Fruit & Veg In The Fridge: Pros & Cons
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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
❝What effect does refrigeration have on the nutritional value of fruit and vegetables??❞
It’s difficult to give a single definitive answer, because naturally there are a lot of different fruits and vegetables, and a lot of different climates. The answer may be different for tomatoes in Alaska vs bananas in Arizona!
However, we can still generalize at least somewhat
Refrigeration will generally slow down any degradation process, and in the case of fruit and vegetables, that can mean slowing down their “ripening” too, as applicable.
However…
Refrigeration will also impede helpful bioactivity too, and that includes quite a list of things.
Here’s a good study that’s quite illustrative; we’d summarize the conclusions but the rather long title already does that nicely:
So, this really is a case of “there are pros and cons, but probably more cons on balance”.
In practical terms, a good take-away from this can be twofold:
- don’t keep fruit and veg in the fridge unless the ambient temperature really requires it
- if the ambient temperature does require it, it’s best to get the produce in fresh each day if that’s feasible, to minimize time spent in the fridge
An extra thing not included there: often when it comes to the spoilage of fruit and veg, the problem is that it respires and oxidizes; reducing the temperature does lower the rate of those, but often a far better way is to remove the oxygen. So for example, if you get carried away and chop too many carrot batons for your hummus night, then putting them in a sealed container can go a long way to keeping them fresh.
See also: How Does the Nutritional Value of Fruits and Vegetables Change Over Time?
Enjoy!
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PS, We Love You
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PS, we love you. With good reason!
There are nearly 20,000 studies on PS listed on PubMed alone, and its established benefits include:
- significantly improving memory
- potential reversal (!) of neurodegeneration
- reduction of stress activation
- improvement in exercise capacity
- it even helps avoid rejection of medical implants
We’ll explore some of these studies and give an overview of how PS does what it does. Just like the (otherwise unrelated) l-theanine we talked about a couple of weeks ago, it does do a lot of things.
PS = Cow Brain?!
Let’s first address a concern. You may have heard something along the lines of “hey, isn’t PS made from cow brain, and isn’t that Very Bad™ for humans, mad cow disease and all?”. The short answer is:
Firstly: ingesting cow brain tissue is indeed generally considered Very Bad™ for humans, on account of the potential for transmission of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) resulting in its human equivalent, Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease (CJD), whose unpleasantries are beyond the scope of this newsletter.
Secondly (and more pleasantly): whilst PS can be derived from bovine brain tissue, most PS supplements these days derive from soy—or sometimes sunflower lecithin. Check labels if unsure.
Using PS to Improve Other Treatments
In the human body, the question of tolerance brings us a paradox (not the tolerance paradox, important as that may also be): we must build and maintain a strong immune system capable of quickly adapting to new things, and then when we need medicines (or even supplements), we need our body to not build tolerance of them, for them to continue having an effect.
So, we’re going to look at a very hot-off-the-press study (Feb 2023), that found PS to “mediate oral tolerance”, which means that it helps things (medications, supplements etc.) that we take orally and want to keep working, keep working.
In the scientists’ own words (we love scientists’ own words because they haven’t been distorted by the popular press)…
❝This immunotherapy has been shown to prevent/reduce immune response against life-saving protein-based therapies, food allergens, autoantigens, and the antigenic viral capsid peptide commonly used in gene therapy, suggesting a broad spectrum of potential clinical applications. Given the good safety profile of PS together with the ease of administration, oral tolerance achieved with PS-based nanoparticles has a very promising therapeutic impact.❞
Nguyen et al, Feb 2023
In other words, to parse those two very long sentences into two shorter bullet points:
- It allows a lot of important treatments to continue working—treatments that the body would otherwise counteract
- It is very safe—and won’t harm the normal function of your immune system at large
This is also very consistent with one of the benefits we mentioned up top—PS helps avoid rejection of implants, something that can be a huge difference to health-related quality of life (HRQoL), never mind sometimes life itself!
What is PS Anyways, and How Does It Work?
Phosphatidylserine is a phospholipid, a kind of lipid, found in cell membranes. More importantly:
It’s a signalling agent, mainly for apoptosis, which in lay terms means: it tells cells when it’s time to die.
Cellular death sounds like a bad thing, but prompt and efficient cellular apoptosis (death) and resultant prompt and efficient autophagy (recycling) reduce the risk of your body making mistakes when creating new cells from old cells.
Think about photocopying:
- Situation A: You have a document, and you want to copy it. If you copy it before it gets messed up, your copy will look almost, if not exactly, like the original. It’ll be super easy to read.
