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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Pumpkin Protein Crackers
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Ten of these (give or take what size you make them) will give you the 20g protein that most people’s body’s can use at a time. Five of these plus some of one of the dips we list at the bottom will also do it:
You will need
- 1 cup chickpea flour (also called gram flour or garbanzo bean flour)
- 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp MSG or ½ tsp low-sodium salt
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 350℉ / 180℃.
2) Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, and mix thoroughly.
3) Add the oil, and mix thoroughly.
4) Add water, 1 tbsp at a time, mixing thoroughly until the mixture comes together and you have a dough ball. You’ll probably need 3–4 tbsp in total, but do add them one at a time.
5) Roll out the dough as thinly and evenly as you can between two sheets of baking paper. Remove the top layer of the paper, and slice the dough into squares or triangles. You could use a cookie-cutter to make other shapes if you like, but then you’ll need to repeat the rolling to use up the offcuts. So we recommend squares or triangles at least for your first go.
6) Bake them in the oven for 12–15 minutes or until golden and crispy. Enjoy immediately or keep in an airtight container.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some things to go with what we have going on today:
- Muhammara ← this is a very nutritionally-dense dip (not to mention tasty; seriously, check out these flavors)
- Hero Homemade Hummus ← a classic
- Plant-Based Healthy Cream Cheese ← also a very respectable option
Take care!
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What’s Your Ikigai?
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Ikigai: A Closer Look
We’ve mentioned ikigai from time to time, usually when discussing the characteristics associated with Blue Zone centenarians, for example as number 5 of…
It’s about finding one’s “purpose”. Not merely a function, but what actually drives you in life. And, if Japanese studies can be extrapolated to the rest of the world, it has a significant and large impact on mortality (other factors being controlled for); not having a sense of ikigai is associated with an approximately 47%* increase in 7-year mortality risk in the categories of cardiovascular disease and external cause mortality:
Sense of life worth living (ikigai) and mortality in Japan: Ohsaki Study
*we did a lot of averaging and fuzzy math to get this figure; the link will show you the full stats though!
In case that huge (n=43,391) study didn’t convince you, here’s another comparably-sized (n=43,117) one that found similarly, albeit framing the numbers the other way around, i.e. a comparable decrease in mortality risk for having a sense of ikigai:
This study was even longer (12 years rather than 7), so the fact that it found pretty much the same results the 7-year study we cited just before is quite compelling evidence. Again, multivariate hazard ratios were adjusted for age, BMI, drinking and smoking status, physical activity, sleep duration, education, occupation, marital status, perceived mental stress, and medical history—so all these things were effectively controlled for statistically.
Three kinds of ikigai
There are three principal kinds of ikigai:
- Social ikigai: for example, a caring role in the family or community, volunteer work, teaching
- Asocial ikigai: for example, a solitary practice of self-discipline, spirituality, or study without any particular intent to teach others
- Antisocial ikigai: for example, a strong desire to outlive an enemy, or to harm a person or group that one hates
You may be thinking: wait, aren’t those last things bad?
And… Maybe! But ikigai is not a matter of morality or even about “warm fuzzy feelings”. The fact is, having a sense of purpose increases longevity regardless of moral implications or niceness.
Nevertheless, for obvious reasons there is a lot more focus on the first two categories (social and asocial), and of those, especially the first category (social), because on a social level, “we all do well when we all do well”.
We exemplified them above, but they can be defined:
- Social: working for the betterment of society
- Asocial: working for the betterment of oneself
Of course, for many people, the same ikigai may cover both of those—often somebody who excels at something for its own sake and/but shares it with others to enrich their lives also, for example a teacher, an artist, a scientist, etc.
For it to cover both, however, requires that both parts of it are genuinely part of their feeling of ikigai, and not merely unintended consequences.
For example, a piano teacher who loves music in general and the piano in particular, and would gladly spend every waking moment studying/practising/performing, but hates having to teach it, but needs to pay the bills so teaches it anyway, cannot be said to be living any kind of social ikigai there, just asocial. And in fact, if teaching the piano is causing them to not have the time or energy to pursue it for its own sake, they might not even be living any ikigai at all.
One other thing to watch out for
There is one last stumbling block, which is that while we can find ikigai, we can also lose it! Examples of this may include:
- A professional whose job is their ikigai, until they face mandatory retirement or are otherwise unable to continue their work (perhaps due to disability, for example)
- A parent whose full-time-parent role is their ikigai, until their children leave for school, university, life in general
- A married person whose “devoted spouse” role is their ikigai, until their partner dies
For this reason, people of any age can have a “crisis of identity” that’s actually more of a “crisis of purpose”.
There are two ways of handling this:
- Have a back-up ikigai ready! For example, if your profession is your ikigai, maybe you have a hobby waiting in the wings, that you can smoothly jump ship to upon retirement.
