The Five Key Traits Of Healthy Aging
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The Five Keys Of Aging Healthily
This is Dr. Daniel Levitin. He’s a neuroscientist, and his research focuses on aging, the brain, health, productivity, and creativity. Also music, and he himself is an accomplished musician also, but we’re not going to be focusing on that today.
We’re going to be looking at the traits that, according to science, promote healthy longevity in old age. In other words, the things that increase our healthspan, from the perspective of a cognitive scientist.
What does he say we should do?
Dr. Levitin offers us what he calls the “COACH” traits:
- Curiosity
- Openness
- Associations
- Conscientiousness
- Healthy practices
By “associations”, he means relationships. However, that would have made the acronym “CORCH”, and decisions had to be made.
Curiosity
Leonardo da Vinci had a list of seven traits he considered most important.
We’ll not go into those today (he is not our featured expert of the day!), but we will say that he agreed with Dr. Levitin on what goes at the top of the list: curiosity.
- Without curiosity, we will tend not to learn things, and learning things is key to keeping good cognitive function in old age
- Without curiosity, we will tend not to form hypotheses about how/why things are the way they are, so we will not exercise imagination, creativity, problem-solving, and other key functions of our brain
- Without curiosity, we will tend not to seek out new experiences, and consequently, our stimuli will be limited—and thus, so will our brains
Openness
Being curious about taking up ballroom dancing will do little for you, if you are not also open to actually trying it. But, openness is not just a tag-on to curiosity; it deserves its spot in its own right too.
Sometimes, ideas and opportunities come to us unbidden, and we have to be able to be open to those too. This doesn’t mean being naïve, but it does mean having at least a position of open-minded skepticism.
Basically, Dr. Levitin is asking us to be the opposite of the pejorative stereotype of “an old person stuck in their ways”.
Associations
People are complex, and so they bring complexities to our lives. Hopefully, positively stimulating ones. Without them to challenge us (again, hopefully in a positive way), we can get very stuck in a narrow field of experience.
And of course, having at least a few good friends has numerous benefits to health. There’s been a lot of research on this; 5 appears to be optimal.
- More than that, and the depth tends to tail off, and/or stresses ensue from juggling too many relationships
- Fewer than that, and we might be only a calendar clash away from loneliness
Friends provide social stimulation and mutual support; they’re good for our mental health and even our physiological immunity (counterintuitively, by means of shared germs).
And, a strong secure romantic relationship is something that has been found time and again to extend healthy life.
Note: by popular statistics, this benefit is conferred upon men partnered with women, men partnered with men, women partnered with women, but not women partnered with men.
There may be a causative factor that’s beyond the scope of this article which is about cognitive science, not feminism, but there could also be a mathematical explanation for this apparent odd-one-out:
Since women tend to live longer than men (who are also often older than their female partners), women who live the longest are often not in a relationship—precisely because they are widows. So these long-lived widows will tend to skew the stats, through no fault of their husbands.
On the flipside of this, for a woman to predecease her (statistically older and shorter-lived) husband will often require that she die quite early (perhaps due to accident or illness unrelated to age), which will again skew the stats to “women married to men die younger”, without anything nefarious going on.
Conscientiousness
People who score highly in the character trait “conscientiousness” will tend to live longer. The impact is so great, that a child’s scores will tend to dictate who dies in their 60s or their 80s, for example.
What does conscientiousness mean? It’s a broad character trait that’s scored in psychometric tests, so it can be things that have a direct impact on health, such as brushing one’s teeth, or things that are merely correlated, such as checking one’s work for typos (this writer does her best!).
In short, if you are the sort of person who attends to the paperwork for your taxes on time, you are probably also the sort of person who remembers to get your flu vaccination and cancer screening.
Healthy practices
This means “the usual things”, such as:
- Healthy diet (Mediterranean Diet consistently scores up top)
- Good exercise (especially the tendency to keep moving in general)
- Good sleep (7–9 hours, no compromises)
- Not drinking (or at least only very moderate consumption, but the only safe amount is zero)
- Not smoking (just don’t; there is no wiggle room on this one)
Want to learn more?
