
Dates vs Raisins – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing dates to raisins, we picked the dates.
Why?
There are benefits for each fruit, but we say dates come out on top. See what you think:
In terms of macros, while they’re both dried fruits, dates contain more water (unless you leave them sitting open for a while), which will tend to mathematically lower the relative percentages of other components because they’re being held against water weight too. However, even though this is the case (i.e. dates are being mathematically disadvantaged), dates contain more than twice the fiber that raisins do (8g/100g compared to raisins’ 3.7g/100g).
While we’re talking macros, dates are also lower in total carbs, as well as obviously net carbs, and have a much lower glycemic index than raisins (dates have a glycemic index of 42, considered low, while raisins have a glycemic index of 64, considered medium; their respective glycemic loads are even more telling: 13 for raisins and just 2 for dates!).
About those carbs… For dates, it’s an approximately equal mix of sucrose, glucose, and fructose, while for raisins it’s 49% glucose and 49% fructose. Because sucrose is the only disaccharide here, this (as well as the fiber difference) is one of the reasons for the different glycemic indices and glycemic loads, since glucose and fructose are more quickly absorbed.
That’s more than we usually write about macros, but in this case, both fruits are ones especially often hit with the “aren’t they full of sugar though?” question, so it was important to cover the critical distinctions between the two, because they really are very different.
Summary of macros: dates win easily in every aspect we looked at
In the category of vitamins, raisins get a tally in their favor. Raisins are higher in vitamins B1, B2, C, E, K, and choline, while dates are higher in vitamins A, B3, B5, and B9, giving raisins a 6:4 lead here. In dates’ defense, the difference in vitamin K is marginal, and it’d make it a 5:4 lead if we considered that within the margin of error (because all these figures are of course based on averages), and the vitamins that dates are higher in, the margins are much wider indeed, meaning that both fruits have approximately the same overall levels of vitamins when looked at in total, but still, we’ll call this category a nominal win for raisins.
When it comes to minerals, dates have more magnesium, selenium, and zinc, while raisins have more copper, iron, phosphorus, and potassium. Nominally that’s a 4:3 lead for raisins, but if we consider that raisins also contain more sodium, it’s more like a tie here. If we have to pick one though, this is a very slight win for raisins.
Adding up the sections, we have one huge win for dates (macros) with two very marginal wins for raisins—hence, we say that dates win out.
Still, of course enjoy both; diversity is good for the health.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
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Apples vs Oranges – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing apples to oranges, we picked the oranges.
Why?
In terms of macros, the two fruits are approximately equal (and indeed, on average, precisely equal in the most important metric, which is fiber). So, a tie here.
In the category of vitamins, apples are higher in vitamin K, while oranges are higher in vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, and choline. An easy win for oranges this time.
When it comes to minerals, apples have more iron and manganese, while oranges have more calcium, copper, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Another easy win for oranges.
So, adding up the sections, a clear win for oranges. But, by all means, enjoy either or both! Diversity is good.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Take care!
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Unlock Your Menopause Type – by Dr. Heather Hirsch
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We featured Dr. Hirsch before, here, and mentioned this book which, at the time, we had not yet reviewed. So, here it is:
What sets this apart from a lot of menopause books is that there’s a lot less “eat these foods and your body will magically stop exhibiting symptoms of menopause” and a lot more clinical observations and then evidence-based recommendations.
Which is not to say don’t eat broccoli and almonds; by all means, they’re great foods and contain valuable nutrients that will help. But it is to say that if your doctor’s prescription is just broccoli and almonds, maybe have those as a snack while you’re looking for a second opinion.
Dr. Hirsch goes through various “menopause types”, but it’s not so much “astrology for gynecologists” and more “here are clusters of menopause symptoms set against timeline of presentation, and they can be categorized into six main ways that between them, cover pretty much all my patients, which have been many”.
So if you, dear reader, are menopausal (including peri- or post-), then the chances are very good that you will see yourself in one of those six sets.
She then goes about how to prioritize relief and safety, and personalize a treatment plan, and maintain the best menopausal care for you, going forward.
The style is easy-reading pop-science, punctuated by clinical science and 35 pages of references. She’s also, unlike a lot of authors in the genre, manifestly not invested in being a celebrity or making a personality cult out of her recommendations; she’s happy to stick to the science and put out good advice.
