on this one.

Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for chickpeas, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!

Want to learn more?

You might like to read:

Plant vs Animal Protein: Head to Head

Enjoy!

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  • How To Heal And Regrow Receding Gums

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    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    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

    ❝So, I have a topic that I’d love you guys to discuss: green tea. I used to try + drink it years ago but I always got an allergic reaction to it. So the question I’d like answered is: Will I still get the same allergic reaction if I take the capsules ? Also, because it’s caffeinated, will taking it interfere with iron pills, other vitamins + meds ? I read that the health benefits of the decaffeinated tea/capsules are not as great as the caffeinated. Any info would be greatly appreciated !! Thanks much !!❞

    I’ll answer this one in the first person as I’ve had a similar issue:

    I found long ago that taking any kind of tea (not herbal infusions, but true teas, e.g. green tea, black tea, red tea, etc) on an empty stomach made me want to throw up. The feeling would subside within about half an hour, but I learned it was far better to circumvent it by just not taking tea on an empty stomach.

    However! I take an l-theanine supplement when I wake up, to complement my morning coffee, and have never had a problem with that. Of course, my physiology is not your physiology, and this “shouldn’t” be happening to either of us in the first place, so it’s not something there’s a lot of scientific literature about, and we just have to figure out what works for us.

    I’d hypothesize that the reason tea causes a problem but the supplement doesn’t, is because the reaction is not to the l-theanine, but rather to the tannins in the tea.

    This last Monday I wrote (inspired in part by your query) about l-theanine supplementation, and how it doesn’t require caffeine to unlock its benefits after all, by the way. So that’s that part in order.

    I can’t speak for interactions with your other supplements or medications without knowing what they are, but I’m not aware of any known issue, beyond that l-theanine will tend to give a gentler curve to the expression of some neurotransmitters. So, if for example you’re talking anything that affects that (e.g. antidepressants, antipsychotics, ADHD meds, sleepy/wakefulness meds, etc) then checking with your doctor is best.

    ❝Can you do something on collagen and keep use posted on pineapple, and yes love and look forward to each issue❞

    Glad you’re enjoying! We did write a main feature on collagen a little while back! Here it is:

    We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of

    As for pineapple, there’s not a lot to keep you posted about! Pineapple’s protein-digesting, DNA-unzipping action is well-established and considered harmless (if your mouth feels weird when you eat pineapple or drink pineapple juice, this is why, by the way) because no meaningful damage was done.

    For example:

    • Pineapple’s bromelain action is akin to taking apart a little lego model brick by brick (easy to fix)
    • Clastogenic genotoxicity is more like taking a blowtorch to the lego model (less easy to fix)

    Fun fact: pineapple is good against inflammation, because of the very same enzyme!

    ❝I never knew anything about the l- tea. Where can I purchase it?❞

    You can get it online quite easily! Here’s an example on Amazon

    ❝The 3 most important exercises don’t work if you can’t get on the floor. I’m 78, and have knee replacements. What about 3 best chair yoga stretches? Love your articles!❞

    Here are six!

    We turn the tables and ask you a question!

    We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:

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  • How To Avoid UTIs

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    Psst… A Word To The Wise

    Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) can strike at any age, but they get a lot more common as we get older:

    • About 10% of women over 65 have had one
    • About 30% of women over 85 have had one

    Source: Urinary tract infection in older adults

    Note: those figures are almost certainly very underreported, so the real figures are doubtlessly higher. However, we print them here as they’re still indicative of a disproportionate increase in risk over time.

    What about men?

    Men do get UTIs too, but at a much lower rate. The difference in average urethra length means that women are typically 30x more likely to get a UTI.

    However! If a man does get one, then assuming the average longer urethra, it will likely take much more treatment to fix:

    Case study: 26-Year-Old Man With Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections

    Risk factors you might want to know about

    While you may not be able to do much about your age or the length of your urethra, there are some risk factors that can be more useful to know:

    Catheterization

    You might logically think that having a catheter would be the equivalent of having a really long urethra, thus keeping you safe, but unfortunately, the opposite is true:

    Read more: Review of Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections

    Untreated menopause

    Low estrogen levels can cause vaginal tissue to dry, making it easier for pathogens to grow.

    For more information on menopausal HRT, see:

    What You Should Have Been Told About Menopause Beforehand

    Sexual activity

    Most kinds of sexual activity carry a risk of bringing germs very close to the urethra. Without wishing to be too indelicate: anything that’s going there should be clean, so it’s a case for washing your hands/partner(s)/toys etc.