You can check out his book, which we reviewed all so recently, and you can also enjoy this video, in which he talks about matters concerning healthy aging from a neuroscientist’s perspective, ranging from heart health and neurodegeneration, to the myth of failing memory, to music and lifespan and more:
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Vaccines and cancer: The myth that won’t die
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Two recent studies reported rising cancer rates among younger adults in the U.S. and worldwide. This prompted some online anti-vaccine accounts to link the studies’ findings to COVID-19 vaccines.
But, as with other myths, the data tells a very different story.
What you need to know
- Baseless claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer have persisted online for several years and gained traction in late 2023.
- Two recent reports finding rising cancer rates among younger adults are based on pre-pandemic cancer incidence data. Cancer rates in the U.S. have been on the rise since the 1990s.
- There is no evidence of a link between COVID-19 vaccination and increased cancer risk.
False claims about COVID-19 vaccines began circulating months before the vaccines were available. Chief among these claims was misinformed speculation that vaccine mRNA could alter or integrate into vaccine recipients’ DNA.
It does not. But that didn’t prevent some on social media from spinning that claim into a persistent myth alleging that mRNA vaccines can cause or accelerate cancer growth. Anti-vaccine groups even coined the term “turbo cancer” to describe a fake phenomenon of abnormally aggressive cancers allegedly linked to COVID-19 vaccines.
They used the American Cancer Society’s 2024 cancer projection—based on incidence data through 2020—and a study of global cancer trends between 1999 and 2019 to bolster the false claims. This exposed the dishonesty at the heart of the anti-vaccine messaging, as data that predated the pandemic by decades was carelessly linked to COVID-19 vaccines in viral social media posts.
Some on social media cherry-pick data and use unfounded evidence because the claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer are not true. According to the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society, there is no evidence of any link between COVID-19 vaccines and an increase in cancer diagnosis, progression, or remission.
Why does the vaccine cancer myth endure?
At the root of false cancer claims about COVID-19 vaccines is a long history of anti-vaccine figures falsely linking vaccines to cancer. Polio and HPV vaccines have both been the target of disproven cancer myths.
Not only do HPV vaccines not cause cancer, they are one of only two vaccines that prevent cancer.
In the case of polio vaccines, some early batches were contaminated with simian virus 40 (SV40), a virus that is known to cause cancer in some mammals but not humans. The contaminated batches were discovered, and no other vaccine has had SV40 contamination in over 60 years.
Follow-up studies found no increase in cancer rates in people who received the SV40-contaminated polio vaccine. Yet, vaccine opponents have for decades claimed that polio vaccines cause cancer.
Recycling of the SV40 myth
The SV40 myth resurfaced in 2023 when vaccine opponents claimed that COVID-19 vaccines contain the virus. In reality, a small, nonfunctional piece of the SV40 virus is used in the production of some COVID-19 vaccines. This DNA fragment, called the promoter, is commonly used in biomedical research and vaccine development and doesn’t remain in the finished product.
Crucially, the SV40 promoter used to produce COVID-19 vaccines doesn’t contain the part of the virus that enters the cell nucleus and is associated with cancer-causing properties in some animals. The promoter also lacks the ability to survive on its own inside the cell or interact with DNA. In other words, it poses no risk to humans.
Over 5.6 billion people worldwide have received COVID-19 vaccines since December 2020. At that scale, even the tiniest increase in cancer rates in vaccinated populations would equal hundreds of thousands of excess cancer diagnoses and deaths. The evidence for alleged vaccine-linked cancer would be observed in real incidence, treatment, and mortality data, not social media anecdotes or unverifiable reports.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Considering taking Wegovy to lose weight? Here are the risks and benefits – and how it differs from Ozempic
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The weight-loss drug Wegovy is now available in Australia.
Wegovy is administered as a once-weekly injection and is approved specifically for weight management. It’s intended to be used in combination with a reduced-energy diet and increased physical activity.
So how does Wegovy work and how much weight can you expect to lose while taking it? And what are the potential risks – and costs – for those who use it?
Let’s look at what the science says.
Halfpoint/Shutterstock What is Wegovy?
Wegovy is a brand name for the medication semaglutide. Semaglutide is a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA). This means it makes your body’s own glucagon-like peptide-1 hormone, called GLP-1 for short, work better.
Normally when you eat, the body releases the GLP-1 hormone which helps signal to your brain that you are full. Semaglutides enhance this effect, leading to a feeling of fullness, even when you haven’t eaten.