Bottom line: if you or someone you love is menopausal (including peri- or post-), this is a top-tier book.
Click here to check out Unlock Your Menopause Type, and get the best care for you!
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How a Friend’s Death Turned Colorado Teens Into Anti-Overdose Activists
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Gavinn McKinney loved Nike shoes, fireworks, and sushi. He was studying Potawatomi, one of the languages of his Native American heritage. He loved holding his niece and smelling her baby smell. On his 15th birthday, the Durango, Colorado, teen spent a cold December afternoon chopping wood to help neighbors who couldn’t afford to heat their homes.
McKinney almost made it to his 16th birthday. He died of fentanyl poisoning at a friend’s house in December 2021. His friends say it was the first time he tried hard drugs. The memorial service was so packed people had to stand outside the funeral home.
Now, his peers are trying to cement their friend’s legacy in state law. They recently testified to state lawmakers in support of a bill they helped write to ensure students can carry naloxone with them at all times without fear of discipline or confiscation. School districts tend to have strict medication policies. Without special permission, Colorado students can’t even carry their own emergency medications, such as an inhaler, and they are not allowed to share them with others.
“We realized we could actually make a change if we put our hearts to it,” said Niko Peterson, a senior at Animas High School in Durango and one of McKinney’s friends who helped write the bill. “Being proactive versus being reactive is going to be the best possible solution.”
Individual school districts or counties in California, Maryland, and elsewhere have rules expressly allowing high school students to carry naloxone. But Jon Woodruff, managing attorney at the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association, said he wasn’t aware of any statewide law such as the one Colorado is considering. Woodruff’s Washington, D.C.-based organization researches and drafts legislation on substance use.
Naloxone is an opioid antagonist that can halt an overdose. Available over the counter as a nasal spray, it is considered the fire extinguisher of the opioid epidemic, for use in an emergency, but just one tool in a prevention strategy. (People often refer to it as “Narcan,” one of the more recognizable brand names, similar to how tissues, regardless of brand, are often called “Kleenex.”)
The Biden administration last year backed an ad campaign encouraging young people to carry the emergency medication.
Most states’ naloxone access laws protect do-gooders, including youth, from liability if they accidentally harm someone while administering naloxone. But without school policies explicitly allowing it, the students’ ability to bring naloxone to class falls into a gray area.
Ryan Christoff said that in September 2022 fellow staff at Centaurus High School in Lafayette, Colorado, where he worked and which one of his daughters attended at the time, confiscated naloxone from one of her classmates.
“She didn’t have anything on her other than the Narcan, and they took it away from her,” said Christoff, who had provided the confiscated Narcan to that student and many others after his daughter nearly died from fentanyl poisoning. “We should want every student to carry it.”
Boulder Valley School District spokesperson Randy Barber said the incident “was a one-off and we’ve done some work since to make sure nurses are aware.” The district now encourages everyone to consider carrying naloxone, he said.
Community’s Devastation Turns to Action
In Durango, McKinney’s death hit the community hard. McKinney’s friends and family said he didn’t do hard drugs. The substance he was hooked on was Tapatío hot sauce — he even brought some in his pocket to a Rockies game.
After McKinney died, people started getting tattoos of the phrase he was known for, which was emblazoned on his favorite sweatshirt: “Love is the cure.” Even a few of his teachers got them. But it was classmates, along with their friends at another high school in town, who turned his loss into a political movement.
“We’re making things happen on behalf of him,” Peterson said.
The mortality rate has spiked in recent years, with more than 1,500 other children and teens in the U.S. dying of fentanyl poisoning the same year as McKinney. Most youth who die of overdoses have no known history of taking opioids, and many of them likely thought they were taking prescription opioids like OxyContin or Percocet — not the fake prescription pills that increasingly carry a lethal dose of fentanyl.
“Most likely the largest group of teens that are dying are really teens that are experimenting, as opposed to teens that have a long-standing opioid use disorder,” said Joseph Friedman, a substance use researcher at UCLA who would like to see schools provide accurate drug education about counterfeit pills, such as with Stanford’s Safety First curriculum.
Allowing students to carry a low-risk, lifesaving drug with them is in many ways the minimum schools can do, he said.
