High-Protein Paneer
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Paneer (a kind of Desi cheese used in many recipes from that region) is traditionally very high in fat, mostly saturated. Which is delicious, but not exactly the most healthy.
Today we’ll be making a plant-based paneer that does exactly the same jobs (has a similar texture and gentle flavor, takes on the flavors of dishes in the same way, etc) but with a fraction of the fat (of which only a trace amount is saturated, in this plant-based version), and even more protein. We’ll use this paneer in some recipes in the future, but it can be enjoyed by itself already, so let’s get going…
You will need
- ½ cup gram flour (unwhitened chickpea flour)
- Optional: 1 tsp low-sodium salt
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Whisk the flour (and salt, if using) with 2 cups water in a big bowl, whisking until the texture is smooth.
2) Transfer to a large saucepan on a low-to-medium heat; you want it hot, but not quite a simmer. Keep whisking until the mixture becomes thick like polenta. This should take 10–15 minutes, so consider having someone else to take shifts if the idea of whisking continually for that long isn’t reasonable to you.
3) Transfer to a non-stick baking tin that will allow you to pour it about ½” deep. If the tin’s too large, you can always use a spatula to push it up against two or three sides, so that it’s the right depth
3) Refrigerate for at least 10 minutes, but longer is better if you have the time.
4) When ready to serve/use, cut it into ½” cubes. These can be served/used now, or kept for about a week in the fridge.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
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Exercised – by Dr. Daniel Lieberman
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Surely the title is taking liberties? We must have evolved to exercise, right? Not exactly.
We evolved to conserve energy. Our strength-to-weight ratio is generally unimpressive, we cannot casually hang in trees, and we spend a third of our lives asleep.
Strengths that we do have, however, include a large brain and a versatile gut perfect for opportunism. Again, not the indicators of being evolved for exercise.
So, Dr. Lieberman tells us, if we’re not inclined to get up and go, that’s quite natural. So, why does it feel good when we do get up and go?
This book covers a lot of the “this not that” aspects of exercise. By this we mean: ways that we can work with or against our bodies, for both physical and psychological fulfilment.
There’s an emphasis on such things as:
- movement without excessive exertion
- persistence being more important than power
- strength-building but only so far as is helpful to us
…and many other factors that you won’t generally see on your gym’s motivational posters
Bottom line: this book is for all those who have felt “exercise is not for me” but would also like the benefits of exercise. It turns out that there’s a best-of-both-worlds sweet spot!
Click here to check out Exercised and get working with your body rather than against it!
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Afterwork – by Joel Malick and Alex Lippert
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Regular 10almonds readers may remember that one of the key unifying factors of Blue Zones supercentenarians is the importance of having purpose, sometimes called ikigai (borrowing the Japanese term, as a nod to the Okinawan Blue Zone).
The authors are financial advisors by profession, but don’t let that fool you; this book is not about retirement financial planning, but rather, simply addressing a problem that was often presented to them while helping people plan their retirements:
A lot of people find themselves adrift without purpose at several points in life. Often, these are: 1) early twenties, 2) some point in the midlife, and/or 3) retirement. This book addresses the third of those life points.
The authors advise cultivating 10 key disciplines; we’ll not keep them a mystery; they are:
- Purpose
- Calendar
- Movement
- Journaling
- Faith
- Connection
- Learning
- Awareness
- Generosity
- Awe
…which each get a chapter in this book.
A note on the chapter about faith: the authors are Christians, and that does influence their perspective here, but if Christianity’s not your thing, then don’t worry: the rest also stands on its own feet without that.
The general “flavor” of the book overall is in essence, embracing a new period of enjoying what is in effect the strongest, most potentially impactful version of you you’ve ever been, as well as avoiding the traps of retirement “sugar rush” and “retirement drift”, to define, well, a more purposeful life—with what’s most meaningful to you.
The style of the book is self-help in layout, with occasional diagrams, flowcharts, and the like; sometimes we see well-sourced stats, but there’s no hard science here. In short, a simple and practical book.
Bottom line: if your retirement isn’t looking like what you imagined it to be, and/or you think it could be more fulfilling, then this book can help you find, claim, and live your ikigai.
Click here to check out Afterwork, and indeed live a future that’s worthy of dreams!
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Eat More, Live Well – by Dr. Megan Rossi
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Often, eating healthily can feel restrictive. Don’t eat this, skip that, eliminate the other. Where is the joy?
Dr. Megan Rossi brings a scientific angle on positive dieting, that is to say, looking at what to add, rather than what to subtract. Now, the idea isn’t to have sugar-laden chocolate cake with berries on top and call it a net positive because of the berries, though. Rather, Dr. Rossi lays out how to include as many diverse vegetables and fruits as possible, with tasty recipes so that we’re too busy with those to crave junk food.
Speaking of recipes, there are 80, and they are easy to follow. She describes them as “plant-based”, and by this what she really means is “plant-centric” or such; she does include the use of some animal products.
This is important to note, because general convention is to use “plant-based” to mean functionally vegan, but being about the food rather than the ideology; a relevant distinction in both society and science. In the case of this book, it’s neither, but it is very healthy.
Bottom line: if you’d like to introduce more healthy diversity to your diet, rather than eating the same three fruits and five vegetables, but you’re not sure how, this book will get you where you need to be.
Click here to check out Eat More, Live Well, and diversify your diet!
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Are GMOs Good Or Bad For Us?
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Unzipping Our Food’s Genes
In yesterday’s newsletter, we asked you for your (health-related) views on GMOs.
But what does the science say?
