Dried Apricots vs Dried Prunes – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing dried apricots to dried prunes, we picked the prunes.
Why?
First, let’s talk hydration. We’ve described both of these as “dried”, but prunes are by default dried plums, usually partially rehydrated. So, for fairness, on the other side of things we’re also looking at dried apricots, partially rehydrated. Otherwise, it would look (mass for mass or volume for volume) like one is seriously outstripping the other even if some metric were actually equal, just because of water-weight in one and not the other.
Illustrative example: consider, for example, that the sugar in a bunch of grapes or a handful of raisins can be the same, not because they magically got more sugary, but because the water was dried out, so per mass and per volume, there’s more sugar, proportionally.
Back to dried apricots and dried prunes…
You’ll often see these two next to each other in the heath food store, which is why we’re comparing them here.
Of course, if it is practical, please by all means enjoy fresh apricots and fresh plums. But we know that life is not always convenient, fruits are not in season growing in abundance in our gardens all year round, and sometimes we’re stood in the aisle of a grocery store, weighing up the dried fruit options.
- Apricots are well-known for their zinc, potassium, and vitamin A.
- Prunes are well-known for their fiber.
But that’s not the whole story…
- Apricots outperform prunes for vitamin A, and also vitamins C and E.
- Prunes take first place for vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and K, and also for minerals calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, and zinc.
- Prunes also have about 3x the fiber, which at the very least offsets the fact that they have 3x the sugar.
Once again, sugar in fruit is healthy (sugar in fruit juices is not*, though, so enjoy prunes rather than just prune juice, if you can) and can take its rightful place as providing a significant portion of our daily energy needs, if we let it.
*It’s the same sugar, just the manner of delivery changes what it does to our liver and our pancreas; see:
Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
In summary…
Dried apricots are great (fresh are even better), and yet prunes outperform them by most metrics on a like-for-like basis.
Prunes have, on balance, a lot more vitamins and minerals, as well as more fiber and energy.
Want to get some?
Your local supermarket probably has them, and if you prefer having them delivered to your door, then here’s an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
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8 Pillars of Weight Loss Explained
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Surprise, diet is #6 and exercise is #7:
How many do you do?
If your body is a temple, these are its eight pillars:
- Emotional freedom and resilience: understanding how the mind works and using techniques such as CBT, neurolinguistic programming, and meditation to reduce psychological stress and improve self-awareness.
- Vagal tone improvement: techniques to get the body out of fight-or-flight mode, improving blood flow, digestion, and reducing chronic pain.
- Lymphatic system support: to enhance your body’s internal cleanup system, boost energy, and alleviate pain.
- Gut health optimization: supporting digestion and gut health, so that your gut can work efficiently.
- Hormonal balance: addressing hormone imbalances to improve overall health, as well as supporting a healthy metabolism and weight loss.
- Dietary choices: choosing a sustainable diet that balances blood sugar, boosts metabolism, and suits your personal needs.
- Exercise and mobility: developing a sustainable workout plan that promotes fat loss, joint health, and muscle building.
- Habit formation: developing routines and habits to maintain progress and prevent relapse into old patterns.
For more on each of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
How To Lose Weight (Healthily!) ← our own main feature on the topic, detailing the best kinds of diet and exercise adjustments, as well as how to go about tending to some of the other factors mentioned above
Take care!
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10 Tips To Reduce Morning Pain & Stiffness With Arthritis
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Physiotherapist and osteoarthritis specialist Dr. Alyssa Kuhn has professional advice:
Just the tips
We’ll not keep them a mystery; they are:
- Perform movements that target the range of motion in stiff joints, especially in knees and hips, to prevent them from being stuck in limited positions overnight.
- Use relaxation techniques like a hot shower, heating pad, or light reading before bed to reduce muscle tension and stiffness upon waking.
- Manage joint swelling during the day through gentle movement, compression sleeves, and self-massage .
- Maintain a balanced level of activity throughout the day to avoid excessive stiffness from either overactivity or, on the flipside, prolonged inactivity.
- Use pillows to support joints, such as placing one between your knees for hip and knee arthritis, and ensure you have a comfortable pillow for neck support.
- Eat anti-inflammatory foods prioritizing fruits and vegetables to reduce joint stiffness, and avoid foods high in added sugar, trans-fats, and saturated fats.
- Perform simple morning exercises targeting stiff areas to quickly relieve stiffness and ease into your daily routine.
- Engage in strength training exercises 2–3 times per week to build stronger muscles around the joints, which can reduce stiffness and pain.
- Ensure you get 7–8 hours of restful sleep, as poor sleep can increase stiffness and pain sensitivity the next day. 10almonds note: we realize there’s a degree of “catch 22” here, but we’re simply reporting her advice. Of course, do what you can to prioritize being able to get the best quality sleep you can.