“I would argue that what the schools should be doing is identifying high-risk teens and giving them the Narcan to take home with them and teaching them why it matters,” Friedman said.
Writing in The New England Journal of Medicine, Friedman identified Colorado as a hot spot for high school-aged adolescent overdose deaths, with a mortality rate more than double that of the nation from 2020 to 2022.
“Increasingly, fentanyl is being sold in pill form, and it’s happening to the largest degree in the West,” said Friedman. “I think that the teen overdose crisis is a direct result of that.”
If Colorado lawmakers approve the bill, “I think that’s a really important step,” said Ju Nyeong Park, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University, who leads a research group focused on how to prevent overdoses. “I hope that the Colorado Legislature does and that other states follow as well.”
Park said comprehensive programs to test drugs for dangerous contaminants, better access to evidence-based treatment for adolescents who develop a substance use disorder, and promotion of harm reduction tools are also important. “For example, there is a national hotline called Never Use Alone that anyone can call anonymously to be supervised remotely in case of an emergency,” she said.
Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands
Many Colorado school districts are training staff how to administer naloxone and are stocking it on school grounds through a program that allows them to acquire it from the state at little to no cost. But it was clear to Peterson and other area high schoolers that having naloxone at school isn’t enough, especially in rural places.
“The teachers who are trained to use Narcan will not be at the parties where the students will be using the drugs,” he said.
And it isn’t enough to expect teens to keep it at home.
“It’s not going to be helpful if it’s in somebody’s house 20 minutes outside of town. It’s going to be helpful if it’s in their backpack always,” said Zoe Ramsey, another of McKinney’s friends and a senior at Animas High School.
“We were informed it was against the rules to carry naloxone, and especially to distribute it,” said Ilias “Leo” Stritikus, who graduated from Durango High School last year.
But students in the area, and their school administrators, were uncertain: Could students get in trouble for carrying the opioid antagonist in their backpacks, or if they distributed it to friends? And could a school or district be held liable if something went wrong?
He, along with Ramsey and Peterson, helped form the group Students Against Overdose. Together, they convinced Animas, which is a charter school, and the surrounding school district, to change policies. Now, with parental permission, and after going through training on how to administer it, students may carry naloxone on school grounds.
Durango School District 9-R spokesperson Karla Sluis said at least 45 students have completed the training.
School districts in other parts of the nation have also determined it’s important to clarify students’ ability to carry naloxone.
“We want to be a part of saving lives,” said Smita Malhotra, chief medical director for Los Angeles Unified School District in California.
Los Angeles County had one of the nation’s highest adolescent overdose death tallies of any U.S. county: From 2020 to 2022, 111 teens ages 14 to 18 died. One of them was a 15-year-old who died in a school bathroom of fentanyl poisoning. Malhotra’s district has since updated its policy on naloxone to permit students to carry and administer it.
“All students can carry naloxone in our school campuses without facing any discipline,” Malhotra said. She said the district is also doubling down on peer support and hosting educational sessions for families and students.
Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland took a similar approach. School staff had to administer naloxone 18 times over the course of a school year, and five students died over the course of about one semester.
When the district held community forums on the issue, Patricia Kapunan, the district’s medical officer, said, “Students were very vocal about wanting access to naloxone. A student is very unlikely to carry something in their backpack which they think they might get in trouble for.”
So it, too, clarified its policy. While that was underway, local news reported that high school students found a teen passed out, with purple lips, in the bathroom of a McDonald’s down the street from their school, and used Narcan to revive them. It was during lunch on a school day.
“We can’t Narcan our way out of the opioid use crisis,” said Kapunan. “But it was critical to do it first. Just like knowing 911.”
Now, with the support of the district and county health department, students are training other students how to administer naloxone. Jackson Taylor, one of the student trainers, estimated they trained about 200 students over the course of three hours on a recent Saturday.
“It felt amazing, this footstep toward fixing the issue,” Taylor said.
Each trainee left with two doses of naloxone.
This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
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?
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Our Verdict
When comparing almonds to pecans, we picked the almonds.
Why?
In terms of macros, almonds have more protein, carbs, and fiber, as well as the lower glycemic index. A strong start for almonds here, though pecans have more fat (and the healthy blend of fats is quite comparable from one nut to the other).