- Situation B: You have a document, and you want to copy it, but you delay doing so for so long that the original is all scuffed and creased and has a coffee stain on it. These unwanted changes will get copied onto the new document, and any copy made of that copy will keep the problems too. It gets worse and worse each time.
So, using this over-simplifier analogy, the speed of ‘copying’ is a major factor in cellular aging. The sooner cells are copied, before something gets damaged, the better the copy will be.
So you really, really want to have enough PS (our bodies make it too, by the way) to signal promptly to a cell when its time is up.
You do not want cells soldiering on until they’re the biological equivalent of that crumpled up, coffee-stained sheet of paper.
Little wonder, then, that PS’ most commonly-sought benefit when it comes to supplementation is to help avoid age-related neurodegeneration (most notably, memory loss)!
Keeping the cells young means keeping the brain young!
PS’s role as a signalling agent doesn’t end there—it also has a lot to say to a wide variety of the body’s immunological cells, helping them know what needs to happen to what. Some things should be immediately eaten and recycled; other things need more extreme measures applied to them first, and yet other things need to be ignored, and so forth.
You can read more about that in Elsevier’s publication if you’re curious 🙂
Wow, what a ride today’s newsletter has been! We started at paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin, and got down to the nitty gritty with a bunch of hopefully digestible science!
We love feedback, so please let us know if we’re striking the balance right, and/or if you’d like to see more or less of something—there’s a feedback widget at the bottom of this email!
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Plant-Based Healthy Cream Cheese
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Cream cheese is a delicious food, and having a plant-based diet isn’t a reason to miss out. Here we have a protein-forward nuts-based cream cheese that we’re sure you’ll love (unless you’re allergic to nuts, in which case, maybe skip this one).
You will need
- 1½ cups raw cashews, soaked in warm water and then drained
- ½ cup water
- ½ cup coconut cream
- Juice of ½ lemon
- 3 tbsp nutritional yeast
- ½ tsp onion powder
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp black pepper
- ½ tsp cayenne pepper
- ¼ tsp MSG, or ½ tsp low-sodium salt
- Optional: ⅓ cup fresh basil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Blend all of the ingredients until creamy.
2) Optional: leave on the countertop, covered, for 1–2 hours, if you want a more fermented (effectively: cheesy) taste.
3) Refrigerate, ideally overnight, before serving. Serving on bagels is a classic, but you can also enjoy with the Healthy Homemade Flatbreads we made yesterday
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Pistachios vs Cashews – Which is Healthier? ← Pistachios actually won here, but cashews are also great and are better (from a culinary perspective) for making cream cheese
- Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
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Do We Need Supplements, And Do They Work?
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Does our diet need a little help?
We asked you for your take on supplements, and got the above-illustrated, below-described set of results.
- The largest minority of respondents (a little over a third) voted for “I just take something very specific”
- The next most respondents voted for “I take so many supplements; every little helps!”
- Almost as many voted for “I just take a vitamin or two / a multivitamin”
- Fewest, about 8%, voted for “I get everything I need from my diet”
But what does the science say?
Food is less nutritious now than it used to be: True or False?
True or False depending on how you measure it.
An apple today and an apple from a hundred years ago are likely to contain the same amounts of micronutrients per apple, but a lower percentage of micronutrients per 100g of apple.
The reason for this is that apples (and many other food products; apples are just an arbitrary example) have been selectively bred (and in some cases, modified) for size, and because the soil mineral density has remained the same, the micronutrients per apple have not increased commensurate to the increase in carbohydrate weight and/or water weight. Thus, the resultant percentage will be lower, despite the quantity remaining the same.
We’re going to share some science on this, and/but would like to forewarn readers that the language of this paper is a bit biased, as it looks to “debunk” claims of nutritional values dropping while skimming over “yes, they really have dropped percentage-wise” in favor of “but look, the discrete mass values are still the same, so that’s just a mathematical illusion”.
The reality is, it’s no more a mathematical illusion than is the converse standpoint of saying the nutritional value is the same, despite the per-100g values dropping. After all, sometimes we eat an apple as-is; sometimes we buy a bag of frozen chopped fruit. That 500g bag of chopped fruit is going to contain less copper (for example) than one from decades past.
Here’s the paper, and you’ll see what we mean:
Supplements aren’t absorbed properly and thus are a waste of money: True or False?