    For the latter, beyond soap and water, you might also consider investing in a UV sanitizer box ← This example has a 9” capacity; if you shop around though, be sure to check the size is sufficient!

    Kidney stones and other kidney diseases

    Anything that impedes the flow of urine can raise the risk of a UTI.

    See also: Keeping Your Kidneys Healthy (Especially After 60)

    Diabetes

    How much you can control this one will obviously depend on which type of diabetes you have, but diabetes of any type is an immunocompromizing condition. If you can, managing it as well as possible will help many aspects of your health, including this one.

    More on that:

    How To Prevent And Reverse Type 2 Diabetes

    Note: In the case of Type 1 Diabetes, the above advice will (alas) not help you to prevent or reverse it. However, reducing/avoiding insulin resistance is even more important in cases of T1D (because if your exogenous insulin stops working, you die), so the advice is good all the same.

    How do I know if I have a UTI?

    Routine screening isn’t really a thing, since the symptoms are usually quite self-evident. If it hurts/burns when you pee, the most likely reason is a UTI.

    Get it checked out; the test is a (non-invasive) urinalysis test. In other words, you’ll give a urine sample and they’ll test that.

    Anything else I can do to avoid it?

    Yes! We wrote previously about the benefits of cranberry supplementation, which was found even to rival antibiotics:

    ❝…recommend cranberry ingestion to decrease the incidence of urinary tract infections, particularly in individuals with recurrent urinary tract infections. This would also reduce the [need for] administration of antibiotics❞

    ~ Luís et al. (2017)

    Read more: Health Benefits Of Cranberries

    Take care!

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  • Older Men’s Connections Often Wither When They’re on Their Own

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    At age 66, South Carolina physician Paul Rousseau decided to retire after tending for decades to the suffering of people who were seriously ill or dying. It was a difficult and emotionally fraught transition.

    “I didn’t know what I was going to do, where I was going to go,” he told me, describing a period of crisis that began in 2017.

    Seeking a change of venue, Rousseau moved to the mountains of North Carolina, the start of an extended period of wandering. Soon, a sense of emptiness enveloped him. He had no friends or hobbies — his work as a doctor had been all-consuming. Former colleagues didn’t get in touch, nor did he reach out.

    His wife had passed away after a painful illness a decade earlier. Rousseau was estranged from one adult daughter and in only occasional contact with another. His isolation mounted as his three dogs, his most reliable companions, died.

    Rousseau was completely alone — without friends, family, or a professional identity — and overcome by a sense of loss.

    “I was a somewhat distinguished physician with a 60-page resume,” Rousseau, now 73, wrote in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society in May. “Now, I’m ‘no one,’ a retired, forgotten old man who dithers away the days.”

    In some ways, older men living alone are disadvantaged compared with older women in similar circumstances. Research shows that men tend to have fewer friends than women and be less inclined to make new friends. Often, they’re reluctant to ask for help.

    “Men have a harder time being connected and reaching out,” said Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist who directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has traced the arc of hundreds of men’s lives over a span of more than eight decades. The men in the study who fared the worst, Waldinger said, “didn’t have friendships and things they were interested in — and couldn’t find them.” He recommends that men invest in their “social fitness” in addition to their physical fitness to ensure they have satisfying social interactions.

    Slightly more than 1 in every 5 men ages 65 to 74 live alone, according to 2022 Census Bureau data. That rises to nearly 1 in 4 for those 75 or older. Nearly 40% of these men are divorced, 31% are widowed, and 21% never married.

    That’s a significant change from 2000, when only 1 in 6 older men lived by themselves. Longer life spans for men and rising divorce rates are contributing to the trend. It’s difficult to find information about this group — which is dwarfed by the number of women who live alone — because it hasn’t been studied in depth. But psychologists and psychiatrists say these older men can be quite vulnerable.

    When men are widowed, their health and well-being tend to decline more than women’s.

    “Older men have a tendency to ruminate, to get into our heads with worries and fears and to feel more lonely and isolated,” said Jed Diamond, 80, a therapist and the author of “Surviving Male Menopause” and “The Irritable Male Syndrome.”

    Add in the decline of civic institutions where men used to congregate — think of the Elks or the Shriners — and older men’s reduced ability to participate in athletic activities, and the result is a lack of stimulation and the loss of a sense of belonging.

