International Women’s Day (and what it can mean for you, really)
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How to not just #EmbraceEquity, but actually grow it, this International Women’s Day!
It’s International Women’s Day, and there’s a lot going on beyond the hashtagging! So, what’s happening, and how could you get involved in more than a “token” way in your workplace, business, or general life?
Well, that depends on your own environment and circumstances, but for example…
A feminist policy for productivity in the food sector?
We tend to think that in this modern world, we all have equal standing when it comes to productivity, food, and health. And yet…
❝If women do 70 per cent of the work in agriculture worldwide, but the land is mainly owned by men, then we don’t have equity yet. If in Germany, only one-tenth of female farmers manage the farm on which they work on, while they also manage the household, then there is no equity yet❞
~ Lea Leimann, Germany
What to do about it, though? It turns out there’s a worldwide organization dedicated to fixing this! It’s called Slow Food.
Their mission is to make food…
- GOOD: quality, flavorsome and healthy food
- CLEAN: production that does not harm the environment
- FAIR: accessible prices for consumers and fair conditions and pay for producers
…and yes, that explicitly includes feminism-attentive food policy:
Read all about it: Slow Food women forge change in the food system
Do you work in the food system?
If so, you can have an impact. Your knee-jerk reaction might be “I don’t”, but there are a LOT of steps from farm-to-table, so, are you sure?
Story time: me, I’m a writer (you’d never have guessed, right?) and wouldn’t immediately think of myself as working “in the food system”.
But! Not long back I (a woman) was contracted by a marketing agent (a woman) to write marketing materials for a small business (owned by a woman) selling pickles and chutneys across the Australian market, based on the recipes she learned from her mother, in India. The result?
I made an impact in the food chain the other side of the planet from me, without leaving my desk.
Furthermore, the way I went about my work empowered—at the very least—myself and the end client (the lady making and selling the pickles and chutneys).
Sometimes we can’t change the world by ourselves… but we don’t have to.
If we all just nudge things in the right direction, we’ll end up with a healthier, better-fed, more productive system for all!
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Millet vs Buckwheat – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing millet to buckwheat, we picked the buckwheat.
Why?
Both of these naturally gluten-free grains* have their merits, but we say buckwheat comes out on top for most people (we’ll discuss the exception later).
*actually buckwheat is a flowering pseudocereal, but in culinary terms, we’ll call it a grain, much like we call tomato a vegetable.
Considering the macros first of all, millet has slightly more carbs while buckwheat has more than 2x the fiber. An easy win for buckwheat (they’re about equal on protein, by the way).
In the category of vitamins, millet has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, and B9, while buckwheat has more of vitamins B5, E, K, and choline. Superficially that’s a 5:4 win for millet, though buckwheat’s margins of difference are notably greater, so the overall vitamin coverage could arguably be considered a tie.
When it comes to minerals, millet has more phosphorus and zinc, while buckwheat has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, and selenium. For most of them, buckwheat’s margins of difference are again greater. An easy win for buckwheat, in any case.
This all adds up to a clear win for buckwheat, but as promised, there is an exception: if you have issues with your kidneys that mean you are avoiding oxalates, then millet becomes the healthier choice, as buckwheat is rather high in oxalates while millet is low in same.
For everyone else: enjoy both! Diversity is good. But if you’re going to pick one, buckwheat’s the winner.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Grains: Bread Of Life, Or Cereal Killer?
Take care!
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Awakening Your Ikigai – by Dr. Ken Mogi
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It’s been well-established in supercentenarian studies that one of the key factors beyond diet or exercise or suchlike (important as those things definitely are), is having a purpose to one’s life.
Neuroscientist Dr. Ken Mogi explains in this very easy-to-read book, how we can bring ikigai into our lives.
From noticing the details of the small things in life, to reorienting one’s life around what’s most truly most important to us, Dr. Mogi gives us not just a “this is ikigai” exposé, but rather, a practical and readily applicable how-to guide.
Bottom line: if you’ve so far been putting off ikigai as “I’ll get to that”, the time to start is today.
Click here to check out Awakening Your Ikigai, and actually awaken yours!
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Jamaican Coconut Rice
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This is a great dish that can be enjoyed hot or cold, as a main or as a side. It has carbs, proteins, healthy fats, fiber, as well as an array of healthy phytochemicals. Not to mention, a great taste!
You will need
- 1 cup wholegrain basmati rice (it may also be called “brown basmati rice“; this is the same) (traditional recipe calls for pudding rice, but we’re going with the healthier option here)
- 2 cans (each 12 z / 400g) coconut milk
- 2 cups (or 2 cans, of which the drained weight is comparable to a cup each) cooked black beans. If you cook them yourself, this is better, as you will be able to cook them more al dente than you can get from a can, and this firmness is desirable. But canned is fine if that’s what’s available.