- Perform gentle movements or stretches before bed to keep joints limber, focusing on exercises that feel comfortable and soothing.
For more on each of these plus some visual demonstrations, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis
- Avoiding/Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis
- Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!)
Take care!
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Unprocessed – by Kimberly Wilson
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First, what this is not: hundreds of pages to say “eat less processed food”. That is, of course, also advisable (and indeed, is advised in the book too), but there’s a lot more going on here too.
Though not a doctor, the author is a psychologist who brings a lot of data to the table, especially when it comes to the neurophysiology at hand, what forgotten micronutrients many people are lacking, and what trends in society worsen these deficiencies in the population at large.
If you only care about the broadest of take-away advice, it is: eat a diet that’s mostly minimally processed plants and some oily fish, watch out for certain deficiencies in particular, and increase dietary intake of them where necessary (with taking supplements as a respectable next-best remedy).
On which note, a point of criticism is that there’s some incorrect information about veganism and brain health; she mentions that DHA is only found in fish (in fact, fish get it from algae, which has it, and is the basis of many vegan omega-3 supplements), and the B12 is found only in animals (also found in yeast, which is not an animal, as well as various bacteria in soil, and farm animals get their B12 from supplements these days anyway, so it is arguable that we could keep things simpler by just cutting out the middlecow).
However, the strength of this book really is in the delivery of understanding about why certain things matter. If you’re told “such-and-such is good for the brain”, you’ll up your intake for 1–60 days, depending on whether you bought a supermarket item or ordered a batch of supplements. And then you’ll forget, until 6–12 months later, and you’ll do it again. On the other hand, if you understand how something is good or bad for the brain, what it does (for good or ill) on a cellular level, the chemistry and neurophysiology at hand, you’ll make new habits for life.
The style is middle-range pop-science; by this we mean there are tables of data and some long words that are difficult to pronounce, but also it’s not just hard science throughout—there’s (as one might expect from an author who is a psychologist) a lot about the psychology and sociology of why many people make poor dietary decisions, and the things governments often do (or omit doing) that affect this adversely—and how we can avoid those traps as individuals (unless we be incarcerated or such).
As an aside, the author is British, so governmental examples are mostly UK-based, but it doesn’t take a lot to mentally measure that against what the governments of, for example, the US or Canada do the same or differently.
Bottom line: there’s a lot of great information about brain health here; the strongest parts are whether the author stays within her field (psychology encompasses such diverse topics as neurophysiology and aspects of sociology, but not microbiology, for example). If you want to learn about the physiology of brain health and enjoy quite a sociopolitical ride along the way, this one’s a good one for that.
Click here to check out Unprocessed, and make the best choices for you!
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Is “Extra Virgin” Worth It?
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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 was wondering, is the health difference important between extra virgin olive oil and regular?❞
Assuming that by “regular” you mean “virgin and still sold as a food product”, then there are health differences, but they’re not huge. Or at least: not nearly so big as the differences between those and other oils.
Virgin olive oil (sometimes simply sold as “olive oil”, with no claims of virginity) has been extracted by the same means as extra virgin olive oil, that is to say: purely mechanical.
The difference is that extra virgin olive oil comes from the first pressing*, so the free fatty acid content is slightly lower (later checked and validated and having to score under a 0.8% limit for “extra virgin” instead of 2% limit for a mere “virgin”).
*Fun fact: in Arabic, extra virgin is called “البكر الممتاز“, literally “the amazing first-born”, because of this feature!
It’s also slightly higher in mono-unsaturated fatty acids, which is a commensurately slight health improvement.
It’s very slightly lower in saturated fats, which is an especially slight health improvement, as the saturated fats in olive oil are amongst the healthiest saturated fats one can consume.
On which fats are which:
The truth about fats: the good, the bad, and the in-between
And our own previous discussion of saturated fats in particular:
Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy?
Probably the strongest extra health-benefit of extra virgin is that while that first pressing squeezes out oil with the lowest free fatty acid content, it squeezes out oil with the highest polyphenol content, along with other phytonutrients:
If you enjoy olive oil, then springing for extra virgin is worth it if that’s not financially onerous, both for health reasons and taste.
However, if mere “virgin” is what’s available, it’s no big deal to have that instead; it still has a very similar nutritional profile, and most of the same benefits.
Don’t settle for less than “virgin”, though.
While some virgin olive oils aren’t marked as such, if it says “refined” or “blended”, then skip it. These will have been extracted by chemical means and/or blended with completely different oils (e.g. canola, which has a very different nutritional profile), and sometimes with a dash of virgin or extra virgin, for the taste and/or so that they can claim in big writing on the label something like:
a blend of
EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL
and other oils…despite having only a tiny amount of extra virgin olive oil in it.
Different places have different regulations about what labels can claim.