Another role of GLP-1 is to stimulate the body to produce more insulin, a hormone which helps lower the level of glucose (sugar) in the blood. That’s why semaglutides have been used for several years to treat type 2 diabetes.
Wegovy is self-injected once a week. S Becker/Shutterstock How does Wegovy differ from Ozempic?
Like Wegovy, Ozempic is a semaglutide. The way Wegovy and Ozempic work in the body are essentially the same. They’re made by the same pharmaceutical company, Novo Nordisk.
But there are two differences:
1) They are approved for two different (but related) reasons.
In Australia (and the United States), Ozempic is approved for use to improve blood glucose levels in adults with type 2 diabetes. By managing blood glucose levels effectively, the medication aims to reduce the risk of major complications, such as heart disease.
Wegovy is approved for use alongside diet and exercise for people with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or greater, or 27 or greater but with other conditions such as high blood pressure.
Wegovy can also be used in people aged 12 years and older. Like Ozempic, Wegovy aims to reduce the risk of future health complications, including heart disease.
2) They are both injected but come in different strengths.
Ozempic is available in pre-loaded single-dose pens with varying dosages of 0.25 mg, 0.5 mg, 1 mg, or 2 mg per injection. The dose can be slowly increased, up to a maximum of 2 mg per week, if needed.
Wegovy is available in prefilled single-dose pens with doses of 0.25 mg, 0.5 mg, 1 mg, 1.7 mg, or 2.4 mg. The treatment starts with a dose of 0.25 mg once weekly for four weeks, after which the dose is gradually increased until reaching a maintenance dose of 2.4 mg weekly.
While it’s unknown what the impact of Wegovy’s introduction will be on Ozempic’s availability, Ozempic is still anticipated to be in low supply for the remainder of 2024.
Is Wegovy effective for weight loss?
Given Wegovy is a semaglutide, there is very strong evidence it can help people lose weight and maintain this weight loss.
A recent study found that over four years, participants taking Wevovy as indicated experienced an average weight loss of 10.2% body weight and a reduction in waist circumference of 7.7cm.
For those who stop taking the medication, analyses have shown that about two-thirds of weight lost is regained.
Wegovy can help people lose weight and maintain their weight loss – while they take the drug. Mladen Mitrinovic/Shutterstock What are the side effects of Wegovy?
The most common side effects are nausea and vomiting.
However, other serious side effects are also possible because of the whole-of-body impact of the medication. Thyroid tumours and cancer have been detected as a risk in animal studies, yet are rarely seen in human scientific literature.
In the four-year Wegovy trial, 16.6% of participants who received Wegovy (1,461 people) experienced an adverse event that led to them permanently discontinuing their use of the medication. This was higher than the 8.2% of participants (718 people) who received the placebo (with no active ingredient).
Side effects included gastrointestinal disorders (including nausea and vomiting), which affected 10% of people who used Wegovy compared to 2% of people who used the placebo.
Gallbladder-related disorders occurred in 2.8% of people who used Wegovy, and 2.3% of people who received the placebo.
Recently, concerns about suicidal thoughts and behaviours have been raised, after a global analysis reviewed more than 36 million reports of adverse events from semaglutide (Ozempic or Wegovy) since 2000.
There were 107 reports of suicidal thoughts and self-harm among people taking semaglutide, sadly including six actual deaths. When people stopped the medication, 62.5% found the thoughts went away. What we don’t know is whether dose, weight loss, or previous mental health status or use of antidepressants had a role to play.
Finally, concerns are growing about the negative effect of semaglutides on our social and emotional connection with food. Anecdotal and scientific evidence suggests people who use semaglutides significantly reduce their daily dietary intake (as anticipated) by skipping meals and avoiding social occasions – not very enjoyable for people and their loved ones.
How can people access Wegovy?
Wegovy is available for purchase at pharmacists with a prescription from a doctor.
But there is a hefty price tag. Wegovy is not currently subsidised through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, leaving patients to cover the cost. The current cost is estimated at around A$460 per month dose.
If you’re considering Wegovy, make an appointment with your doctor for individual advice.
Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland and Emily Burch, Accredited Practising Dietitian and Lecturer, Southern Cross University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Crispy Tofu Pad Thai
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Easy to make, delicious to enjoy, and packed with phytonutrients, this dish is a great one to add to your repertoire:
You will need
- 10 oz ready-to-wok rice noodles, or 6 oz dry
- 5 oz silken tofu
- 5 oz firm or extra firm tofu, cut into small cubes
- 1 oz arrowroot (or cornstarch if you don’t have arrowroot)
- 4 scallions, sliced
- ¼ bulb garlic, finely chopped
- 1″ piece fresh ginger, grated
- 1 red chili, chopped (multiply per your heat preferences)
- 1 red bell pepper, deseeded and thinly sliced
- 4 oz bok choi, thinly sliced
- 4 oz mung bean sprouts
- 1 tbsp tamari (or other, but tamari is traditional) soy sauce
- 1 tbsp sweet chili sauce
- Juice of ½ lime
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
- Avocado oil, or your preferred oil for stir-frying
- To serve: lime wedges
- Optional garnish: crushed roasted peanuts (if allergic, substitute sesame seeds; peanuts are simply traditional, that’s all)
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Scramble the silken tofu. For guidance and also additional seasoning pointers, see our Tasty Tofu Scramble recipe, but omit the thyme.
2) Cook the noodles if necessary (i.e. if they are the dry type and need boiling, as opposed to “ready-to-wok” noodles that don’t), drain, and set aside.
4) Prepare the tofu cubes: if the tofu cubes are dry to the touch, toss them gently in a little oil to coat. If they’re wet to the touch, no need. Dust the tofu cubes with the arrowroot and MSG/salt; you can do this in a bowl, tossing gently to distribute the coating evenly.
4) Heat some oil in a wok over a high heat, and fry the tofu on each side until golden and crispy all over, and set aside.
5) Stir-fry the scallions, garlic, ginger, chili, and bell pepper for about 2 minutes.
6) Add the bean sprouts and bok choi, and keep stir-frying for another 2 minutes.
7) Add everything that’s not already in the pan except the lime wedges and peanuts (i.e., add the things you set aside, plus the remaining as-yet-untouched ingredients) and stir-fry for a further 2 minutes.
8) Serve hot, garnished with the crushed peanuts if using, and with the lime wedges on the side:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Sprout Your Seeds, Grains, Beans, Etc
- Which Bell Peppers To Pick? A Spectrum Of Specialties
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
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Healthy Cook’s Anti-Inflammatory Diet & Cookbook – by Dr. Albert Orbinati
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Chronic inflammation is a root cause of very many illnesses, and exacerbates almost all the ones it doesn’t cause. So, reducing inflammation is a very good way to stay well in general, reducing one’s risk factors for very many other diseases.
Dr. Orbinati starts by giving advice for adjusting to an anti-inflammatory diet, including advice on trying an elimination diet, if you suspect an undiagnosed allergy/intolerance.
Thereafter, he gives guidance on pantry-stocking—not just what anti-inflammatory foods to include and what inflammatory foods to skip, but also, what food and nutrient pairings are particularly beneficial, like how black pepper and turmeric are both anti-inflammatory by themselves, but the former greatly increases the bioavailability of the latter if consumed together.
The rest of the book—aside from assorted appendices, such as 8 pages of scientific references—is given over to the recipes.
The recipes themselves are, obviously, anti-inflammatory in focus. As one might expect, therefore, most are vegetarian and many are vegan, but we do find many recipes with chicken and fish as well; there’s also some use of eggs and fermented dairy in some of the recipes too.
The book certainly does deliver on its promise of flavorful healthy food; that’s what happens when one includes a lot of herbs and spices in one’s cooking, as well as the fact that many other polyphenol-rich foods are, by nature, tasty in and of themselves.
Bottom line: if you’d like to expand your anti-inflammatory culinary repertoire, this book is a top-tier choice for that.
Click here to check out Healthy Cook’s Anti-Inflammatory Diet & Cookbook, and spice up your kitchen!
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I’m iron deficient. Which supplements will work best for me and how should I take them?
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Iron deficiency is common and can be debilitating. It mainly affects women. One in three premenopausal women are low in iron compared to just 5% of Australian men. Iron deficiency particularly affects teenage girls, women who do a lot of exercise and those who are pregnant.
