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

❝Maybe I missed it but the study on blood pressure did it say what the 2 numbers should read ideally?❞

We linked it at the top of the article rather than including it inline, as we were short on space (and there was a chart rather than a “these two numbers” quick answer), but we have a little more space today, so:

To oversimplify for a “these two numbers” answer, under 120/80 is generally considered good, unless it is under 90/60, in which case that becomes hypotension.

Hypotension, the blood pressure being too low, means your organs may not get enough oxygen and if they don’t, they will start shutting down.

To give you an idea how serious this, this is the closed-circuit equivalent of the hypovolemic shock that occurs when someone is bleeding out onto the floor. Technically, bleeding to death also results in low blood pressure, of course, hence the similarity.

So: just a little under 120/80 is great.

❝What could be easily digestible plant sources of protein for a vegetarian. My son is a gym holic and always looking for ways to get his protein from lentils other than eggs. He says to reach his protein requirement for the day, the amount of lentils he has to eat is sometimes heavy on the gut. Would really appreciate if you throw some light on this❞

Unless one has IBS or similar (or is otherwise unaccustomed to consuming healthy amounts of fiber), lentils shouldn’t be at all problematic for the digestion.

However, the digestive process can still be eased by (speaking specifically for lentils here) blending them (in the water they were cooked in). This thick tasty liquid can then be used as the base of a soup, for example.

Soy is an excellent source of complete protein too. Your son probably knows this because it’s in a lot of body-building supplements as soy protein isolate, but can also be enjoyed as textured soy protein (as in many plant-based meats), or even just soy beans (edamame). Tofu (also made from soy) is very versatile, and again can be blended to form the basis of a creamy sauce.

Mycoproteins (as found in “Quorn” brand products and other meat substitutes) also perform comparably to meat from animals:

Meatless Muscle Growth: Building Muscle Size and Strength on a Mycoprotein-Rich Vegan Diet

See also, for interest:

Vegan and Omnivorous High Protein Diets Support Comparable Daily Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis Rates and Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy in Young Adults

❝Is it good to eat farm raised fish?❞

We’ll answer this as a purely health-related question (and thus not considering economy, ecology, ethics, or taste).

It’s certainly not as good as wild-caught fish, for several reasons, some more serious than others:

Farmed fish can have quite a different nutritional profile to wild-caught fish, and also contain more contaminants, including heavy metals.

For example, farmed fish tend to have much higher fat content for the same amount of protein, but lower levels of minerals and other nutrients. Here are two side-by-side:

Wild-caught salmon | Farmed salmon

See also:

Quantitative analysis of the benefits and risks of consuming farmed and wild salmon

Additionally, because fish in fish farms tend to be very susceptible to diseases (because of the artificially cramped and overcrowded environment), fish farms tend to make heavy use of antibiotics, which can cause all sorts of problems down the line:

Extended antibiotic treatment in salmon farms select multiresistant gut bacteria with a high prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes

So definitely, “let the buyer beware”!

It’s Q&A Day!

Each Thursday, we respond to subscriber questions and requests! If it’s something small, we’ll answer it directly; if it’s something bigger, we’ll do a main feature in a follow-up day instead!

So, no question/request to big or small; they’ll just get sorted accordingly

Remember, you can always hit reply to any of our emails, or use the handy feedback widget at the bottom. We always look forward to hearing from you!

Q: What’s the process behind the books you recommend? You seem to have a limitless stream of recommendations

We do our best!

The books we recommend are books that…

• are on Amazon—it makes things tidy, consistent, and accessible. And if you end up buying one of the books, we get a small affiliate commission*.
• we have read—we would say “obviously”, but you might be surprised how many people write about books without having read them.
• pertain in at least large part to health and/or productivity.
• are written by humans—bookish people (and especially Kindle Unlimited users) may have noticed lately that there are a lot of low quality AI-written books flooding the market, sometimes with paid 5-star reviews to bolster them. It’s frustrating, but we can tell the difference and screen those out.
• are of a certain level of quality. They don’t have to be “top 5 desert-island books”, because well, there’s one every day and the days keep coming. But they do have to genuinely deliver the value that we describe, and merit a sincere recommendation.
• are varied—we try to not give a run of “samey” books one after another. We will sometimes review a book that covers a topic another previously-reviewed book did, but it must have something about it that makes it different. It may be a different angle or a different writing style, but it needs something to set it apart.

*this is from Amazon and isn’t product-specific, so this is not affecting our choice of what books to review at all—just that they will be books that are available on Amazon.