True or False depending on the supplement (and your body, and the rest of your diet)
Many people are suffering from dietary deficiencies of vitamins and minerals, that could be easily correctable by supplementation:
However, as this study by Dr. Fang Fang Zhang shows, a lot of vitamin and mineral supplementation does not appear to have much of an effect on actual health outcomes, vis-à-vis specific diseases. She looks at:
- Cardiovascular disease
- Cancer
- Type 2 diabetes
- Osteoporosis
Her key take-aways from this study were:
- Randomised trial evidence does not support use of vitamin, mineral, and fish oil supplements to reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases
- People using supplements tend to be older, female, and have higher education, income, and healthier lifestyles than people who do not use them
- Use of supplements appreciably reduces the prevalence of inadequate intake for most nutrients but also increases the prevalence of excess intake for some nutrients
- Further research is needed to assess the long term effects of supplements on the health of the general population and in individuals with specific nutritional needs, including those from low and middle income countries
Read her damning report: Health effects of vitamin and mineral supplements
On the other hand…
This is almost entirely about blanket vitamin-and-mineral supplementation. With regard to fish oil supplementation, many commercial fish oil supplements break down in the stomach rather than the intestines, and don’t get absorbed well. Additionally, many people take them in forms that aren’t pleasant, and thus result in low adherence (i.e., they nominally take them, but in fact they just sit on the kitchen counter for a year).
One thing we can conclude from this is that it’s good to check the science for any given supplement before taking it, and know what it will and won’t help for. Our “Monday Research Review” editions of 10almonds do this a lot, although we tend to focus on herbal supplements rather than vitamins and minerals.
We can get everything we need from our diet: True or False?
Contingently True (but here be caveats)
In principle, if we eat the recommended guideline amounts of various macro- and micro-nutrients, we will indeed get all that we are generally considered to need. Obviously.
However, this may come with:
- Make sure to get enough protein… Without too much meat, and also without too much carbohydrate, such as from most plant sources of protein
- Make sure to get enough carbohydrates… But only the right kinds, and not too much, nor at the wrong time, and without eating things in the wrong order
- Make sure to get enough healthy fats… Without too much of the unhealthy fats that often exist in the same foods
- Make sure to get the right amount of vitamins and minerals… We hope you have your calculators out to get the delicate balance of calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, and vitamin D right.
That last one’s a real pain, by the way. Too much or too little of one or another and the whole set start causing problems, and several of them interact with several others, and/or compete for resources, and/or are needed for the others to do their job.
And, that’s hard enough to balance when you’re taking supplements with the mg/µg amount written on them, never mind when you’re juggling cabbages and sardines.
On the topic of those sardines, don’t forget to carefully balance your omega-3, -6, and -9, and even within omega-3, balancing ALA, EPA, and DHA, and we hope you’re juggling those HDL and LDL levels too.
So, when it comes to getting everything we need from our diet, for most of us (who aren’t living in food deserts and/or experiencing food poverty, or having a medical condition that restricts our diet), the biggest task is not “getting enough”, it’s “getting enough of the right things without simultaneously overdoing it on the others”.
With supplements, it’s a lot easier to control what we’re putting in our bodies.
And of course, unless our diet includes things that usually can’t be bought in supermarkets, we’re not going to get the benefits of taking, as a supplement, such things as:
Etc.
So, there definitely are supplements with strong science-backed benefits, that probably can’t be found on your plate!
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Get The Right Help For Your Pain
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.
How Much Does It Hurt?
Sometimes, a medical professional will ask us to “rate your pain on a scale of 1–10”.
It can be tempting to avoid rating one’s pain too highly, because if we say “10” then where can we go from there? There is always a way to make pain worse, after all.
But that kind of thinking, however logical, is folly—from a practical point of view. Instead of risking having to give an 11 later, you have now understated your level-10 pain as a “7” and the doctor thinks “ok, I’ll give Tylenol instead of morphine”.
A more useful scale
First, know this:
Zero is not “this is the lowest level of pain I get to”.
Zero is “no pain”.
As for the rest…
- My pain is hardly noticeable.
- I have a low level of pain; I am aware of my pain only when I pay attention to it.
- My pain bothers me, but I can ignore it most of the time.
- I am constantly aware of my pain, but can continue most activities.
- I think about my pain most of the time; I cannot do some of the activities I need to do each day because of the pain.
- I think about my pain all of the time; I give up many activities because of my pain.
- I am in pain all of the time; It keeps me from doing most activities.
- My pain is so severe that it is difficult to think of anything else. Talking and listening are difficult.
- My pain is all that I can think about; I can barely move or talk because of my pain.
- I am in bed and I can’t move due to my pain; I need someone to take me to the emergency room because of my pain.
10almonds tip: are you reading this on your phone? Screenshot the above, and keep it for when you need it!
One extra thing to bear in mind…
Medical staff will be more likely to believe a pain is being overstated, on a like-for-like basis, if you are a woman, or not white, or both.
There are some efforts to compensate for this:
A new government inquiry will examine women’s pain and treatment. How and why is it different?
Some other resources of ours:
- The 7 Approaches To Pain Management ← a pain specialist discusses the options available
- Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically!) ← when there’s no quick fix, but these things can buy you some hours’ relief at least / stop the pain from getting worse in the moment
- Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief ← for when you’re maxxed out on painkillers, and need something more/different, these are the things the science says will work
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Brain Food – by Dr. Lisa Mosconi
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.
We know that we should eat for brain health, but often that knowledge doesn’t go a lot further than “we should eat some nuts… but also not the wrong nuts, which would be bad”.
However, as Dr. Lisa Mosconi lays out for us, there’s a lot more than that!
This book is as much a treatise of brain health in the context of nutrition, as it is a “eat this and avoid that” guide.
Which is good, because our brains don’t exist in isolation, and nor do the nutrients that we consume. Put it this way:
We have a tendecy to think of our diets as a set of slider-bars, “ok, that’s 104% of my daily intake of fiber, I need another 10g protein and that’ll be at 100%, I’ve had 80% of the vitamin C that I need, and…”
Whereas in reality: much of what we eat interacts positively or negatively with other things, and thus needs to be kept in balance. And not only that, but other peri-nutritional factors play a big part too! From obvious things like hydration, to less obvious things like maintaining good gut microbiota, our brains rely on us to do a lot of things for them.
This book is very easy-reading, though a weakness is it doesn’t tend to summarise key ideas much, give cheat-sheets, that sort of thing. We recommend reading this book with a notebook to the side, to jot down things you want to attend to in your own dietary habits.
Bottom line: this is an excellent overview of brain health in the context of nutrition, and is more comprehensive than most “eat this for good brain health and avoid that” books.
Click here to check out “Brain Food” on Amazon and treat your brain like it deserves!
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Marrakesh Sorghum Salad
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As the name suggests, it’s a Maghreb dish today! Using sorghum, a naturally gluten-free whole grain with a stack of vitamins and minerals. This salad also comes with fruit and nuts (apricots and almonds; a heavenly combination for both taste and nutrients) as well as greens, herbs, and spices.
Note: to keep things simple today, we’ve listed ras el-hanout as one ingredient. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a spice blend; you can probably buy a version locally, but you might as well know how to make it yourself—so here’s our recipe for that!
You will need
- 1½ cups sorghum, soaked overnight in water (if you can’t find it locally, you can order it online (here’s an example product on Amazon), or substitute quinoa) and if you have time, soaked overnight and then kept in a jar with just a little moisture for a few days until they begin to sprout—this will be best of all. But if you don’t have time, don’t worry about it; overnight soaking is sufficient already.
- 1 carrot, grated
- ½ cup chopped parsley
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- ½ tbsp chopped chives
- 2 tbsp ras el-hanout
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 2 tbsp almond butter
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp white miso paste
- ½ cup sliced almonds
- 4 fresh apricots, pitted and cut into wedges
- 1 cup mint leaves, chopped
- To serve: your choice of salad greens; we suggest chopped romaine lettuce and rocket
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Cook the sorghum, which means boiling it for about 45 minutes, or 30 in a pressure cooker. If unsure, err on the side of cooking longer—even up to an hour will be totally fine. You have a lot of wiggle room, and will soon get used to how long it takes with your device/setup. Drain the cooked sorghum, and set it aside to cool. If you’re entertaining, we recommend doing this part the day before and keeping it in the fridge.
2) When it’s cool, add the carrot, the parsley, the chives, the vinegar, and 1 tbsp of the ras el-hanout. Toss gently but thoroughly to combine.
3) Make the dressing, which means putting ¼ cup water into a blender with the other 1 tbsp of the ras el-hanout, the garlic, the almond butter, the lemon juice, and the miso paste. Blend until smooth.
4) Assemble the salad, which means adding the dressing to sorghum-and-ingredients bowl, along with the almonds, apricots, and mint leaves. Toss gently, but sufficiently that everything is coated.
5) Serve on a bed of salad greens.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet ← including an anti-inflammatory version, which is functionally what we’re doing today. As an aside when people hear “Mediterranean” they often think “Italy and Greece”. Which, sure, but N. Africa (and thus Maghreb cuisine) is also very much Mediterranean, and it shows!
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
- Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!
- Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