- 1 large red onion, finely chopped
- ½ cup low-sodium vegetable stock (ideally you made this yourself from vegetable offcuts you saved in the freezer for this purpose, but failing that, low-sodium stock cubes can be bought at any large supermarket)
- 2 serrano chilis, finely chopped
- 1 Scotch bonnet chili, without doing anything to it
- 1 tbsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- Garnish: parsley, chopped
Note: we have erred on the side of low-heat when it comes to the chilis. If you know that you and (if applicable) everyone else eating would enjoy more heat, add more heat. If not, let extra heat be added at the table via your hot sauce of choice. Sounds heretical, but it ensures everyone gets the right amount! It’s easy to add heat than to take it out, after all.
However: if you do end up with too much heat in this or any other dish, adding acid will usually help to neutralize that. In the case of this dish, we’d recommend lime juice as a complementary flavor.
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) In a big sauté pan, add the coconut oil, melt it if not already melted, and add the chopped onion and the chopped chilis, at a temperature sufficient to sizzle. Keep them all moving. Once the coconut oil is absorbed into the onion (this will happen before the onion is fully cooked), add the vegetable stock, followed by the coconut milk; mix it all gently to create a smooth consistency.
2) Add the rice, chia seeds, and black pepper; mix it all gently but thoroughly; turn the temperature to a simmer, and add the Scotch bonnet chili, without cutting it at all.
3) Cover and keep on low for about 20–30 minutes until the rice is looking done. Check on it periodically to make sure it’s not running out of liquid, but resist the urge to stir it; it shouldn’t be burning but paradoxically, once you start stirring you can’t stop or it will definitely burn.
4) Take out the Scotch bonnet chili, and discard*. Add the black beans.
*its job was to add flavor without adding the high-level heat of that particular chili. If you’re a regular heat-fiend, feel free to experiment with using sliced Scotch bonnet chilis instead of serrano chilis; just be aware that there’s a big difference in heat. Only do this if you really like heat. Using it the way we described in the main recipe is what’s traditional in the Caribbean, by the way.
5) Now you can (and in fact must) stir, to mix in the black beans and bring them back to temperature within the dish. Be aware that once you start stirring, you need to keep stirring until you’re ready to take it off the heat.
6) Serve, adding the parsley garnish.
(this example went light on the beans; our recipe includes more for a heartier dish)
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Should You Go Light Or Heavy On Carbs?
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
- Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Fiber (And How To Fix It)
- Burn! How To Boost Your Metabolism
- Capsaicin For Weight Loss And Against Inflammation
Take care!
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Surviving with Beans And Rice – by Eliza Whool
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If you’d like to be well-set the next time a crisis shuts down supply lines, this is one of those books you’ll want to have read.
Superficially, “have in a large quantity of dried beans and rice” is good advice, but obvious. Why a book?
Whool gives a lot of advice on keeping your nutrition balanced while subsisting on the same quite few ingredients, which is handy.
More than that, she offers 100 recipes using the ingredients that will be in your long-term pantry. That’s over three months without repeating a meal! And if you don’t think rice and beans can be tasty and exciting and varied, then most of the chefs of the Global South might want to have a word about that.
Anyway, we’re not here to sell you rice and beans (we’re just enthusiastic and correct). What we are here to do is to give you a fair overview of this book.
The recipes are just-the-recipes, very simple clear instructions, one two-page spread per recipe. Most of the book is devoted to these. As a quick note, it does cover making things gluten-free if necessary, and other similar adjustments for medical reasons.
The planning-and-storage section of the book is helpful too though, especially as it covers common mistakes to avoid.
Bottom line: this is a great book, and remember what we said about doing the things now that future you will thank you for!
Get yourself a copy of Surviving with Beans And Rice from Amazon today!
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10 Ways To Self-Soothe That Don’t Involve Food Or Drink
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If one is accustomed to comfort-eating or drowning one’s sorrows, what are the alternatives that can actually work? Holistic nutritionist Selin Bilgin has a list:
Self-Care That’s Not Self-Sabotage
You might want to make a note of these 10 things, so they can be a sort of “menu” for you when you need them:
- Give your introversion or extroversion what it needs (e.g. alone time to decompress, or social activities)
- Treat your senses: often we don’t actually need food/drink so much as culinary entertainment. So, we can sate this sensory mood in other ways, for example pleasant candles, flowers, and so forth.
- Bathe/shower nicely: it’s cliché but some personal pampering can go a long way
- Beautify yourself: it’s also cliché, but a makeover evening has its place
- Move! Go for a walk, do some yoga, whatever suits you, but move your body.