    Depression can ensue, fueling excessive alcohol use, accidents, or, in the most extreme cases, suicide. Of all age groups in the United States, men over age 75 have the highest suicide rate, by far.

    For this column, I spoke at length to several older men who live alone. All but two (who’d been divorced) were widowed. Their experiences don’t represent all men who live alone. But still, they’re revealing.

    The first person I called was Art Koff, 88, of Chicago, a longtime marketing executive I’d known for several years. When I reached out in January, I learned that Koff’s wife, Norma, had died the year before, leaving him hobbled by grief. Uninterested in eating and beset by unremitting loneliness, Koff lost 45 pounds.

    “I’ve had a long and wonderful life, and I have lots of family and lots of friends who are terrific,” Koff told me. But now, he said, “nothing is of interest to me any longer.”

    “I’m not happy living this life,” he said.

    Nine days later, I learned that Koff had died. His nephew, Alexander Koff, said he had passed out and was gone within a day. The death certificate cited “end stage protein calorie malnutrition” as the cause.

    The transition from being coupled to being single can be profoundly disorienting for older men. Lodovico Balducci, 80, was married to his wife, Claudia, for 52 years before she died in October 2023. Balducci, a renowned physician known as the “patriarch of geriatric oncology,” wrote about his emotional reaction in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, likening Claudia’s death to an “amputation.”

    “I find myself talking to her all the time, most of the time in my head,” Balducci told me in a phone conversation. When I asked him whom he confides in, he admitted, “Maybe I don’t have any close friends.”

    Disoriented and disorganized since Claudia died, he said his “anxiety has exploded.”

    We spoke in late February. Two weeks later, Balducci moved from Tampa to New Orleans, to be near his son and daughter-in-law and their two teenagers.

    “I am planning to help as much as possible with my grandchildren,” he said. “Life has to go on.”

    Verne Ostrander, a carpenter in the small town of Willits, California, about 140 miles north of San Francisco, was reflective when I spoke with him, also in late February. His second wife, Cindy Morninglight, died four years ago after a long battle with cancer.

    “Here I am, almost 80 years old — alone,” Ostrander said. “Who would have guessed?”

    When Ostrander isn’t painting watercolors, composing music, or playing guitar, “I fall into this lonely state, and I cry quite a bit,” he told me. “I don’t ignore those feelings. I let myself feel them. It’s like therapy.”

    Ostrander has lived in Willits for nearly 50 years and belongs to a men’s group and a couples’ group that’s been meeting for 20 years. He’s in remarkably good health and in close touch with his three adult children, who live within easy driving distance.

    “The hard part of living alone is missing Cindy,” he told me. “The good part is the freedom to do whatever I want. My goal is to live another 20 to 30 years and become a better artist and get to know my kids when they get older.”

    The Rev. Johnny Walker, 76, lives in a low-income apartment building in a financially challenged neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. Twice divorced, he’s been on his own for five years. He, too, has close family connections. At least one of his several children and grandchildren checks in on him every day.

    Walker says he had a life-changing religious conversion in 1993. Since then, he has depended on his faith and his church for a sense of meaning and community.

    “It’s not hard being alone,” Walker said when I asked whether he was lonely. “I accept Christ in my life, and he said that he would never leave us or forsake us. When I wake up in the morning, that’s a new blessing. I just thank God that he has brought me this far.”

    Waldinger recommended that men “make an effort every day to be in touch with people. Find what you love — golf, gardening, birdwatching, pickleball, working on a political campaign — and pursue it,” he said. “Put yourself in a situation where you’re going to see the same people over and over again. Because that’s the most natural way conversations get struck up and friendships start to develop.”

    Rousseau, the retired South Carolina doctor, said he doesn’t think about the future much. After feeling lost for several years, he moved across the country to Jackson, Wyoming, in the summer of 2023. He embraced solitude, choosing a remarkably isolated spot to live — a 150-square-foot cabin with no running water and no bathroom, surrounded by 25,000 undeveloped acres of public and privately owned land.

    “Yes, I’m still lonely, but the nature and the beauty here totally changed me and focused me on what’s really important,” he told me, describing a feeling of redemption in his solitude.

    Rousseau realizes that the death of his parents and a very close friend in his childhood left him with a sense of loss that he kept at bay for most of his life. Now, he said, rather than denying his vulnerability, he’s trying to live with it. “There’s only so long you can put off dealing with all the things you’re trying to escape from.”

