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?
Take care!
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What Happens To Your Body When You Plank 1 Minute Every Day
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Planks improve strength, flexibility, balance, posture, reduce chronic back pain, lower blood pressure, and enhance physique. But can we really get benefits from just 1 minute per day?
To the core
The benefits that can be expected, according to the science cited in this video, include:
- Within 2–3 weeks, daily planking of just 1 minute per day activates deep core muscles, enhancing balance, which helps in everyday tasks and prevents muscle imbalances.
- Strengthening core muscles through planks also helps alleviate lower back pain, with research supporting its effectiveness within 3 weeks.
- Posture is important for good health, and planks align the spine and hips, improving posture naturally, which also helps alleviate back issues. So, there’s a good kind of synergy to this exercise.
- Of course, many people exercising have the goal of a more toned body; regular planking leads to a toned core, sculpted shoulders, and leaner legs.
- For those who care more about mobility, though, planking enhances flexibility in hamstrings, feet, and toes within 4–6 weeks.
- Anything else? Yes, isometric exercises like planks are highly effective at reducing blood pressure, and, counterintuitively, more so than aerobic exercises.
The video also looks at a study in which participants did 20 minutes per day instead of 1, which predictably also significantly improved strength, endurance, flexibility, and reduced body fat.
However, another study cited gives the stats for just 1 minute daily, and that was not even a whole minute, so much as 30 seconds hold, 1 minute rest, 30 seconds hold—and still showed very good improvements.
For more on all this, plus links to three studies mentioned in the video, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Isometric Exercises That Are Good If You Have Osteoporosis (or if you don’t, but the point is, they are safe and beneficial for people with osteoporosis)
Take care!
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Food for Life – by Dr. Tim Spector
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This book is, as the author puts it, “an eater’s guide to food and nutrition”. Rather than telling us what to eat or not eat, he provides an overview of what the latest science has to say about various foods, and leaves us to make our own informed decisions.
He also stands firmly by the “personalized nutrition” idea that he introduced in his previous book which we reviewed the other day, and gives advice on what tests we might like to perform.
The writing style is accessible, without shying away from reference to hard science. Dr. Spector provides lots of information about key chemicals, genes, gut bacteria, and more—as well as simply providing a very enjoyable read along the way.
Bottom line: if you’d like a much better idea of what food is (and isn’t) doing what, this book is an invaluable resource.
Click here to check out Food for Life, and make the best decisions for you!
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The Pain-Free Mindset – by Dr. Deepak Ravindran
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First: please ignore the terrible title. This is not the medical equivalent of “think and grow rich”. A better title would have been something like “The Pain-Free Plan”.
Attentive subscribers may notice that this author was our featured expert yesterday, so you can learn about his “seven steps” described in our article there, without us repeating that in our review here.
This book’s greatest strength is also potentially its greatest weakness, depending on the reader: it contains a lot of detailed medical information.
This is good or bad depending on whether you like lots of detailed medical information. Dr. Ravindran doesn’t assume prior knowledge, so everything is explained as we go. However, this means that after his well-referenced clinical explanations, high quality medical diagrams, etc, you may come out of this book feeling like you’ve just done a semester at medical school.
Knowledge is power, though, so understanding the underlying processes of pain and pain management really does help the reader become a more informed expert on your own pain—and options for reducing that pain.
Bottom line: this, disguised by its cover as a “think healing thoughts” book, is actually a science-centric, information-dense, well-sourced, comprehensive guide to pain management from one of the leading lights in the field.
Click here to check out The Pain-Free Mindset, and manage yours more comfortably!
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Related Posts
More Salt, Not Less?
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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
❝I’m curious about the salt part – learning about LMNT and what they say about us needing more salt than what’s recommended by the government, would you mind looking into that? From a personal experience, I definitely noticed a massive positive difference during my 3-5 day water fasts when I added salt to my water compared to when I just drank water. So I’m curious what the actual range for salt intake is that we should be aiming for.❞
That’s a fascinating question, and we’ll have to tackle it in several parts:
When fasting
3–5 days is a long time to take only water; we’re sure you know most people fast from food for much less time than that. Nevertheless, when fasting, the body needs more water than usual—because of the increase in metabolism due to freeing up bodily resources for cellular maintenance. Water is necessary when replacing cells (most of which are mostly water, by mass), and for ferrying nutrients around the body—as well as escorting unwanted substances out of the body.
Normally, the body’s natural osmoregulatory process handles this, balancing water with salts of various kinds, to maintain homeostasis.
However, it can only do that if it has the requisite parts (e.g. water and salts), and if you’re fasting from food, you’re not replenishing lost salts unless you supplement.
Normally, monitoring our salt intake can be a bit of a guessing game, but when fasting for an entire day, it’s clear how much salt we consumed in our food that day: zero
So, taking the recommended amount of sodium, which varies but is usually in the 1200–1500mg range (low end if over aged 70+; high end if aged under 50), becomes sensible.