The body needs iron to make new red blood cells, and to support energy production, the immune system and cognitive function. If you’re low, you may experience a range of symptoms including fatigue, weakness, shortness of breath, headache, irregular heartbeat and reduced concentration.
If a blood test shows you’re iron deficient, your doctor may recommend you start taking an oral iron supplement. But should you take a tablet or a liquid? With food or not? And when is the best time of day?
Here are some tips to help you work out how, when and what iron supplement to take.
LittlePigPower/Shutterstock How do I pick the right iron supplement?
The iron in your body is called “elemental iron”. Choosing the right oral supplement and dose will depend on how much elemental iron it has – your doctor will advise exactly how much you need.
The sweet spot is between 60-120 mg of elemental iron. Any less and the supplement won’t be effective in topping up your iron levels. Any higher and you risk gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhoea, cramping and stomach pain.
Low iron can especially affect people during pregnancy and women who do a lot of sport. Kamil Macniak/Shutterstock In Australia, iron salts are the most common oral supplements because they are cheap, effective and come in different delivery methods (tablets, capsules, liquid formulas). The iron salts you are most likely to find in your local chemist are ferrous sulfate (~20% elemental iron), ferrous gluconate (~12%) and ferrous fumarate (~33%).
These formulations all work similarly, so your choice should come down to dose and cost.
Many multivitamins may look like an iron supplement, but it’s important to note they usually have too little iron – usually less than 20 mg – to correct an iron deficiency.
Should I take tablets or liquid formulas?
Iron contained within a tablet is just as well absorbed as iron found in a liquid supplement. Choosing the right one usually comes down to personal preference.
The main difference is that liquid formulas tend to contain less iron than tablets. That means you might need to take more of the product to get the right dose, so using a liquid supplement could work out to be more expensive in the long term.
What should I eat with my iron supplement?
Research has shown you will absorb more of the iron in your supplement if you take it on an empty stomach. But this can cause more gastrointestinal issues, so might not be practical for everyone.
If you do take your supplement with meals, it’s important to think about what types of food will boost – rather than limit – iron absorption. For example, taking the supplement alongside vitamin C improves your body’s ability to absorb it.
Some supplements already contain vitamin C. Otherwise you could take the supplement along with a glass of orange juice, or other vitamin C-rich foods.
Taking your supplement alongside foods rich in vitamin C, like orange juice or kiwifruit, can help your body absorb the iron. Anete Lusina/Pexels On the other hand, tea, coffee and calcium all decrease the body’s ability to absorb iron. So you should try to limit these close to the time you take your supplement.
Should I take my supplement in the morning or evening?
The best time of day to take your supplement is in the morning. The body can absorb significantly more iron earlier in the day, when concentrations of hepcidin (the main hormone that regulates iron) are at their lowest.
Exercise also affects the hormone that regulates iron. That means taking your iron supplement after exercising can limit your ability to absorb it. Taking your supplement in the hours following exercise will mean significantly poorer absorption, especially if you take it between two and five hours after you stop.
Our research has shown if you exercise every day, the best time to take your supplement is in the morning before training, or immediately after (within 30 minutes).
My supplements are upsetting my stomach. What should I do?
If you experience gastrointestinal side effects such as diarrhoea or cramps when you take iron supplements, you may want to consider taking your supplement every second day, rather than daily.
Taking a supplement every day is still the fastest way to restore your iron levels. But a recent study has shown taking the same total dose can be just as effective when it’s taken on alternate days. For example, taking a supplement every day for three months works as well as every second day for six months. This results in fewer side effects.
Oral iron supplements can be a cheap and easy way to correct an iron deficiency. But ensuring you are taking the right product, under the right conditions, is crucial for their success.
It’s also important to check your iron levels prior to commencing iron supplementation and do so only under medical advice. In large amounts, iron can be toxic, so you don’t want to be consuming additional iron if your body doesn’t need it.
If you think you may be low on iron, talk to your GP to find out your best options.
Alannah McKay, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Sports Nutrition, Australian Catholic University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Make Your Vegetables Work Better Nutritionally
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Most people know that boiling vegetables to death is generally not best for them, but raw isn’t always best either, and if we want to not sabotage our food, then there’s more to bear in mind than “just steam them, then”.