In the category of vitamins, almonds have more of vitamins B2, B3, B9, E, and choline, while pecans have more of vitamins A, B1, B5, B6, and K. Numerically that’s a tie, though the biggest margins of difference are for vitamins A and E, respectively, and we might want to prioritize almonds’ extra vitamin E, over pecans’ extra vitamin A, given that vitamin A is more easily found in large quantities in many foods, whereas vitamin E is not quite so abundant generally. So in short, either a tie or a slight win for almonds here.
When it comes to minerals, both contain a lot of goodness, but almonds have more calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while pecans have more copper, manganese, and zinc. A clear win for almonds, though as we say, pecans are also great for this, just not as great as almonds.
As a side-note, both of these nuts have been found to have anticancer properties against breast cancer cell lines. In all likelihood this means they help against other cancers too, but breast cancer is what the extant research has been for.
So, naturally, enjoy either or both (in fact, both is ideal). But if you want to choose one for nutritional density, it’s almonds.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts
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Seven Steps to Managing Your Memory – by Dr. Andrew Budson & Dr. Maureen O’Connor
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First, what this is not: a “how to improve your memory” book of the kind marketed to students and/or people who want to do memory-themed party tricks.
What this book actually is: exactly what the title and subtitle claim it to be: seven steps to managing your memory: what’s normal, what’s not, and what to do about it.
Drs. Budson & O’Connor cover:
- which memory errors can (and usually do) happen at any age
- how memory changes with normal aging, and
- what kinds of memory problems are not normal.
One thing that sets this book aside from a lot of its genre is that it also covers which kinds of memory loss are reversible—and, where appropriate, what can be undertaken to effect such a reversal.
The authors talk about what things have (and what things haven’t!) been shown to strengthen memory and reduce cognitive decline, and in the worst case scenario, what medications can help against Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
The style is halfway between pop-science and a science textbook. The structure of the book, with its headings, subheadings, bullet points, summaries, etc, helps the reader to process and remember the information.
Bottom line: if you’d like to get on top of managing your memory before you forget, then this book is for you.
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Strategic Wellness
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Strategic Wellness: planning ahead for a better life!
This is Dr. Michael Roizen. With hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and 14 US patents, his work has been focused on the importance of lifestyle factors in healthy living. He’s the Chief Wellness Officer at the world-famous Cleveland Clinic, and is known for his “RealAge” test and related personalized healthcare services.
If you’re curious about that, you can take the RealAge test here.
(they will require you inputting your email address if you do, though)
What’s his thing?
Dr. Roizen is all about optimizing health through lifestyle factors—most notably, diet and exercise. Of those, he is particularly keen on optimizing nutritional habits.
Is this just the Mediterranean Diet again?
Nope! Although: he does also advocate for that. But there’s more, he makes the case for what he calls “circadian eating”, optimally timing what we eat and when.
Is that just Intermittent Fasting again?
Nope! Although: he does also advocate for that. But there’s more:
Dr. Roizen takes a more scientific approach. Which isn’t to say that intermittent fasting is unscientific—on the contrary, there’s mountains of evidence for it being a healthful practice for most people. But while people tend to organize their intermittent fasting purely according to convenience, he notes some additional factors to take into account, including:
- We are evolved to eat when the sun is up
- We are evolved to be active before eating (think: hunting and gathering)
- Our insulin resistance increases as the day goes on
Now, if you’ve a quick mind about you, you’ll have noticed that this means:
- We should keep our eating to a particular time window (classic intermittent fasting), and/but that time window should be while the sun is up
- We should not roll out of bed and immediately breakfast; we need to be active for a bit first (moderate exercise is fine—this writer does her daily grocery-shopping trip on foot before breakfast, for instance… getting out there and hunting and gathering those groceries!)
- We should not, however, eat too much later in the day (so, dinner should be the smallest meal of the day)
The latter item is the one that’s perhaps biggest change for most people. His tips for making this as easy as possible include:
- Over-cater for dinner, but eat only one portion of it, and save the rest for an early-afternoon lunch
- First, however, enjoy a nutrient-dense protein-centric breakfast with at least some fibrous vegetation, for example:
- Salmon and asparagus
- Scrambled tofu and kale
- Yogurt and blueberries
Enjoy!
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