The main countries that produce olives (and the EU, which contains and/or directly trades with those) have this set of rules:
International Olive Council: Designations and definitions of Olive Oils
…which must be abided by or marketers face heavy fines and sanctions.
In the US, the USDA has its own set of rules based on the above:
USDA | Olive Oil and Olive-Pomace Oil Grades and Standards
…which are voluntary (not protected by law), and marketers can pay to have their goods certified if they want.
So if you’re in the US, look for the USDA certification or it really could be:
- What the USDA calls “US virgin olive oil not fit for human consumption”, which in the IOC is called “lamp oil”*
- crude pomace-oil (oil made from the last bit of olive paste and then chemically treated)
- canola oil with a dash of olive oil
- anything yellow and oily, really
*This technically is virgin olive oil insofar as it was mechanically extracted, but with defects that prevent it from being sold as such, such as having a free fatty acid content above the cut-off, or just a bad taste/smell, or some sort of contamination.
See also: Potential Health Benefits of Olive Oil and Plant Polyphenols
(the above paper has a handy infographic if you scroll down just a little)
Where can I get some?
Your local supermarket, probably, but if you’d like to get some online, here’s an example product on Amazon for your convenience
Enjoy!
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Bath vs Shower – Which is Healthier?
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.
Our Verdict
When comparing bathing to showering, we picked the shower.
Why?
For the basic task of getting your body clean, the shower is better as it is an entirely one-way process. Clean water hits your body, dirty water leaves it, and no dirt is making its way back.
Baths do not have this advantage, and if you enter a bath dirty, you will then be sitting in dirty water. You will leave it a lot cleaner than you entered it (because a lot of the dirt stayed in the bathwater to be drained away after the bath), but not as clean as if you had showered.
One could argue soap or equivalent will prevent the dirt re-sticking, and that’s true, but it’s true for soap in the shower too, so it doesn’t offset anything.
Additionally, being immersed in water for more than 15 minutes can start to have a (paradoxically) dehydrating effect on the skin; this happens not only because of losing skin oils to the water, but also because of osmosis, the resultant mild edema, the body’s homeostatic response to the mild edema, then getting out the bath and drying, leaving one with the response having now just caused dehydrated skin.
Baths do have some health advantages! And these come primarily from the mental health benefits of relaxation in warm water and/or generally pampering oneself. Additionally, some bath oils or bath salts can be beneficial in a way that couldn’t be administered the same way in the shower.
Best of both worlds?
In some parts of the world (Thailand and Turkey come to mind; doubtlessly there are many others) there are traditions of first taking a shower to get clean, and then taking a bath for the rest of the bathing experience. As a bonus, the bathing experience is then all the more pleasant for the water remaining just as clean as it was to start with.
However, if you do have to pick one (and for the purpose of our “This or That” exercise, we do), then it’s the shower, hands-down.
Want to read more?
You might want to also take into account how it’s still possible to have too much of a good thing:
Enjoy!
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Turkish Saffron Salad
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Summer is upon us, and we need salad options. Coleslaw’s all well and good, until you’re the 4th person to bring it to the pot luck. Tzatziki’s great—and healthier than a standard coleslaw, being based in yogurt rather than mayonnaise as most Western coleslaws are (Eastern European coleslaws, for example, more often use a vinaigrette), but today our tastebuds are traveling to Turkey for this gut-healthy, phytochemical-rich, delicious dish.
You will need
- 12 oz carrots, cut into very thin batons (alternatively: use a peeler to peel it into super-thin strips)
- 2 oz chopped nuts (pistachios are traditional, almonds are also used sometimes; many other nuts would work too e.g. walnuts, hazelnuts, etc; not peanuts though)
- 2 cups kefir yogurt (if unavailable, substitute any 2 cups plain unsweetened yogurt; comparable plant yogurt is fine if you’re vegan; those healthy bacteria love plant yogurts as much as animal ones)
- 1 bulb garlic, grated
- 1 tsp chili flakes
- 1 pinch saffron, ground, then soaked in 1 tbsp warm water for a few hours
- 2 tbsp olive oil for cooking; ideally Extra Virgin, but at least Virgin
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Put the olive oil and carrots into a saucepan and heat gently, stirring. You want to soften the carrots just a little and absorb the olive oil, without actually fully cooking the carrots; this will probably only take 2–3 minutes at most. Take it off the heat and transfer it to a bowl to cool.
When the mixture has cooled…
2) Add the kefir yogurt, garlic, chili flakes, and saffron water into the carrots, mixing thoroughly.
3) Add the chopped nuts as a garnish
(after mixing thoroughly, you will probably see more of the yogurt mixture and less of the carrots; that’s fine and correct))
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
- The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic
- Capsaicin For Weight Loss And Against Inflammation
- Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
- Saffron For The Brain (& More) ← do not underestimate saffron’s neuroprotective qualities, and many other beneficial properties!
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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