Chickpeas vs Pinto Beans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing chickpeas to pinto beans, we picked the pinto beans.
Why?
Both are great! And an argument could be made for either…
In terms of macros, pinto beans have slightly more fiber and slightly more protein, while chickpeas have slightly more carbs, and thus predictably higher net carbs. In the category of those proteins, they both have a comparable spread of amino acods, with pinto beans having very slightly more of each amino acid. All this adds up to a clear, but moderate, win for pinto beans.
When it comes to vitamins, technically chickpeas have more of vitamins A, B3, B5, C, K, and choline, but the margins are so small as to be almost meaningless. Meanwhile, pinto beans have more of vitamins B1, B6, and E, and/but the only one where the margin is enough to really care about is vitamin E (a little over 2x what chickpeas have). So, an argument could be made either way, but we’re going to call this category a tie.
The story with minerals is similar; chickpeas have more copper, iron, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc, all with small margins, while pinto beans have more potassium and selenium, and/but also less sodium. We’d call this either a tie, or a very slight win for chickpeas.
Adding up the sections gives for a very modest win for pinto beans, but as we say, an argument could be made for either.
Certainly, enjoy both!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Chickpeas vs Black Beans – Which is Healthier?
- Kidney Beans vs Fava Beans – Which is Healthier?
- What Matters Most For Your Heart? Eat More (Of This) For Lower Blood Pressure
Take care!
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Fitness In Our Fifties
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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
Q: What’s a worthwhile fitness goal for people in their 50s?
A: At 10almonds, we think that goals are great but habits are better.
If your goal is to run a marathon, that’s a fine goal, and can be very motivating, but then after the marathon, then what? You’ll look back on it as a great achievement, but what will it do for your future health?
PS, yes, marathon-running in one’s middle age is a fine and good activity for most people. Maybe skip it if you have osteoporosis or some other relevant problem (check with your doctor), but…
Marathons in Mid- and Later-Life ← we wrote about the science of it here
PS, we also explored some science that may be applicable to your other question, on the same page as that about marathons!
The thing about habits vs goals is that habits give ongoing cumulative (often even: compounding) benefits:
How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits
If you pressingly want advice on goals though, our advice is this:
Make it your goal to be prepared for the health challenges of later life. It may seem gloomy to say that old age is coming for us all if something else doesn’t get us first, but the fact is, old age does not have to come with age-related decline, and the very least, we can increase our healthspan (so we’re hitting 90 with most of the good health we enjoyed in our 70s, for example, or hitting 80 with most of the good health we enjoyed in our 60s).
If that goal seems a little wishy-washy, here are some very specific and practical ideas to get you started:
Train For The Event Of Your Life!
As for the limits and/or extents of how much we can do in that regard? Here are what two aging experts have to say:
And here’s what we at 10almonds had to say:
Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
Take care!
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Brain Food – by Dr. Lisa Mosconi
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We know that we should eat for brain health, but often that knowledge doesn’t go a lot further than “we should eat some nuts… but also not the wrong nuts, which would be bad”.
However, as Dr. Lisa Mosconi lays out for us, there’s a lot more than that!
This book is as much a treatise of brain health in the context of nutrition, as it is a “eat this and avoid that” guide.
Which is good, because our brains don’t exist in isolation, and nor do the nutrients that we consume. Put it this way:
We have a tendecy to think of our diets as a set of slider-bars, “ok, that’s 104% of my daily intake of fiber, I need another 10g protein and that’ll be at 100%, I’ve had 80% of the vitamin C that I need, and…”
Whereas in reality: much of what we eat interacts positively or negatively with other things, and thus needs to be kept in balance. And not only that, but other peri-nutritional factors play a big part too! From obvious things like hydration, to less obvious things like maintaining good gut microbiota, our brains rely on us to do a lot of things for them.
This book is very easy-reading, though a weakness is it doesn’t tend to summarise key ideas much, give cheat-sheets, that sort of thing. We recommend reading this book with a notebook to the side, to jot down things you want to attend to in your own dietary habits.
Bottom line: this is an excellent overview of brain health in the context of nutrition, and is more comprehensive than most “eat this for good brain health and avoid that” books.
Click here to check out “Brain Food” on Amazon and treat your brain like it deserves!