- Make movie nights luxurious: instead of making it about food/drink, focus on creating an enjoyable atmosphere
- Physically release tension: at 10almonds we recommend progressive relaxation for this!
- Create something: whether it’s art, craft, baking, or something else, creativity feels good
- Tackle things you’ve been procrastinating: this one doesn’t seem like self-soothing from the front end, but from the back end (i.e., having done it), it makes a big difference!
- Journal: expressing your thoughts and feelings can help a lot—really.
For more on each of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
- Rebalancing Dopamine (Without “Dopamine Fasting”)
- Self-Care That’s Not Just Self-Indulgence
Take care!
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Lacking Motivation? Science Has The Answer
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The Science Of Motivation (And How To Use It To Your Advantage)
When we do something rewarding, our brain gets a little (or big!) spike of dopamine. Dopamine is popularly associated with pleasure—which is fair— but there’s more to it than this.
Dopamine is also responsible for motivation itself, as a prime mover before we do the thing that we find rewarding. If we eat a banana, and enjoy it, perhaps because our body needed the nutrients from it, our brain gets a hit of dopamine.
(and not because bananas contain dopamine; that dopamine is useful for the body, but can’t pass the blood-brain barrier to have an effect on the brain)
So where does the dopamine in our brain come from? That dopamine is made in the brain itself.
Key Important Fact: the brain produces dopamine when it expects an activity to be rewarding.
If you take nothing else away from today’s newsletter, let it be this!
It makes no difference if the activity is then not rewarding. And, it will keep on motivating you to do something it anticipated being rewarding, no matter how many times the activity disappoints, because it’ll remember the very dopamine that it created, as having been the reward.
To put this into an example:
- How often have you spent time aimlessly scrolling social media, flitting between the same three apps, or sifting through TV channels when “there’s nothing good on to watch”?
- And how often did you think afterwards “that was a good and rewarding use of my time; I’m glad I did that”?
In reality, whatever you felt like you were in search of, you were really in search of dopamine. And you didn’t find it, but your brain did make some, just enough to keep you going.
Don’t try to “dopamine detox”, though.
While taking a break from social media / doomscrolling the news / mindless TV-watching can be a great and healthful idea, you can’t actually “detox” from a substance your body makes inside itself.
Which is fortunate, because if you could, you’d die, horribly and miserably.
If you could “detox” completely from dopamine, you’d lose all motivation, and also other things that dopamine is responsible for, including motor control, language faculties, and critical task analysis (i.e. planning).
This doesn’t just mean that you’d not be able to plan a wedding; it also means:
- you wouldn’t be able to plan how to get a drink of water
- you wouldn’t have any motivation to get water even if you were literally dying of thirst
- you wouldn’t have the motor control to be able to physically drink it anyway
Read: Dopamine and Reward: The Anhedonia Hypothesis 30 years on
(this article is deep and covers a lot of ground, but is a fascinating read if you have time)
Note: if you’re wondering why that article mentions schizophrenia so much, it’s because schizophrenia is in large part a disease of having too much dopamine.
Consequently, antipsychotic drugs (and similar) used in the treatment of schizophrenia are generally dopamine antagonists, and scientists have been working on how to treat schizophrenia without also crippling the patient’s ability to function.
Do be clever about how you get your dopamine fix
Since we are hardwired to crave dopamine, and the only way to outright quash that craving is by inducing anhedonic depression, we have to leverage what we can’t change.
The trick is: question how much your motivation aligns with your goals (or doesn’t).
So if you feel like checking Facebook for the eleventieth time today, ask yourself: “am I really looking for new exciting events that surely happened in the past 60 seconds since I last checked, or am I just looking for dopamine?”
You might then realize: “Hmm, I’m actually just looking for dopamine, and I’m not going to find it there”
Then, pick something else to do that will actually be more rewarding. It helps if you make a sort of dopa-menu in advance, of things to pick from. You can keep this as a list on your phone, or printed and pinned up near your computer.
Examples might be: Working on that passion project of yours, or engaging in your preferred hobby. Or spending quality time with a loved one. Or doing housework (surprisingly not something we’re commonly motivated-by-default to do, but actually is rewarding when done). Or exercising (same deal). Or learning that language on Duolingo (all those bells and whistles the app has are very much intentional dopamine-triggers to make it addictive, but it’s not a terrible outcome to be addicted to learning!).
Basically… Let your brain’s tendency to get led astray work in your favor, by putting things in front of it that will lead you in good directions.
Things for your health and/or education are almost always great things to allow yourself the “ooh, shiny” reaction and pick them up, try something new, etc.
Don’t Forget…
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