First, a note on terms
Technically, we (humans) have been (g)enetically (m)odifying (o)rganisms for thousands of years.
If you eat a banana, you are enjoying the product of many generations of artificial selection, to change its genes to produce a fruit that is soft, sweet, high in nutrients, and digestible without cooking. The original banana plant would be barely recognizable to many people now (and also, barely edible). We’ve done similarly with countless other food products.
So in this article, we’re going to be talking exclusively about modern genetic modification of organisms, using exciting new (ish, new as in “in the last century”) techniques to modify the genes directly, in a copy-paste fashion.
For more details on the different kinds of genetic modification of organisms, and how they’re each done (including the modern kinds), check out this great article from Sciencing, who explain it in more words than we have room for here:
Sciencing | How Are GMOs Made?
(the above also offers tl;dr section summaries, which are great too)
GMOS are outright dangerous (cancer risks, unknown risks, etc): True or False?
False, so far as we know, in any direct* fashion. Obviously “unknown risks” is quite a factor, since those are, well, unknown. But GMOs on the market undergo a lot of safety testing, and have invariably passed happily.
*However! Glyphosate (the herbicide), on the other hand, has a terrible safety profile and is internationally banned in very many countries for this reason.
Why is this important? Because…
- in the US (and two out of ten Canadian provinces), glyphosate is not banned
- In the US (and we may hypothesize, those two Canadian provinces) one of the major uses of genetic modification of foodstuffs is to make it resistant to glyphosate
- Consequently, GMO foodstuffs grown in those places have generally been liberally doused in glyphosate
So… It’s not that the genetic modification itself makes the food dangerous and potentially carcinogenic (it doesn’t), but it is that the genetic modification makes it possible to use a lot more glyphosate without losing crops to glyphosate’s highly destructive properties.
Which results in the end-consumer eating glyphosate. Which is not good. For example:
❝Following the landmark case against Monsanto, which saw them being found liable for a former groundskeeper, 46 year old Dewayne Johnson’s cancer, 32 countries have to date banned the use of Glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer. The court awarded Johnson R4.2 billion in damages finding Monsanto “acted with malice or oppression”.❞
Source: see below!
You can read more about where glyphosate is and isn’t banned, here:
33 countries ban the use of Glyphosate—the key ingredient in Roundup
For the science of this (and especially the GMO → glyphosate use → cancer pipeline), see:
Use of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO)-Containing Food Products in Children
GMOs are extra healthy because of the modifications (they were designed for that, right?): True or False?
True or False depending on who made them and why! As we’ve seen above, not all companies seem to have the best interests of consumer health in mind.
However, they can be! Here are a couple of great examples:
❝Recently, two genome-edited crops targeted for nutritional improvement, high GABA tomatoes and high oleic acid soybeans, have been released to the market.
Nutritional improvement in cultivated crops has been a major target of conventional genetic modification technologies as well as classical breeding methods❞
Source: Drs. Nagamine & Ezura
Read in full: Genome Editing for Improving Crop Nutrition
(note, they draw a distinction of meaning between genome editing and genetic modification, according to which of two techniques is used, but for the purposes of our article today, this is under the same umbrella)
Want to know more?
If you’d like to read more about this than we have room for here, here’s a great review in the Journal of Food Science & Nutrition:
Should we still worry about the safety of GMO foods? Why and why not? A review
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Cashew Nuts vs Coconut – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing cashew nuts to coconut, we picked the cashews.
Why?
It can be argued this isn’t a fair comparison, as coconuts aren’t true nuts, but it’s at the very least a useful comparison, because they have very similar (often the same) culinary uses, so deciding between one or the other is something people will often do.
In terms of macros, cashews have 6x the protein and more than 2x the fiber, as well as slightly more fat (but the fats are healthy, as are those of coconut, by the way) and 2x the carbs. Depending on what you’re looking for, this head-to-head could come out differently, but we say it’s a win for cashews.
You may be wondering: if cashews have more of all those things, what are coconuts made of? And the answer is that coconuts have 8x the water (and yes, this is counting the coconut meat only, not including the milk inside). Of course, if you get dessicated coconut, then it won’t have that, but we’re comparing fresh to fresh.
In the category of vitamins, cashews have a lot more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, E, and K. Meanwhile, coconut has more vitamin C, but it’s not a lot. An easy win for cashews here.
When it comes to minerals, cashews have rather more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. On the other hand, coconut has more sodium. Another easy win for cashews.
Cashews also have the lower glycemic index.
All in all, cashews win the day.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
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Inflammation: The Silent Fire – by Dr. Carly Stewart
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Despite its relative brevity (188 pages), this book is quite comprehensive, covering a lot more than “eat some fruits and vegetables please”.
In terms of complexity, it starts at the level of “what is inflammation?” and progresses to the nuances of NF-kB inhibitors and the role of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and CRISPR-associated protein 9. And we do mean “progresses”; it doesn’t jump from one to the other.
The author, a doctor of physiotherapy, has plenty to say about the role of movement, as you may have guessed, and there’s a whole section on anti-inflammatory exercises to do (mostly derived from yoga), as well as all the things you might expect (and more) about diet, sleep, and so forth, plus a chapter on gut health, one on stress management (beyond the yoga and sleep and such in their respective chapters). She also covers supplements beyond the obvious, as well as medications—again, beyond the obvious.
The style is simple and explanatory, not complicating things more than necessary, nor padding it out with anecdotes or sensationalist fluff.
Bottom line: if you’d like to better manage inflammation, this book is a great resource for that.
Click here to check out Inflammation: The Silent Fire, and dial down yours!
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