Hazelnuts vs Pecans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing hazelnuts to pecans, we picked the hazelnuts.
Why?
In terms of macros, hazelnuts have more protein, carbs, and fiber, though the difference is not big in the latter two cases, and the glycemic indices are resultantly about the same. Meanwhile, pecans have a little more fat, but the fat is healthy in both cases. Everything taken into account, we’re calling it a tie on macros.
When it comes to vitamins, hazelnuts have more of vitamins B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, C, E, K, and choline, while pecans have more of vitamins A, B1, and B2. An easy win for hazelnuts here.
In the category of minerals, hazelnuts have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and potassium, while pecans have more selenium and zinc. Another clear win for hazelnuts.
In short, enjoy either or both (unless you’re allergic, in which case, don’t), but hazelnuts are ultimately the more nutritionally dense of the two.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts
Take care!
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Pomegranate vs Cranberries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing pomegranate to cranberries, we picked the pomegranate.
Why?
Starting with the macros: pomegranate has nearly 4x the protein (actually quite a lot for a fruit, but this is not too surprising—it’s because we are eating the seeds!), and slightly more carbs and fiber. Their glycemic indices are comparable, both being low GI foods. While both of these fruits have excellent macro profiles, we say the pomegranate is slightly better, because of the protein, and when it comes to the carbs and fiber, since they balance each other out, we’ll go with the option that’s more nutritionally dense. We like foods that add more nutrients!
In the category of vitamins, pomegranate is higher in vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, K, and choline, while cranberry is higher in vitamins A, C, and E. Both are very respectable profiles, but pomegranate wins on strength of numbers (and also some higher margins of difference).
When it comes to minerals, it is not close; pomegranate is higher in calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while cranberry is higher in manganese. An easy win for pomegranate here.
Both of these fruits have additional “special” properties, though it’s worth noting that:
- pomegranate’s bonus properties, which are too many to list here, but we link to an article below, are mostly in its peel (so dry it, and grind it into a powder supplement, that can be worked into foods, or used like an instant fruit tea, just without the sugar)
- cranberries’ bonus properties (including: famously very good at reducing UTI risk) come with some warnings, including that they may increase the risk of kidney stones if you are prone to such, and also that cranberries have anti-clotting effects, which are great for heart health but can be a risk of you’re on blood thinners or have a bleeding disorder.
You can read about both of these fruits’ special properties in more detail below:
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
- Health Benefits Of Cranberries (But: You’d Better Watch Out)
- Pomegranate’s Health Gifts Are Mostly In Its Peel
Take care!
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Early Dementia Screening From Your Blood & More
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.
Dementia is, statistically speaking, the most feared disease in the US. Notwithstanding…
- heart disease killing more
- COVID being more of a lottery
- cancer being the “yes you can modify risk factors but it can come for anyone” life-changing (and often life-ending) disease,
…it’s still dementia that Americans report fearing the most.
And yet… Early dementia screening is seriously underused
It may be a case of a head-in-sand approach to avoid unwanted news, or it could be a case of not knowing what’s available.
So, with that in mind…
How to watch out: first line warning signs
You walk into a room of your house, and suddenly stop: “what did I come in here for?”, you wonder.
A moment later, you’re worrying whether this is a sign of age-related cognitive decline.
The good news: it usually isn’t. In fact, you did that when you were younger, too, you just didn’t pay enough attention at the time to remember it now.
Dementia-related memory loss is less “where did I put my car keys?”, and more “what is this thing for?” (it’s your car keys). Or at a less advanced stage: “whose are these car keys?” (they are yours).
You can read about some of the nuances here:
Is It Dementia? Spot The Signs (Because None Of Us Are Immune) ← If you’d like an objective test of memory and other cognitive impairments, this article also has a link to the industry’s gold standard test (it’s free)
(The Self-Administered Gerocognitive Exam (SAGE) is designed to detect early signs of cognitive, memory or thinking impairments)
Tests you can’t do at home
We wrote a little while back about how one kind of blood testing for Alzheimer’s disease works:
The Brain Alarm Signs That Warn Of Dementia
Why “Brain Alarm Signs” if it’s a blood test? Because the blood gets (in very lay terms) bits of broken brain in it. Or more specifically, they tested the blood for density of cerebrovascular endothelial extracellular vesicles (CEEVs), which are bits of the cells from the lining of blood vessels in the brain. These cerebrovascular endothelial extracellular vesicles should not, ideally, be falling off and riding around your bloodstream, and the greater the density of them, the greater likelihood of mild cognitive impairment now, and by extension, dementia later.