More detail: How Much Sodium You Need Per Day
See also, on a related note:
When To Take Electrolytes (And When We Shouldn’t!)
When not fasting
Our readers here are probably not “the average person” (since we have a very health-conscious subscriber-base), but the average person in N. America consumes about 9g of salt per day, which is several multiples of the maximum recommended safe amount.
The WHO recommends no more than 5g per day, and the AHA recommends no more than 2.3g per day, and that we should aim for 1.5g per day (this is, you’ll note, consistent with the previous “1200–1500mg range”).
Read more: Massive efforts needed to reduce salt intake and protect lives
Questionable claims
We can’t speak for LMNT (and indeed, had to look them up to discover they are an electrolytes supplement brand), but we can say that sometimes there are articles about such things as “The doctor who says we should eat more salt, not less”, and that’s usually about Dr. James DiNicolantonio, a doctor of pharmacy, who wrote a book that, because of this question today, we’ve now also reviewed:
Spoiler, our review was not favorable.
The body knows
Our kidneys (unless they are diseased or missing) do a full-time job of getting rid of excess things from our blood, and dumping them into one’s urine.
That includes excess sugar (which is how diabetes was originally diagnosed) and excess salt. In both cases, they can only process so much, but they do their best.
Dr. DiNicolantino recognizes this in his book, but chalks it up to “if we do take too much salt, we’ll just pass it in urine, so no big deal”.
Unfortunately, this assumes that our kidneys have infinite operating capacity, and they’re good, but they’re not that good. They can only filter so much per hour (it’s about 1 liter of fluids). Remember we have about 5 liters of blood, consume 2–3 liters of water per day, and depending on our diet, several more liters of water in food (easy to consume several more liters of water in food if one eats fruit, let alone soups and stews etc), and when things arrive in our body, the body gets to work on them right away, because it doesn’t know how much time it’s going to have to get it done, before the next intake comes.
It is reasonable to believe that if we needed 8–10g of salt per day, as Dr. DiNicolantonio claims, our kidneys would not start dumping once we hit much, much lower levels in our blood (lower even than the daily recommended intake, because not all of the salt in our body is in our blood, obviously).
See also: How Too Much Salt Can Lead To Organ Failure
Lastly, a note about high blood pressure
This is one where the “salt’s not the bad guy” crowd have at least something close to a point, because while salt is indeed still a bad guy (if taken above the recommended amounts, without good medical reason), when it comes to high blood pressure specifically, it’s not the worst bad guy, nor is it even in the top 5:
Hypertension: Factors Far More Relevant Than Salt
Thanks for writing in with such an interesting question!
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Rethinking Diabetes – by Gary Taubes
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We’ve previously reviewed this author’s “The Case Against Sugar” and “Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It“. There’s an obvious theme, and this book caps it off nicely:
By looking at the history of diabetes treatment (types 1 and 2) in the past hundred years, and analysing the patterns over time, we can see how:
- diabetics have been misled a lot over time by healthcare providers
- we can learn from those mistakes going forwards
Happily, he does this without crystal-balling the future or expecting diet to fix, for example, a pancreas that can’t produce insulin. But what he does do is focus on the “can” items rather than the “can’t” items.
In the category of criticism, one of the strategies he argues for is basically the keto diet, which is indeed just fine for diabetes but often not great for the heart in the long-term (it depends on various factors, including genes). However, even if you choose not to implement that, there is plenty more to try out in this book.
Bottom line: whether you have diabetes, love someone who does, or just plain like to be on top of your glycemic health, this book is full of important insights and opportunities to improve things progressively along the way.
Click here to check out Rethinking Diabetes, and rethink diabetes!
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Science of Stretch – by Dr. Leada Malek
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This book is part of a “Science of…” series, of which we’ve reviewed some others before (Yoga | HIIT | Pilates), and needless to say, we like them.
You may be wondering: is this just that thing where a brand releases the same content under multiple names to get more sales, and no, it’s not (long-time 10almonds readers will know: if it were, we’d say so!).
While flexibility and mobility are indeed key benefits in yoga and Pilates, they looked into the science of what was going on in yoga asanas and Pilates exercises, stretchy or otherwise, so the stretching element was not nearly so deep as in this book.
In this one, Dr. Malek takes us on a wonderful tour of (relevant) human anatomy and physiology, far deeper than most pop-science books go into when it comes to stretching, so that the reader can really understand every aspect of what’s going on in there.
This is important, because it means busting a lot of myths (instead of busting tendons and ligaments and things), understanding why certain things work and (critically!) why certain things don’t, how certain stretching practices will sabotage our progress, things like that.
It’s also beautifully clearly illustrated! The cover art is a fair representation of the illustrations inside.
Bottom line: if you want to get serious about stretching, this is a top-tier book and you won’t regret it.
Click here to check out Science of Stretching, and learn what you can do and how!
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