- Embrace the fluidity of life! Sometimes, things don’t happen the way we expect. Sometimes life’s surprises can trip us up; sometimes they can leave us a sobbing wreck. But so long as life continues, there is an opportunity to pick ourselves up and decide where to go from that point. Note that this is not fatalism, by the way, it doesn’t have to be “this bad thing happened so that we could find this good thing, so really it was a good thing all along”. Rather, it can equally readily be “well, we absolutely did not want that bad thing to happen, but since it did, now we shall take it this way from here”.
For more on developing/maintaining psychological resilience in the face of life’s less welcome adversities, see:
Psychological Resilience Training
…and:
Putting The Abs Into Absurdity ← do not underestimate the power of this one
Take care!
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Age Proof – by Dr. Rose Anne Kenny
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We don’t generally include an author bio, but in this case it’s worth noting that Dr. Kenny, the Chair of Medical Gerontology at Trinity College Dublin, with over 300 staff under her, has 704 peer-reviewed publications to her name, and enough awards and honors and achievements to more than fill a page on her university’s website.
In short, she knows her stuff.
A lot of the material in this book will not be completely new to regular 10almonds readers; there’s a lot about Blue Zones supercentenarians, the usual qualities associated with healthy longevity in those places (diet, lifestyle, etc), as well as genetic factors and epigenetic, and so forth.
Some items are… Not new, but not so commonly focused on in such works; for example, Dr. Kenny devotes a chapter to sleep, a chapter to laughter, a chapter to hormesis, and a chapter to sexual activity, amongst others.
Another thing she delivers that a lot of books of this kind don’t is that she has a collection of “Test Yourself” appendices, so that you can establish where you are relative to various benchmarks of aging.
Dr. Kenny also references her own work especially with TILDA (The Irish Longitudinal Study on Aging) that she has directed for many years, which has a vast amount of data and many important findings, which adds another extra strength to this book often not found in others.
The style is surprisingly personal, making it an enjoyable read as well as an educational one, and yet with a lot of hard science throughout—explained well for the layperson though, and thoroughly referenced with an extensive bibliography.
Bottom line: if you’d like to be (and continue to be!) “young for your years”, then this is an excellent book to get (and/or keep) you on the right track.
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Sweet Potato vs Winter Squash – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing sweet potato to winter squash, we picked the sweet potato.
Why?
In terms of macros, the sweet potato has 2x the protein, 2x the carbs, and slightly more fiber. Because the protein numbers are small, the carb:fiber ratio is the deciding factor here, and has winter squash has the lower glycemic index (assuming cooking them both on a like-for-like basis), we’re going with that on macros, but it’s subjective.
In the category of vitamins, sweet potato has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, C, E, and choline, while winter squash has more of vitamins B9 and K. It’s interesting to note that while sweet potato is rightly famous for its vitamin A content, winter squash is actually very good for that too. Still, by the numbers, it’s a clear 9:2 victory for sweet potato here.
When it comes to minerals, sweet potato has more calcium copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, while winter squash has more selenium, meaning an 8:1 victory for sweet potato this time.
In short, enjoy either or both, but sweet potato is the more nutritionally dense option for sure.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Carb-Strong or Carb-Wrong? Should You Go Light Or Heavy On Carbs?
Enjoy!
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Longevity for the Lazy – by Dr. Richard Malish
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There are some people who devote all their resources to longevity, which can become a full-time occupation, not to mention a very expensive endeavor. This book’s for those who want to get the best possible “bang for buck” by doing the things that have the most favorable cost:worth ratio.
Dr. Malish covers what can be done easily for personal longevity, as well as what technological advances can be enjoyed that those before us didn’t have as options. He also discusses the diseases that are most likely to kill us, and how to avoid those.
He preaches a proactive approach, but one that is simple and consistent and based in good science, and good statistics. Indeed, while he’s served 20 years as an army doctor and a cardiologist, he now works as a healthcare policy consultant, so he is well-placed to advise.
The style of the book is halfway between regular pop-science and a textbook; you can either read it cover-to-cover, or skim first though the key points, highlight boxes, summaries, and the like. He also provides a time-phased task list, for those who like things to be laid out like that.
Bottom line: this is a very good, methodical guide to living longer without making it a full-time occupation.
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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Leek vs Scallions – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing leek to scallions, we picked the leek.
Why?
In terms of macros, scallions might have a point: scallions have the lower glycemic index, thanks to leek having more carbs for the same amount of fiber. That said, leek already has a low glycemic index, so this is not a big deal.
When it comes to vitamins, leek has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, E, and choline, while scallions have more of vitamins A, C, and K. Noteworthily, a cup of chopped leek already provides the daily dose of vitamins A and K, and the difference in levels of vitamin C is minimal. All in all, an easy 8:3 win for leeks here, even without taking that into account.
In the category of minerals, leek has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while scallions have a little more zinc.
Both of these allium-family plants (i.e., related to garlic) have an abundance of polyphenols, especially kaempferol.
Of course, enjoy whatever goes best with your meal, but if you’re looking for nutritional density, then leek is where it’s at.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic
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
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