Chickpeas vs Soybeans – Which is Healthier?

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Our Verdict

When comparing chickpeas to soybeans, we picked the soybeans.

Why?

Both are great! But:

In terms of macros, chickpeas have more than 3x the carbs and only very slightly more fiber, while soybeans have more than 2x the protein. Given the ratio of carbs to fiber in each, soybeans also have the lower glycemic index, so all in all, we’re calling this a win for soybeans.

In the category of vitamins, chickpeas have more of vitamins A, B3, B5, and B9, while soybeans have more of vitamins B1, B2, B6, C, K, and choline—another win for soybeans.

When it comes to minerals, chickpeas have more manganese and zinc, while soybeans have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium—meaning soybeans win yet again.

Two extra things to know:

  • Chickpeas are naturally high in FODMAPs, which can be problematic for a minority of people—however, canned chickpeas are not.
  • Soybeans are famously high in phytoestrogens, however, the human body cannot actually use these as estrogen (we are not plants and our physiology is different). This means that on the one hand they won’t help against menopause (aside from the ways in which any nutrient-dense food would help), but on the other, they aren’t a cancer risk, and no, they won’t feminize men/boys in the slightest. You/they would be more at risk from beef and dairy, as the cows have usually been given extra estrogen, and those are animal hormones, not plant hormones.

All in all, chickpeas are a wonderful food, but soybeans beat them by most nutritional metrics.

Want to learn more?

You might like to read:

Why You Can’t Skimp On Amino Acids ← soybeans also have a great amino acid profile!

Enjoy!

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  • Probiotics & Gas/Bloating

    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 😎

    ❝I read about probiotics and got myself some from amazon but having started them, now I have a lot of gas, is this normal?❞

    As Tom Jones would say: it’s not unusual.

    However, it’s also not necessary, and it is easy enough to get past!

    And probiotics certainly have their place; see: How Much Difference Do Probiotic Supplements Make, Really?

    What’s going on with your gas is…

    We interrupt this article to bring back attention to our regular legal/medical disclaimer; please do remember that we can only speak in general health terms, cannot diagnose you, nor make any firm assurances about your health, nor prescribe treatment. What we can do is share information that we hope is educational, and if it helps you, so much the better. Always speak to your own doctor if you have concerns about your health.

    Now, back to the article,,,

    What’s going on with your gas is most probably what happens for a lot of people: you’ve just put a lot of bacteria into your gut, and congratulations, they survived (which is definitely not a given, more on that later, but their survival is what you wanted), and they are now thriving sufficiently that the output of their respiratory processes is tangible to you—in the form of abdominal bloating/gas.

    Because your gut is a semi-closed system (literally there’s an opening at both ends, but it’s mostly quite self-contained in terms of its ecosystem, unless you have leaky gut syndrome, which is Very Bad™), this will generally fix itself within a few days at most—perhaps it even has by the time you’re reading this.

    How does it fix itself you wonder? Because there’s only enough resources to sustain so many bacteria, what happens when we take a probiotic supplement (or food) is initially an overload of more bacteria than the gut can support (because unless you recently took antibiotics, the gut is pretty much always running at maximum capacity, because the bacteria there have no evolutionary reason to leave room for newcomers; they just multiply as best they can until the resources run out), and then the excess (i.e., those that are in excess of how many your gut can support) will die, and then the numbers will be back to normal.

    Note: the numbers will be back to normal. However, that doesn’t mean the probiotics did nothing—what you’ve done is add diversity, and specifically, you’ve made it so that percentage-wise, you now have slightly more “good” bacteria in the balance than you did previously.

    So, unless there are factors out of the ordinary: this is all usually self-correcting quite quickly.

    Tips to make things go as smoothly as possible

    Firstly, pay attention to recommended doses. If you take one, and think “that was delicious; I’ll have six more” then the initial effect will be a lot more than six times stronger, because of the nature of how bacteria multiply (i.e. exponentially) within minutes of reaching your gut.

    Again, this will normally self-correct, but there’s no reason to cause yourself discomfort unnecessarily.

    Secondly, if you take probiotics and do not get even a little gas or abdominal bloating even just a little bit, even just briefly… Then probably one of two things happened:

    • The probiotics were dead on arrival (i.e. the supplement was a dud, or a “live culture” product in fact died before it got to you)
    • The probiotics were fine, but your gut wasn’t prepared for them, and they died upon arrival

    The latter happens a lot, especially if the current gut health is not good. What your probiotics need to survive (and bear in mind, because of their life cycle, they need this in minutes of arrival, which is their multiply-or-die-out window), is:

    • Fiber, especially insoluble fiber
    • In a place they can get at it (i.e. it was the most recent thing you ate, and is not several feet further down your intestines)
    • Not too crowded with competitors (i.e. you just ate it, not last night)

    Thus, it can be best to take probiotics on a mostly-empty stomach after enjoying a fibrous snack.

