General Tso’s Chickpeas

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A fiber-rich, heart-healthy take on a classic:

You will need

  • 1 can chickpeas, drained
  • ¾ cup vegetable stock; ideally you made this yourself from vegetable cuttings that you kept in the freezer for this purpose, but failing that, you should be able to get low-sodium stock cubes at your local supermarket.
  • ¼ cup arrowroot starch (cornstarch will do at a pinch, but arrowroot is better and has no flavor of its own)
  • 3 tbsp coconut oil
  • 2 tbsp grated fresh ginger
  • ¼ bulb garlic, minced
  • 2 tbsp honey (or maple syrup if you prefer, and if you don’t like sweetness, reduce this to 1 tbsp or even omit entirely, though it won’t be quite so “General Tso” if you do, but it’s your meal!)
  • 2 tbsp tomato paste
  • 2 tsp hot sauce
  • 1 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
  • 3 green onions, sliced

Method

(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

1) Coat the chickpeas in the arrowroot starch by tossing them together in a bowl

2) Heat the coconut oil in a skillet on a medium-high heat, and when hot, add the chickpeas, stirring for 3 minutes

3) Add the remaining ingredients in the order we gave (except the vegetable stock, which goes in last), stirring for 5 more minutes, or until the sauce thickens

4) Serve with the carb of your choice; we recommend our Tasty Versatile Rice Recipe

Enjoy!

Want to learn more?

For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

Take care!

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  • Regular Nail Polish vs Gel Nail Polish – 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 regular nail polish to gel nail polish, we picked the regular.

    Why?

    This one’s less about what’s in the bottle, and more about what gets done to your hands:

    • Regular nail polish application involves carefully brushing it on.
    • Regular nail polish removal involves wiping with acetone.

    …whereas:

    • Gel nail polish application involves deliberately damaging (roughing up) the nail to allow the color coat to adhere, then when the top coat is applied, holding the nails (and thus, the attached fingers) under a UV light to set it. That UV lamp exposure is very bad for the skin.
    • Gel nail polish removal involves soaking in acetone, which is definitely worse than wiping with acetone. Failure to adequately soak it will result in further damage to the nail while trying to get the base coat off the nail that you already deliberately damaged when first applying it.

    All in all, regular nail polish isn’t amazing for nail health (healthiest is for nails to be free and naked), but for those of us who like a little bit of color there, regular is a lot better than gel.

    Gel nail polish damages the nail itself by necessity, and presents a cumulative skin cancer risk and accelerated aging of the skin, by way of the UV lamp use.

    For your interest, here are the specific products that we compared, but the above goes for any of this kind:

    Regular nail polish | Gel nail polish

    If you’d like to read more about nail health, you might enjoy reading:

    The Counterintuitive Dos and Don’ts of Nail Health

    Take care!

    Share This Post

  • Revive and Maintain Metabolism

    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.

    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

    ❝How to jump start a inactive metabolism and keep it going? THANKYOU❞

    The good news is, if you’re alive, your metabolism is active (it never stops!). So, it may just need perking up a little.

    As for keeping it going, well, that’s what we’re here for! We’re all in favor of healthy longevity.

    We’ll do a main feature soon on what we can do to influence our metabolism in either direction, but to give some quick notes here:

    • A lot of our metabolism is influenced by genes and is unalterable (without modifying our genes, anyway)
    • Metabolism isn’t just one thing—it’s many. And sometimes, parts of our metabolism can be much quicker or slower than others.
    • When people talk about wanting a “faster metabolism”, they’re usually referring to fat-burning, and that’s just a small part of the picture, but we understand that it’s a focal point for many.

    There really is enough material for a whole main feature on metabolic tweaks, though, so watch this space!

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  • The Paleo Diet

    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.

    What’s The Real Deal With The Paleo Diet?

    The Paleo diet is popular, and has some compelling arguments for it.

    Detractors, meanwhile, have derided Paleo’s inclusion of modern innovations, and have also claimed it’s bad for the heart.

    But where does the science stand?

    First: what is it?

    The Paleo diet looks to recreate the diet of the Paleolithic era—in terms of nutrients, anyway. So for example, you’re perfectly welcome to use modern cooking techniques and enjoy foods that aren’t from your immediate locale. Just, not foods that weren’t a thing yet. To give a general idea:

    Paleo includes:

    • Meat and animal fats
    • Eggs
    • Fruits and vegetables
    • Nuts and seeds
    • Herbs and spices

    Paleo excludes:

    • Processed foods
    • Dairy products
    • Refined sugar
    • Grains of any kind
    • Legumes, including any beans or peas

    Enjoyers of the Mediterranean Diet or the DASH heart-healthy diet, or those with a keen interest in nutritional science in general, may notice they went off a bit with those last couple of items at the end there, by excluding things that scientific consensus holds should be making up a substantial portion of our daily diet.

    But let’s break it down…

    First thing: is it accurate?