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The Yoga of Breath – by Richard Rosen
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You probably know to breathe through your nose, and to breathe with your diaphragm. But did you know you’re usually only breathing through one nostril at a time, and alternate between nostrils every few hours? And did you know how to breathe through both nostrils equally instead, and the benefits that can bring?
The above is one example of many, of things that make this book stand out from the crowd when it comes to breathing exercises. Author Richard Rosen has a deep expertise in this topic, and explains everything clearly and comprehensively, without leaving room for ambiguity.
While most of the book focuses on the mechanics and physical techniques of breathing, he does also cover some more mindstate-related things too—without which, it wouldn’t be yoga.
If the book has a downside, it’s that its comprehensive nature could be off-putting to readers new to breathing work in general. However, since he does explain everything from the ground up, that’s no reason to be put off this book, iff you’re serious about learning.
Bottom line: if you’d like a deeper understanding of breathwork than “breathe slowly through your nose, using your diaphragm”, this book will teach you depths of breathing you probably didn’t know were possible.
Click here to check out The Yoga of Breath, and catch yours!
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Related Posts
The Smart Woman’s Guide to Breast Cancer – by Dr. Jenn Simmons
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.
There’s a lot more to breast cancer care than “check your breasts regularly”. Because… And then what? “Go see a doctor” obviously, but it’s a scary prospect with a lot of unknowns.
Dr. Simmons demystifies these unknowns, from both her position as an oncologist (and breast surgeon) and also her position as a breast cancer survivor herself.
What she found, upon getting to experience the patient side of things, was that the system is broken in ways she’d never considered before as a doctor.
This book is the product of the things she’s learned both within her field, and elsewhere because of realizing the former’s areas of shortcoming.
She gives a step-by-step guide, from diagnosis onwards, advising taking as much as possible into one’s own hands—especially in the categories of information and action. She also explains the things that make the biggest difference to cancer outcomes when it comes to eating, sleeping, and so forth, the best attitude to have to be neither despairing and giving up, nor overconfident and complacent.
She does also talk complementary therapies, be they supplements or more out-of-the-box approaches and the evidence for them where applicable, as well as doing some high-quality mythbusting about more prescription-based considerations such as HRT.
Bottom line: if you or a loved one have a breast cancer diagnosis, or you just prefer knowing this sort of thing than not, then this book is a top-tier “insider’s guide”.
Click here to check out the Smart Woman’s Guide To Breast Cancer, and take control!
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Thinking of using an activity tracker to achieve your exercise goals? Here’s where it can help – and where it probably won’t
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 that time of year when many people are getting started on their resolutions for the year ahead. Doing more physical activity is a popular and worthwhile goal.
If you’re hoping to be more active in 2024, perhaps you’ve invested in an activity tracker, or you’re considering buying one.
But what are the benefits of activity trackers? And will a basic tracker do the trick, or do you need a fancy one with lots of features? Let’s take a look.
Why use an activity tracker?
One of the most powerful predictors for being active is whether or not you are monitoring how active you are.
Most people have a vague idea of how active they are, but this is inaccurate a lot of the time. Once people consciously start to keep track of how much activity they do, they often realise it’s less than what they thought, and this motivates them to be more active.
You can self-monitor without an activity tracker (just by writing down what you do), but this method is hard to keep up in the long run and it’s also a lot less accurate compared to devices that track your every move 24/7.
By tracking steps or “activity minutes” you can ascertain whether or not you are meeting the physical activity guidelines (150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week).
It also allows you to track how you’re progressing with any personal activity goals, and view your progress over time. All this would be difficult without an activity tracker.
Research has shown the most popular brands of activity trackers are generally reliable when it comes to tracking basic measures such as steps and activity minutes.
But wait, there’s more
Many activity trackers on the market nowadays track a range of other measures which their manufacturers promote as important in monitoring health and fitness. But is this really the case? Let’s look at some of these.
Resting heart rate
This is your heart rate at rest, which is normally somewhere between 60 and 100 beats per minute. Your resting heart rate will gradually go down as you become fitter, especially if you’re doing a lot of high-intensity exercise. Your risk of dying of any cause (all-cause mortality) is much lower when you have a low resting heart rate.