    See also: What Do The Different Kinds Of Fiber Do? 30 Foods That Rank Highest

    And for that matter: Stop Sabotaging Your Gut ← this covers some common probiotics mistakes/problems

    If you’d rather take them on an entirely empty stomach, look for probiotic supplements that come with their own prebiotic fiber (usually inulin); these are often marketed as “symbiotics”.

    We don’t sell them, but here’s an example product on Amazon for your convenience 😎

    Another thing to bear in mind is that there is (unless your case is unusual) no reason to take the same kind of probiotic for more than one course (i.e. one container of however many servings it has). This is because one of two things will be the case:

    • The probiotic worked, in which case, you now have thriving colonies of the bacterial species that that supplement provided
    • The probiotic didn’t work, in which case, why buy that one again?

    So, if supplementing with probiotics, it can be good to do so with new brand each time, with a gap in between each for your gut to get used to the new order of things.

    Finally, if you’re making any drastic dietary change, likely this will result in similar gut disturbances.

    In particular, if you are moving away from foods that feed C. albicans (the bad fungus that puts holes in your gut), then it will object strongly, cause you to crave sugar/flour/alcohol/etc, give you mood swings, and generally remind you that it has its roots firmly embedded in your nervous system. If that happens, don’t listen to it; it’s just its death throes and it’ll quieten down soon.

    You can read more about that here:

    Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)

    Take care!

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  • Glucose Revolution – by Jessie Inchauspé

    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.

    While we all know that keeping balanced blood sugars is important for all us (be we diabetic, pre-diabetic, or not at all), it can be a mystifying topic!

    Beyond a generic “sugar is bad”…

    • What does it all mean and how does it all work?
    • Should we go low-carb?
    • What’s the deal with fruit?
    • Carbs or protein for breakfast?
    • Is “quick energy” ever a good thing?
    • How do starches weigh in again?

    It’s all so confusing!

    Happily, Jessie Inchauspé has the incredible trifecta of qualifications to help us: she’s a biochemist, a keen cook, and a great educator. What we mean by this latter is:

    Instead of dry textbook explanations, or “trust me” hand-waives, she explains biochemistry in a clear, simple, digestible (if you’ll pardon the pun) way with very helpful diagrams what things cause (or flatten) blood sugar spikes and how and why. If you read this book, you will understand, without guesswork or gaps, exactly what is happening on a physical level, and why and how her “10 hacks” work.

    Her “10 hacks” are explained so thoroughly that each gets a chapter of its own, but we’ll not keep them a mystery from you meanwhile, they are:

    1. Eat foods in the right order
    2. Add a green starter to your meals
    3. Stop counting calories
    4. Flatten your breakfast curve
    5. Have any type of sugar you like—they’re all the same
    6. Pick dessert over a sweet snack
    7. Reach for the vinegar before you eat
    8. After you eat, move
    9. If you have to snack, go savoury
    10. Put some clothes on your carbs

    She then finishes up with a collection of handy cheat-sheets and some of her own recipes.

    Bottom line: this isn’t just a “how-to” book. It gives the how-to, yes, but it also gives such good explanations that you’ll never be confused again by what’s going on in your glucose-related health.

    Get your copy of Jessie Inchauspé’s #1 international bestseller, “Glucose Revolution”, from Amazon today!

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  • The Evidence-Based Skincare That Beats Product-Specific Hype

    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.

    A million videos on YouTube will try to sell you a 17-step skincare routine, or a 1-ingredient magical fix that’s messy and inconvenient enough you’ll do it once and then discard it. This one takes a simple, scientific approach instead.

    The Basics That Count

    Ali Abdaal, known for his productivity hacks channel, enlisted the help of his friend, dermatologist Dr. Usama Syed, who recommends the following 3–4 things:

    1. Moisturize twice per day. Skin acts as a barrier, locking in moisture and protecting against irritants. Moisturizers replenish fats and proteins, maintaining this barrier and preventing dry, inflamed, and itchy skin. He uses CeraVe, but if you have one you know works well with your skin, stick with that, because skin comes in many varieties and yours might not be like his.
    2. Use sunscreen every day. Your phone’s weather app should comment on your local UV index. If it’s “moderate” or above, then sunscreen is a must—even if you aren’t someone who burns easily at all, the critical thing here is avoiding UV radiation causing DNA mutations in skin cells, leading to wrinkles, dark spots, and potentially skin cancer. Use a broad-spectrum sunscreen, ideally SPF 50.
    3. Use a retinoid. Retinoids are vitamin A-based and offer anti-aging benefits by promoting collagen growth, reducing pigmentation, and accelerating skin cell regeneration. Retinols are weaker, over-the-counter options, while stronger retinoids may require a prescription. Start gently with low dosage, whatever you choose, as initially they can cause dryness or sensitivity, before making everything better. He recommends adapalene as a starter retinoid (such as Differen gel, to give an example brand name).
    4. Optional: use a cleanser. Cleansers remove oils and dirt that water alone can’t. He recommends using a hydrating cleanser, to avoid stripping natural healthy oils as well as unwanted ones. That said, a cleanser is probably only beneficial if your skin tends towards the oily end of the dry-to-oily spectrum.