So, what should we keep in mind?
Water solubility
Many nutrients are water-soluble, including vitamin C, vitamin B-complex (as in, the collection of B-vitamins), and flavonoids, as well as many other polyphenols.
This means that if you cook your vegetables (which includes beans, lentils, etc) in water, a lot of the nutrients will go into the water, and be lost if you then drain that.
There are, thus, options;
- Steaming, yes
- Use just enough water to slow-cook or pressure-cook things that are suitable for slow-cooking, or pressure-cooking such as those beans and lentils. That way, when it’s done, there’s no excess water to drain, and all the nutrients are still in situ.
- Use as much water as you like, but then keep the excess water to make a soup, sauce, or broth.
- Use a cooking method other than water, where appropriate. For example, roasting peppers is a much better idea than roasting dried pulses.
- Consume raw, where appropriate.
Fat solubility
Many nutrients are fat-soluble, including vitamins A, D, E, and K, as well as a lot of carotenoids (including heavy-hitters lycopene and β-carotene) and many other polyphenols.
We’re now going to offer almost the opposite advice to that we had about water solubility. This is because unless they are dried, vegetables already contain water, whereas many contain only trace amounts of fat. Consequently, the advice this time is to add fat.
There are options:
- Cook with a modest amount of your favorite healthy cooking oil (our general go-to is extra-virgin olive oil, but avocado oil is great especially for higher temperature cooking, and an argument can be made for coconut oil sometimes)
- Remember that this goes for roasting, too. Brush those vegetables with a touch of olive oil, and not only will they be delicious, they’ll be more nutritious, too.
- Drizzle some the the above, if you’re serving things raw and it’s appropriate. This goes also for things like salads, so dress them!
- Enjoy your vegetables alongside healthy fatty foods such as nuts and seeds (or fatty animal products, if you eat those; fatty fish is a fine option here, in moderation, as are eggs, or fermented dairy products).
For a deeper understanding: Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy?
Do not, however, deep-fry your foods unless it’s really necessary and then only for an occasional indulgence that you simply accept will be unhealthy. Not only is deep-frying terrible for the health in a host of ways (ranging from an excess of oil in the resultant food, to acrylamide, to creating Advanced Glycation End-products*), but also those fat-soluble nutrients? Guess where they’ll go. And unlike with the excess vegetable-cooking water that you can turn into soup or whatever, we obviously can’t recommend doing that with deep-fryer oil.
*see also: Are You Eating AGEs?
Temperature sensitivity
Many nutrients are sensitive to temperature, including vitamin C (breaks down when exposed to high temperatures) and carotenoids (are released when exposed to higher temperatures). Another special case is ergothioneine, “the longevity vitamin” that’s not a vitamin, found in mushrooms, which is also much more bioavailable when cooked.
So, if you’re eating something for vitamin C, then raw is best if that’s a reasonable option.
And if it’s not a reasonable option? Well, then you can either a) just cope with the fact it’s going to have less vitamin C in it, or b) cook it as gently and briefly as reasonably possible.
On the other hand, if you’re eating something for carotenoids (especially including lycopene and β-carotene), or ergothioneine, then cooked is best.
Additionally, if your food is high in oxalates (such as spinach), and you don’t want it to be (for example because you have kidney problems, which oxalates can exacerbate, or would like to get more calcium out of the spinach and into your body, which which oxalic acid would inhibit), then cooked is best, as it breaks down the oxalates.
Same goes for phytates, another “anti-nutrient” found in some whole grains (such as rice and wheat); cooking breaks it down, therefore cooked is best.
This latter is not, however, applicable in the case of brown rice protein powder, for those who enjoy that—because phytates aren’t found in the part of the rice that’s extracted to make that.
And as for brown rice itself? Does contain phytates… Which can be reduced by soaking and heating, preferably both, to the point that the nutritional value is better than it would have been had there not been phytic acid present in the first place; in other words: cooked is best.
You may be wondering: “who is eating rice raw?” and the answer is: people using rice flour.
See: Brown Rice Protein: Strengths & Weaknesses
Want to know more?
Here’s a great rundown from Dr. Rosalind Gibson, Dr. Leah Perlas, and Dr. Christine Hotz:
Improving the bioavailability of nutrients in plant foods at the household level
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
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