So, it is useful to keep an eye on your resting heart rate. Activity trackers are pretty good at tracking it, but you can also easily measure your heart rate by monitoring your pulse and using a stopwatch.
Heart rate during exercise
Activity trackers will also measure your heart rate when you’re active. To improve fitness efficiently, professional athletes focus on having their heart rate in certain “zones” when they’re exercising – so knowing their heart rate during exercise is important.
But if you just want to be more active and healthier, without a specific training goal in mind, you can exercise at a level that feels good to you and not worry about your heart rate during activity. The most important thing is that you’re being active.
Also, a dedicated heart rate monitor with a strap around your chest will do a much better job at measuring your actual heart rate compared to an activity tracker worn around your wrist.
Maximal heart rate
This is the hardest your heart could beat when you’re active, not something you could sustain very long. Your maximal heart rate is not influenced by how much exercise you do, or your fitness level.
Most activity trackers don’t measure it accurately anyway, so you might as well forget about this one.
VO₂max
Your muscles need oxygen to work. The more oxygen your body can process, the harder you can work, and therefore the fitter you are.
VO₂max is the volume (V) of oxygen (O₂) we could breathe maximally (max) over a one minute interval, expressed as millilitres of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute (ml/kg/min). Inactive women and men would have a VO₂max lower than 30 and 40 ml/kg/min, respectively. A reasonably good VO₂max would be mid thirties and higher for women and mid forties and higher for men.
VO₂max is another measure of fitness that correlates well with all-cause mortality: the higher it is, the lower your risk of dying.
For athletes, VO₂max is usually measured in a lab on a treadmill while wearing a mask that measures oxygen consumption. Activity trackers instead look at your running speed (using a GPS chip) and your heart rate and compare these measures to values from other people.
If you can run fast with a low heart rate your tracker will assume you are relatively fit, resulting in a higher VO₂max. These estimates are not very accurate as they are based on lots of assumptions. However, the error of the measurement is reasonably consistent. This means if your VO₂max is gradually increasing, you are likely to be getting fitter.
So what’s the take-home message? Focus on how many steps you take every day or the number of activity minutes you achieve. Even a basic activity tracker will measure these factors relatively accurately. There is no real need to track other measures and pay more for an activity tracker that records them, unless you are getting really serious about exercise.
Corneel Vandelanotte, Professorial Research Fellow: Physical Activity and Health, CQUniversity Australia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Plant-Based Alternatives for Meat Recipes
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
❝How about providing a plant-based alternative when you post meat-based recipes? I appreciate how much you advocate for veggie diets and think offering an alternative with your recipes would support that❞
Glad you’re enjoying! And yes, we do usually do that. But: pardon, we missed one (the Tuna Steak with Protein Salad) because it’d be more than a simple this-for-that substitution, we didn’t already have an alternative recipe up (as with the salmon recipes such as the Chili Hot-Bedded Salmon and Thai Green Curry Salmon Burgers).
Our recipes, by the way, will tend towards being vegan, vegetarian, or at least pescatarian. This is for several reasons:
- Good science suggests the best diet for general purpose good health is one that is mostly plants, with optional moderate amounts of fermented dairy products, fish, and/or eggs.
- Your writer here (it’s me, hi) has been vegan for many years, transitioning to such via pescatarianism and ovo-lacto vegetarianism, and so the skill of cooking meat is least fresh in my memory, meaning I’d not be confident writing about that, especially as cooking meat has the gravest health consequences for messing it up.
Note on biases: notwithstanding this writer being vegan, we at 10almonds are committed to reporting the science as it stands with no agenda besides good health. Hence, there will continue to be unbiased information about animal products’ health considerations, positive as well as negative.
See also: Do We Need Animal Products To Be Healthy?
…as well as, of course, some animal-based classics from our archives including:
We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of & Eggs: All Things In Moderation?
Finishing with one for the vegans though, you might enjoy:
Which Plant Milk? We Compare 6 Of The Most Popular
Some previous articles you might enjoy meanwhile:
- Pinpointing The Usefulness Of Acupuncture
- Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief
- Peripheral Neuropathy: How To Avoid It, Manage It, Treat It
- What Does Lion’s Mane Actually Do, Anyway?
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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