    For more on all of these, plus an example routine, enjoy:

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

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Who Screens The Sunscreens?

    Take care!

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Related Posts

  • Chickpeas vs Black-Eyed Peas – Which is Healthier?
  • Reduce Caffeine’s Impact on Kidneys

    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? 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

    ❝Avid coffee drinker so very interested in the results Also question Is there something that you could take or eat that would prevent the caffeine from stimulating the kidneys? I tried to drink decaf from morning to night not a good result! Thanks❞

    That is a good question! The simple answer is “no” (but keep reading, because all is not lost)

    There’s no way (that we yet know of) to proof the kidneys against the stimulating effect of caffeine. This is especially relevant because part of caffeine’s stimulating effect is noradrenergic, and that “ren” in the middle there? It’s about the kidneys. This is just because the adrenal gland is situated next to them (actually, it’s pretty much sitting on top of them), hence the name, but it does mean that the kidneys are about the hardest thing in the body to have not effected by caffeine.

    However! The effects of caffeine in general can be softened a little with l-theanine (found in tea, or it can be taken as a supplement). It doesn’t stop it from working, but it makes the curve of the effect a little gentler, and so it can reduce some unwanted side effects.

    You can read more about l-theanine here:

    L-Theanine: What’s The Tea?

    Don’t Forget…

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

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  • Hardwiring Happiness – by Dr. Rick Hanson

    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.

    Publishers are very excitable about “the new science of…”, and it’s almost never actually a new science of. But what about in this case?

    No, it isn’t. It’s the very well established science of! And that’s a good thing, because it means this book is able to draw on quite a lot of research and established understanding of how neuroplasticity works, to leverage that and provide useful guidance.

    A particular strength of this book is that while it polarizes the idea that some people have “happy amygdalae” and some people have “sad amygdalae”, it acknowledges that it’s not just a fated disposition and is rather the result of the lives people have led… And then provides advice on upgrading from sad to happy, based on the assumption that the reader is quite possibly coming from a non-ideal starting point.

    The bookdoes an excellent job of straddling neuroscience and psychology, which sounds like not much of a straddle (the two are surely very connected, after all, right?) but this does mean that we’re hearing about the chemical structure of DNA inside the nuclei of the neurons of the insula, not long after reading an extended gardening metaphor about growth, choices, and vulnerabilities.

    Bottom line: if you’d like a guide to changing your brain for the better (happier) that’s not just “ask yourself: what if it goes well?” and similar CBTisms, then this is a fine book for you.

    Click here to check out Hardwiring Happiness, and indeed hardwire happiness!

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  • The Calorie Myth – by Jonathan Bailor

    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.

    First we’ll mention: the author is not a doctor, but the book is endorsed by assorted well-known doctors in the field, and the science described is consistent with current scientific consensus (and, for that matter, consistent with what we wrote in our mythbusting feature: Are You A Calorie-Burning Machine?).

    It’s often (correctly) said that “not all calories are created equal”, but how should we quantify them? He proposes his “SANE solution”, which is based around the ideas of:

    • Satiety: how quickly calories fill us up
    • Aggression: how likely calories are to be stored as fat
    • Nutrition: how many micronutrients calories bring with them, and how much
    • Efficiency: how easily calories are converted

    To this end, he recommends a diet high in foods that score well on his “SANE” factors, and provides such things as recipes, meal plans etc to help, as well principles for exercising more usefully in the context of metabolic base rate, and moving (rather than fighting) one’s “set point”, which is usually associated with one’s weight but it really has more to do with metabolic base rate. In fact, Bailor recommends throwing out the bathroom scale and focusing on pursuing good health itself, rather than obsessing over changing one’s relationship with the Earth’s gravitational field.

    Yes, it says “lose weight” in the subtitle, but the idea is that this will be a by-product rather than the thing actively pursued. After all, we can control our actions, so that input variable is where we should put our focus, not the output variable of the numbers on the scale which can often be misleading (muscle weighing more than fat, tendency to water weight fluctuations, etc).

    The style is a little flashy and salesy for this reviewer’s personal taste (a lot of references to his own businesses and neologisms associated with such), but it doesn’t take away from the quality of the content, and in terms of science, study references come at a rate of about one per page on average.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to rethink your relationship with calories, then this book can help give you a much more practical angle.

    Click here to check out The Calorie Myth, and take control of your metabolic base rate!

    Don’t Forget…

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