    It’s not the life he envisioned, but it’s one that fits him, Rousseau said. He stays busy with volunteer activities — cleaning tanks and running tours at Jackson’s fish hatchery, serving as a part-time park ranger, and maintaining trails in nearby national forests. Those activities put him in touch with other people, mostly strangers, only intermittently.

    What will happen to him when this way of living is no longer possible?

    “I wish I had an answer, but I don’t,” Rousseau said. “I don’t see my daughters taking care of me. As far as someone else, I don’t think there’s anyone else who’s going to help me.”

    We’re eager to hear from readers about questions you’d like answered, problems you’ve been having with your care, and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit http://kffhealthnews.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips.

    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.

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    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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  • Almonds vs Pecans – Which is Healthier?
  • Hearing loss is twice as common in Australia’s lowest income groups, our research shows

    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.

    Around one in six Australians has some form of hearing loss, ranging from mild to complete hearing loss. That figure is expected to grow to one in four by 2050, due in a large part to the country’s ageing population.

    Hearing loss affects communication and social engagement and limits educational and employment opportunities. Effective treatment for hearing loss is available in the form of communication training (for example, lipreading and auditory training), hearing aids and other devices.

    But the uptake of treatment is low. In Australia, publicly subsidised hearing care is available predominantly only to children, young people and retirement-age people on a pension. Adults of working age are mostly not eligible for hearing health care under the government’s Hearing Services Program.

    Our recent study published in the journal Ear and Hearing showed, for the first time, that working-age Australians from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are at much greater risk of hearing loss than those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.

    We believe the lack of socially subsidised hearing care for adults of working age results in poor detection and care for hearing loss among people from disadvantaged backgrounds. This in turn exacerbates social inequalities.

    Population data shows hearing inequality

    We analysed a large data set called the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey that collects information on various aspects of people’s lives, including health and hearing loss.

    Using a HILDA sub-sample of 10,719 working-age Australians, we evaluated whether self-reported hearing loss was more common among people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds than for those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds between 2008 and 2018.

    Relying on self-reported hearing data instead of information from hearing tests is one limitation of our paper. However, self-reported hearing tends to underestimate actual rates of hearing impairment, so the hearing loss rates we reported are likely an underestimate.

    We also wanted to find out whether people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to develop hearing loss in the long run.

    A boy wearing a hearing aid is playing.
    Hearing care is publicly subsidised for children.
    mady70/Shutterstock

    We found people in the lowest income groups were more than twice as likely to have hearing loss than those in the highest income groups. Further, hearing loss was 1.5 times as common among people living in the most deprived neighbourhoods than in the most affluent areas.

    For people reporting no hearing loss at the beginning of the study, after 11 years of follow up, those from a more deprived socioeconomic background were much more likely to develop hearing loss. For example, a lack of post secondary education was associated with a more than 1.5 times increased risk of developing hearing loss compared to those who achieved a bachelor’s degree or above.

    Overall, men were more likely to have hearing loss than women. As seen in the figure below, this gap is largest for people of low socioeconomic status.

    Why are disadvantaged groups more likely to experience hearing loss?

    There are several possible reasons hearing loss is more common among people from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Noise exposure is one of the biggest risks for hearing loss and people from low socioeconomic backgrounds may be more likely to be exposed to damaging levels of noise in jobs in mining, construction, manufacturing, and agriculture.

    Lifestyle factors which may be more prevalent in lower socioeconomic communities such as smoking, unhealthy diet, and a lack of regular exercise are also related to the risk of hearing loss.

    Finally, people with lower incomes may face challenges in accessing timely hearing care, alongside competing health needs, which could lead to missed identification of treatable ear disease.

    Why does this disparity in hearing loss matter?

    We like to think of Australia as an egalitarian society – the land of the fair go. But nearly half of people in Australia with hearing loss are of working age and mostly ineligible for publicly funded hearing services.

    Hearing aids with a private hearing care provider cost from around A$1,000 up to more than $4,000 for higher-end devices. Most people need two hearing aids.

    A builder using a grinder machine at a construction site.
    Hearing loss might be more common in low income groups because they’re exposed to more noise at work.
    Dmitry Kalinovsky/Shutterstock

    Lack of access to affordable hearing care for working-age adults on low incomes comes with an economic as well as a social cost.

    Previous economic analysis estimated hearing loss was responsible for financial costs of around $20 billion in 2019–20 in Australia. The largest component of these costs was productivity losses (unemployment, under-employment and Jobseeker social security payment costs) among working-age adults.

    Providing affordable hearing care for all Australians

    Lack of affordable hearing care for working-age adults from lower socioeconomic backgrounds may significantly exacerbate the impact of hearing loss among deprived communities and worsen social inequalities.

    Recently, the federal government has been considering extending publicly subsidised hearing services to lower income working age Australians. We believe reforming the current government Hearing Services Program and expanding eligibility to this group could not only promote a more inclusive, fairer and healthier society but may also yield overall cost savings by reducing lost productivity.

    All Australians should have access to affordable hearing care to have sufficient functional hearing to achieve their potential in life. That’s the land of the fair go.The Conversation

    Mohammad Nure Alam, PhD Candidate in Economics, Macquarie University; Kompal Sinha, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Macquarie University, and Piers Dawes, Professor, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, The University of Queensland

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

    Don’t Forget…

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  • How To Actually Start A Healthy Lifestyle In The New Year

    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.

    Dr. Faye Bate cuts through the trends to give advice that’ll last past January the 2nd:

    What actually works

    …and is actually easy to implement:

    Avoid an All-or-Nothing Mindset

    • Strict, perfectionist approaches often lead to failure and guilt.
    • Small, balanced efforts can be imperfect without being failures!
    • Sustainable habits should integrate seamlessly into daily life..

    Focus on Unprocessed vs. Processed Foods

    • Don’t worry overly about calorie counts unless you have a very specific medical reason to do so.
    • Prioritize minimally processed, nutrient-dense foods over highly processed, empty-calorie-dense options.
    • Moderation is key—processed foods don’t need to be eliminated entirely; taking things down by just one tier of processing is already an improvement.

    Choose Enjoyable Exercise

    • The best exercise is one you enjoy and can maintain long-term. If something’s not enjoyable, you’ll soon give it up.
    • Trends in fitness shouldn’t dictate your routine—do what works for you.
    • Same goes for “body goals”—fashions come and go, while you’re still going to have more or less the same basic body, so work with it rather than against it.

    Prioritize Convenience

    • Convenience plays a critical role in maintaining healthy habits, for similar reasons to the enjoyment (very few people enjoy inconvenience)
    • Example from Dr. Bate: switching to a closer gym led to consistent workouts despite a busy schedule.
    • Apply the same principle to food: plan ahead and stock convenient, healthy options (e.g. frozen vegetables etc).

    Keep It Simple

    • Do follow basic health advice: drink water, eat fruits and vegetables, move your body, and see a doctor if needed.
    • Avoid being swayed by sensationalized health trends and headlines designed to sell products—if you want it for a good while first, then maybe you’ll actually use it more than twice.
    • Stick to evidence-based, straightforward habits for long-term health. And check the evidence for yourself! Do not just believe claims!

    In short: you will more likely tend to do things that are enjoyable and not too difficult. Start there and work up, keeping things simple along the way. It doesn’t matter if it’s not how everyone else does it; if it works for you, it works for you!

    For more on all of these, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    The Science Of New Year’s Pre-Resolutions

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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

  • No, beetroot isn’t vegetable Viagra. But here’s what else it can do

    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.

    Beetroot has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Supply issues in recent months have seen a shortage of tinned beetroot on Australian supermarket shelves. At one point, a tin was reportedly selling on eBay for more than A$65.

    But as supplies increase, we turn our attention to beetroot’s apparent health benefits.

    Is beetroot really vegetable Viagra, as UK TV doctor Michael Mosley suggests? What about beetroot’s other apparent health benefits – from reducing your blood pressure to improving your daily workout? Here’s what the science says.

    What’s so special about beetroot?

    Beetroot – alongside foods such as berries, nuts and leafy greens – is a “superfood”. It contains above-average levels per gram of certain vitamins and minerals.

    Beetroot is particularly rich in vitamin B and C, minerals, fibre and antioxidants.

    Most cooking methods don’t significantly alter its antioxidant levels. Pressure cooking does, however, lower levels of carotenoid (a type of antioxidant) compared to raw beetroot.

    Processing into capsules, powders, chips or juice may affect beetroot’s ability to act as an antioxidant. However, this can vary between products, including between different brands of beetroot juice.

    Is beetroot really vegetable Viagra?

    The Romans are said to have used beetroot and its juice as an aphrodisiac.

    But there’s limited scientific evidence to say beetroot improves your sex life. This does not mean it doesn’t. Rather, the vast number of scientific studies looking at the effect of beetroot have not measured libido or other aspects of sexual health.

    How could it work?

    When we eat beetroot, chemical reactions involving bacteria and enzymes transform the nitrate in beetroot into nitrite, then to nitric oxide. Nitric oxide helps dilate (widen) blood vessels, potentially improving circulation.

    The richest sources of dietary nitric oxide that have been tested in clinical studies are beetroot, rocket and spinach.

    Nitric oxide is also thought to support testosterone in its role in controlling blood flow before and during sex in men.

    Beetroot’s ability to improve blood flow can benefit the circulatory system of the heart and blood vessels. This may positively impact sexual function, theoretically in men and women.

    Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest there could be a modest link between beetroot and preparedness for sex, but don’t expect it to transform your sex life.

    What else could it do?

    Beetroot has received increasing attention over recent years due to its antioxidant and anti-tumour effect in humans.

    Clinical trials have not verified all beetroot’s active ingredients and their effects. However, beetroot may be a potentially helpful treatment for various health issues related to oxidative stress and inflammation, such as cancer and diabetes. The idea is that you can take beetroot supplements or eat extra beetroot alongside your regular medicines (rather than replace them).

    There is evidence beetroot juice can help lower systolic blood pressure (the first number in your blood pressure reading) by 2.73-4.81 mmHg (millimetres of mercury, the standard unit of measuring blood pressure) in people with high blood pressure. Some researchers say this reduction is comparable to the effects seen with certain medications and dietary interventions.

    Other research finds even people without high blood pressure (but at risk of it) could benefit.

    Beetroot may also improve athletic performance. Some studies show small benefits for endurance athletes (who run, swim or cycle long distances). These studies looked at various forms of the food, such as beetroot juice as well as beetroot-based supplements.

    How to get more beetroot in your diet

    There is scientific evidence to support positive impacts of consuming beetroot in whole, juice and supplement forms. So even if you can’t get hold of tinned beetroot, there are plenty of other ways you can get more beetroot into your diet. You can try:

    • raw beetroot – grate raw beetroot and add it to salads or coleslaw, or slice beetroot to use as a crunchy topping for sandwiches or wraps
    • cooked beetroot – roast beetroot with olive oil, salt and pepper for a flavour packed side dish. Alternatively, steam beetroot and serve it as a standalone dish or mixed into other dishes
    • beetroot juice – make fresh beetroot juice using a juicer. You can combine it with other fruits and vegetables for added flavour. You can also blend raw or cooked beetroot with water and strain to make a juice
    • smoothies – add beetroot to your favourite smoothie. It pairs well with fruits such as berries, apples and oranges
    • soups – use beetroot in soups for both flavour and colour. Borscht is a classic beetroot soup, but you can also experiment with other recipes
    • pickled beetroot – make pickled beetroot at home, or buy it from the supermarket. This can be a tasty addition to salads or sandwiches
    • beetroot hummus – blend cooked beetroot into your homemade hummus for a vibrant and nutritious dip. You can also buy beetroot hummus from the supermarket
    • grilled beetroot – slice beetroot and grill it for a smoky flavour
    • beetroot chips – slice raw beetroot thinly, toss the slices with olive oil and your favourite seasonings, then bake or dehydrate them to make crispy beetroot chips
    • cakes and baked goods – add grated beetroot to muffins, cakes, or brownies for a moist and colourful twist.
    Three squares of beetroot/chocolate cake with white icing and nuts sprinkled on top
    You can add beetroot to baked goods. Ekaterina Khoroshilova/Shutterstock

    Are there any downsides?

    Compared to the large number of studies on the beneficial effects of beetroot, there is very little evidence of negative side effects.

    If you eat large amounts of beetroot, your urine may turn red or purple (called beeturia). But this is generally harmless.

    There have been reports in some countries of beetroot-based dietary supplements contaminated with harmful substances, yet we have not seen this reported in Australia.

    What’s the take-home message?

    Beetroot may give some modest boost to sex for men and women, likely by helping your circulation. But it’s unlikely to transform your sex life or act as vegetable Viagra. We know there are many contributing factors to sexual wellbeing. Diet is only one.

    For individually tailored support talk to your GP or an accredited practising dietitian.

    Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland and Emily Burch, Lecturer, Southern Cross University

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

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