It’s not the only blood test available though, see:
Highly accurate blood test for Alzheimer’s disease is similar or superior to clinical cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) tests ← this one checks the ratio of phosporylated-tau217 to non-phosphorylated tau (which is a protein antibody), which equalled or outperformed FDA-approved CSF tests in classifying amyloid-β positron emission topography (PET, as in a PET scan) status, with a confidence interval as high as, or better than, industry standards.
If you don’t like having your blood taken, trust us that you’d find having your cerebrospinal fluid taken even less enjoyable, so this is a very welcome improvement!
In case you’re curious about how the CSF test works, here you go: NPTX2 in Cerebrospinal Fluid Predicts the Progression From Normal Cognition to Mild Cognitive Impairment ← NPTX2 is a protein biomarker of Alzheimer’s risk
…but again, we really think the blood test is preferable.
Tests beyond the physiological
There are, of course, psychological tests that can be done, including a linguistic analysis of your conversation, compared with a vast database of other people’s conversations, with and without various degrees of cognitive impairment
As Dr. Ioannis Paschalidis explains:
❝We wanted to predict what would happen in the next six years—and we found we can reasonably make that prediction with relatively good confidence and accuracy.
Rather than using acoustic features of speech, like enunciation or speed, the model is just pulling from the content of the interview—the words spoken, how they’re structured.
You can think of the score as the likelihood, the probability, that someone will remain stable or transition to dementia. It had significant predictive ability.
Digital is the new blood. You can collect it, analyze it for what is known today, store it, and reanalyze it for whatever new emerges tomorrow.❞
You can read the full paper here: Prediction of Alzheimer’s disease progression within 6 years using speech: A novel approach leveraging language models
See also: AI: The Doctor That Never Tires?
What if the news isn’t good?
While bad news is never welcome per se, it is preferable to not knowing, insofar as we can then take steps to manage the situation.
You may be wondering: what can be done that I wouldn’t already be doing to minimize my dementia risk in the first place?
And the answer is: yes, do continue those things of course, but there is more to do:
See: Beyond Guarding Against Dementia: When Age’s Brain-Changes Come Knocking
Take care!
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Continuous Glucose Monitors Without Diabetes: Pros & Cons
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The “Glucose Goddess”, biochemist Jessie Inchauspé, gives us the low-down:
Knowledge is power (but watch out)
A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) is a device that continually monitors glucose levels, without the need to stab one’s finger every few hours to test blood.
It was designed for diabetics, especially for those with Type 1 Diabetes, where around-the-clock monitoring is necessary for appropriate insulin dosing.
For non-diabetics, they can be a good way of learning what our body’s response to various foods and activities is like, the better to be able to tweak our habits to avoid undue glucose spikes (which are harmful for our pancreas, liver, heart, brain, kidneys, and more).
How it works: there’s a sensor that sits on the arm (or elsewhere, but the arm is a popular placement) with a little probe that goes under the skin. It’s applied using a device that inserts it automatically using a needle (you only need to press a button, you don’t need to guide the needle yourself); the needle then retracts, leaving the soft, flexible probe in place. Having been attached, that sensor can now stay in place for 2 weeks (usually; depends on brand, but for example FreeStyle Libre, the most popular brand, the sensors last 2 weeks), and yes, it’s fine to bathe/shower/etc with it. When you want an update from your CGM, you scan it with your phone (or you can buy a dedicated reader, but that is more expensive and unnecessary), and it uploads the data since your last scan.
Pros: it’s convenient and gives a lot of data, so even if you only use it for a short period of time (for example, a month) you can get a very good idea of what affects your blood sugar levels and how. Also, because of the constant nature of the monitoring, it helps avoid accidental sample bias of the kind that can occur with manual testing, by testing a little too soon or too late, and missing a spike/dip.
Cons: it can be expensive, depending on where you live and what options are available for you locally, so you might not want to do it long-term (since that would require buying two sensors per month). It’s also, for all its wealth of data, slightly less accurate than fingerprick testing—that’s because it takes an interstitial reading instead of directly from the blood. For this reason, if you test both ways, you may find a discrepancy of about 3mg/dL. Given that the healthy range is about 70–140mg/dL, a discrepancy of 3mg/dL is probably not going to be important, but it is a thing to mention can (and probably will) happen.