    Well, aside from the modern cooking techniques, the global market of goods, and the fact it does include food that didn’t exist yet (most fruits and vegetables in their modern form are the result of agricultural engineering a mere few thousand years ago, especially in the Americas)…

    …no, no it isn’t. Best current scientific consensus is that in the Paleolithic we ate mostly plants, with about 3% of our diet coming from animal-based foods. Much like most modern apes.

    Ok, so it’s not historically accurate. No biggie, we’re pragmatists. Is it healthy, though?

    Well, health involves a lot of factors, so that depends on what you have in mind. But for example, it can be good for weight loss, almost certainly because of cutting out refined sugar and, by virtue of cutting out all grains, that means having cut out refined flour products, too:

    Diet Review: Paleo Diet for Weight Loss

    Measured head-to-head with the Mediterranean diet for all-cause mortality and specific mortality, it performed better than the control (Standard American Diet, or “SAD”), probably for the same reasons we just mentioned. However, it was outperformed by the Mediterranean Diet:

    Paleolithic and Mediterranean Diet Pattern Scores Are Inversely Associated with All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality in Adults

    So in lay terms: the Paleo is definitely better than just eating lots of refined foods and sugar and stuff, but it’s still not as good as the Mediterranean Diet.

    What about some of the health risk claims? Are they true or false?

    A common knee-jerk criticism of the paleo-diet is that it’s heart-unhealthy. So much red meat, saturated fat, and no grains and legumes.

    The science agrees.

    For example, a recent study on long-term adherence to the Paleo diet concluded:

    ❝Results indicate long-term adherence is associated with different gut microbiota and increased serum trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), a gut-derived metabolite associated with cardiovascular disease. A variety of fiber components, including whole grain sources may be required to maintain gut and cardiovascular health.❞

    ~ Genoni et al, 2020

    Bottom line:

    The Paleo Diet is an interesting concept, and certainly can be good for short-term weight loss. In the long-term, however (and: especially for our heart health) we need less meat and more grains and legumes.

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  • Escape Self-Sabotage

    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.

    Stop Making The Same Mistakes

    It’s easy to think that a self-destructive cycle is easy to avoid if you have no special will to self-destruction. However, the cycle is sneaky.

    It’s sneaky because it can be passive, and/or omissions rather than actions, procrastinations rather than obvious acts of impulse, and so forth.

    So, they’re often things that specifically aren’t there to see.

    How to catch them

    How often do you think “I wish I had [done xyz]” or “I wish I had [done yxz] sooner”?

    Now, how often have you thought that about the same thing more than once? For example, “I should have kept up my exercise”.

    For things like this, habit-trackers are a great way to, well, keep track of habits. If for example you planned to do a 10-minute exercise session daily but you’ve been postponing it since you got distracted on January the 2nd, then it’ll highlight that. See also:

    How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits

    Speaking of habits, this goes for other forms of procrastination, too. For example, if you are always slow to get medical check-ups, or renew your prescriptions, or get ready for some regularly-occurring thing in your schedule, then set a reminder in your preferred way (phone app, calendar on the wall, whatever) and when the appointed time arrives (to book the check-up, renew the prescription, do your taxes, whatever), do it on the day you set your reminder for, as a personal rule for you that you keep to, barring extreme calamity.

    By “extreme calamity” we mean less “running late today” and more “house burned down”.

    Digital traps

    Bad habits can be insidious in other ways too, like getting sucked into social media scrolling (it is literally designed to do that to you; you are not immune modern programming hijacking evolutionary dopamine responses).

    Setting a screentime limit (you can specify “just these apps” if you like) will help with this. On most devices, this feature includes a sticky notification in the notification bar, that’ll remind you “27 out of 30 minutes remaining” or whatever you set it for. That’ll remind you to do what you went there to do, instead of getting caught in the endless scroll (and if you went there to just browse, to do so briefly).

    Here’s how to set that:

    Instructions for iOS devices | Instructions for Android devices

    Oh, and on the topic of social media? If you find yourself getting caught up in unproductive arguments on the Internet, try the three-response rule:

    1. You reply; they reply (no progress made)
    2. You reply; they reply (still no progress made)
    3. You reply; they reply (still yet no progress made)

    You reply just one more time: “I have a personal rule that if I’m arguing on the Internet and no progress has been made after three replies, I don’t reply further—I find this is helpful to avoid a lot of time lost to pointless arguing that isn’t going anywhere. Best wishes.”

    (and then stick to it, no matter how they try to provoke you; best is to just not look until at least the next day)

    When “swept up in love” gets to one of those little whirlpools…

    The same works in personal relationships, by the way. If for example you are arguing with a loved one and not making progress, it can be good if you both have a pre-arranged agreement that either of you can, up to once on any given day, invoke a “time-out” (e.g. 30 minutes, but you agree the time between you when you first make this standing policy) during which you will both keep out of the other’s way, and come back with a more productive head on (remembering that things go best when it’s you both vs the problem, rather than vs each other).