Patterns to bear in mind (with any kind of blood sugar monitoring):
- Dawn phenomenon: a natural glucose rise upon waking.
- Exercise-induced spikes (normal due to energy demands).
- Fat in meals slowing glucose absorption.
- Different foods can sometimes cause a double-wave after dinner (because glucose from different foods is absorbed differently, and/or different foods affect insulin response independent of glucose)
- Steep, rapid spikes that are more harmful than gradual, sustained increases.
- Vitamin C spikes: temporary chemical interference with the sensor, not actual glucose rises.
- Nighttime glucose dips (often false readings caused by sleeping position).
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
Take care!
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The Cancer Code − by Dr. William Fung
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We have previously reviewed, by the same author, “The Obesity Code” and “The Diabetes Code”, so, what does this one offer that’s new?
Mostly, it’s just a new focus, because the dietary approach is basically the same (because all three are fundamentally metabolism-related), with some small tweaks for cancer-specificity. If you’ve read one or more of the other books, you can probably comfortably get away with skipping this one, unless you or a loved one presently has cancer and you’re doing your best to squeeze out any extra 1% of anticancer potential.
Indeed, the former two books assumed that you are affected by obesity or diabetes, respectively, and this one assumes you are at least particularly concerned by cancer—he doesn’t assume you have it (although he does cover that too); he assumes however that you perhaps have a known risk factor or some other similar reason to be focusing on this.
To oversimplify a lot, the dietary approach recommended involves practising intermittent fasting, and also adjusting one’s diet to reduce fasting blood sugar levels and postprandial (after eating) blood sugar and insulin levels. Shocking nobody, he advocates for a lot of plants; he does however recommend a moderately low-carb diet (e.g. legumes are fine but maybe skip the fries).
The style is on the hard end of pop-science, while still quite readable provided one takes one’s time, and there are more than 30 pages of scientific references.
Bottom line: if you’d like to make your diet as anticancer as possible, this book will show you how.
Click there to check out The Cancer Code, and eat to beat cancer!
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Feeding You Lies – by Vani Hari
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When it comes to advertising, we know that companies will often be as misleading as they can get away with. But just how misleading is it?
Vani Hari, of “Food Babe” fame, is here to unravel it all.
The book covers many areas of food and drink advertising and marketing, and gives particular attention to:
- Sodas (with and without sugar), and how deleterious they are to the health—as well as not even helping people lose weight, but actively hindering
- Nutritionally fortified foods, and what we may or may not actually get from them by the time the processing is done
- Organic food, and what that may or may not mean
She also covers a lot of what happens outside of supermarkets, way back in universities and corporate boardrooms. In short, who is crossing whose palms with silver for a seal of approval… And what that means for us as consumers.
A strength of this book that sets it apart from many of its genre, by the way, is that while being deeply critical of certain institutions’ practices, it doesn‘t digress into tinfoil-hat pseudoscientific scaremongering, either. Here at 10almonds we love actual science, so that was good to see too.
Bottom line: is you’d like to know “can they say that and get away with it if it’s not true?” and make decisions based on the actual nutritional value of things, this is a great book for you.
Click here to check out “Feeding You Lies” on Amazon and make your shopping healthier!
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Natto vs Tempeh – 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 nattō to tempeh, we picked the nattō.
Why?
Both are great, but in the battle of fermented soybeans vs fermented soybeans with extra steps, it turns out that the simplest option is the best, even if tempeh was a close runner-up:
In terms of macros, nattō has more carbs and fiber for the same protein and fat; we’ll call this category a tie or a marginal win for nattō.
In the category of vitamins, nattō has more of vitamins B1, C, E, K, and choline, while tempeh has more of vitamins B2, B3, B6, and B9. A clearer, yet still modest, win for nattō.
Minerals, however, are what really set them apart: nattō has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while tempeh has more phosphorus. An overwhelming win for nattō this time.
In short: enjoy either or both, but nattō is the more nutritionally dense option!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
21% Stronger Bones in a Year at 62? Yes, It’s Possible (No Calcium Supplements Needed!) ← nattō is featured as part of the diet 😎
Enjoy!
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