    See also:

    Seriously Useful Communication Skills: Conflict Resolution

    What if the self-sabotaging cycle is active and apparent?

    Well, that is less sneaky, but certainly no less serious, and sometimes moreso. An obvious example is drinking too much; this is often cyclical in nature. We wrote about this one previously:

    How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol

    That article’s alcohol-specific, but the same advices go for other harmful activities, including other substance abuse (which in turn includes binge-eating), as well psychological addictions (such as gambling, for example).

    Finally…

    If your destructive cycle is more of a rut you’ve got stuck in, a common advice is to change something, anything, to get out of the rut.

    That can be very bad advice! Because sometimes the change you go for is absolutely not the change that was needed, and is rather just cracking under pressure and doing something impulsive.

    Here’s one way to actively get out of a slump:

    Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety

    Note: you do not have to be depressed or anxious to do this. But the point is, it’s a tool you can use even if you are depressed and/or anxious, so it’s a good thing to try for getting out of most kinds of slumps.

    And really finally, here’s a resource for, well, the title speaks for itself:

    When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)

    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:

  • Walking… Better.

    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.

    Walking… Better.

    We recently reviewed52 Ways To Walk” by Annabel Streets. You asked us to share some more of our learnings from that book, and… Obviously we can’t do all 52, nor go into such detail, but here are three top tips inspired by that book…

    Walk in the cold!

    While cold weather is often seen as a reason to not walk, in fact, it has numerous health benefits, the most exciting of which might be:

    Walking in the cold causes us to convert white and yellow fat into the healthier brown fat. If you didn’t know about this, neither did scientists until about 15 years ago.

    In fact, scientists didn’t even know that adult humans could even have brown adipose tissue! It was really quite groundbreaking.

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    Work while you walk!

    Obviously this is only appropriate for some kinds of work… but if in your life you have any kind of work that is chiefly thinking, a bunch of it can be done while walking.

    Open your phone’s note-taking app, lock the screen and pocket your phone, and think on some problem that you need to solve. Whenever you have an “aha” moment, take out your phone and make a quick note on the go.

    For that matter, if you have the money and space (or are fortunate to have an employer disposed towards facilitating such), you could even set up a treadmill desk… At worst, it wouldn’t harm your work (and it’ll be a LOT better than sitting for so long).

    Walk within an hour of waking!

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    But it does mean: in the evening, make preparations to head out first thing in the morning. Set out your clothes and appropriate footwear, find your flask to fill with the beverage of your choice in the morning and set that with them.

    Then, when morning arrives… do your morning necessaries (e.g. some manner of morning ablutions and perhaps a light breakfast), make that drink for your flask, and hit the road.

    Why? We’ll tell you a secret:

    You ever wondered why some people seem to be more able to keep a daylight-regulated circadian rhythm than others? It’s not just about smartphones and coffees…

    This study found that getting sunlight (not electric light, not artificial sunlight, but actual sunlight, from the sun, even if filtered through partial cloud) between 08:30—09:00 resulted in higher levels of a protein called PER2. PER2 is critical for setting circadian rhythms, improving metabolism, and fortifying blood vessels.

    Besides, on a more simplistic level, it’s also a wonderful and energizing start to a healthy and productive day!

    Read: Beneficial effects of daytime light exposure on daily rhythms, metabolic state and affect

    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:

  • Supergreen Superfood Salad Slaw

    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.

    When it comes to “eating the rainbow”, in principle green should be the easiest color to get in, unless we live in a serious food desert (or serious food poverty). In practice, however, a lot of meals could do with a dash more green. This “supergreen superfood salad slaw” is remarkably versatile, and can be enjoyed as a very worthy accompaniment to almost any main.

    You will need

    For the bits:

    • ½ small green cabbage, finely diced
    • 7 oz tenderstem broccoli, finely chopped
    • 2 stalks celery, finely chopped (if allergic, simply omit)
    • ½ cucumber, diced into small cubes
    • 2 oz kale, finely shredded
    • 4 green (spring) onions, thinly sliced

    For the dressing:

    • 1 cup cashews (if allergic, substitute 1 cup roasted chickpeas)
    • ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
    • 2 oz baby spinach
    • 1 oz basil leaves
    • 1 oz chives
    • ¼ bulb garlic
    • 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
    • 1 tbsp chia seeds
    • Juice of two limes

    Method

    (we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)

    1) Combine the ingredients from the “bits” category in a bowl large enough to accommodate them comfortably

    2) Blend the ingredients from the “dressing” category in a blender until very smooth (the crux here is you do not want any stringy bits of spinach remaining)

    3) Pour the dressing onto the bits, and mix well to combine. Refrigerate, ideally covered, until ready to serve.

    Enjoy!

    Want to learn more?

    For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:

    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: