Mango vs Papaya – Which is Healthier?

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Our Verdict

When comparing mango to papaya, we picked the mango.

Why?

Both are great! But there are some things to set them apart:

In terms of macros, this one’s not so big of a difference. They are equal in fiber, while mango has more protein and slightly more carbs. They are both low glycemic index, so we’ll call this one a tie, or the slenderest nominal win for papaya.

When it comes to vitamins, mango has more of vitamins A, B1, B3, B5, B7, B9, E, K, and choline, while papaya has more vitamin C. However, a cup of mango already gives the RDA of vitamin C, so at this point, it’s not even really much of a bonus that papaya has more. In any case, a clear and overwhelming win in the vitamins category for mango.

As for minerals, this one’s closer; mango has more copper, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc, while papaya has more calcium, iron, and magnesium. Still, a 4:3 win for mango.

Adding these up makes for a clear win for mango. However, one extra thing to bear in mind about both:

Both of these fruits interact with warfarin and many other anticoagulants. So if you’re taking those, you might want to skip these, or at least consult with your doctor/pharmacist for input on your personal situation.

Aside from that; enjoy both; diversity is good! But mango is the more nutritionally dense, and thus the winner here.

Want to learn more?

You might like to read:

5 Ways To Make Your Smoothie Blood Sugar Friendly (Avoid the Spike!)

Take care!

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  • Focusing On Health In Our Sixties

    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

    ❝What happens when you age in your sixties?❞

    The good news is, a lot of that depends on you!

    But, speaking on averages:

    While it’s common for people to describe being over 50 as being “over the hill”, halfway to a hundred, and many greetings cards and such reflect this… Biologically speaking, our 60s are more relevant as being halfway to our likely optimal lifespan of 120. Humans love round numbers, but nature doesn’t care for such.

    • In our 60s, we’re now usually the “wrong” side of the menopausal metabolic slump (usually starting at 45–55 and taking 5–10 years), or the corresponding “andropause” where testosterone levels drop (usually starting at 45 and a slow decline for 10–15 years).
    • In our 60s, women will now be at a higher risk of osteoporosis, due to the above. The risk is not nearly so severe for men.
    • In our 60s, if we’re ever going to get cancer, this is the most likely decade for us to find out.
    • In our 60s, approximately half of us will suffer some form of hearing loss
    • In our 60s, our body has all but stopped making new T-cells, which means our immune defenses drop (this is why many vaccines/boosters are offered to over-60s, but not to younger people)

    While at first glance this does not seem a cheery outlook, knowledge is power.

    • We can take HRT to avoid the health impact of the menopause/andropause
    • We can take extra care to look after our bone health and avoid osteoporosis
    • We can make sure we get the appropriate cancer screenings when we should
    • We can take hearing tests, and if appropriate find the right hearing aids for us
      • We can also learn to lip-read (this writer relies heavily on lip-reading!)
    • We can take advantage of those extra vaccinations/boosters
    • We can take extra care to boost immune health, too

    Your body has no idea how many times you’ve flown around the sun and nor does it care. What actually makes a difference to it, is how it has been treated.

    See also: Milestone Medical Tests You Should Take in Your 60s, 70s, and Beyond

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  • There are ‘forever chemicals’ in our drinking water. Should standards change to protect our health?

    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.

    Today’s news coverage reports potentially unsafe levels of “forever chemicals” detected in drinking water supplies around Australia. These include human-made chemicals: perfluorooctane sulfonate (known as PFOS) and perflurooctanic acid (PFOA). They are classed under the broader category of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS chemicals.

    The contaminants found in our drinking water are the same ones United States authorities warn can cause cancer over a long period of time, with reports warning there is “no safe level of exposure”.

    In April, the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) sent shock waves through the water industry around the world when it announced stricter advice on safe levels of PFOS/PFOA in drinking water. This reduced limits considered safe in supplies to zero and gave the water industry five years to meet legally enforceable limits of 4 parts per trillion.

    So, should the same limits be enforced here in Australia? And how worried should we be that the drinking in many parts of Australia would fail the new US standards?

    What are the health risks?

    Medical knowledge about the human health effects of PFOS/PFOA is still emerging. An important factor is the bioaccumulation of these chemicals in different organs in the body over time.

    Increased exposure of people to these chemicals has been associated with several adverse health effects. These include higher cholesterol, lower birth weights, modified immune responses, kidney and testicular cancer.

    It has been very difficult to accurately track and measure effects of different levels of PFAS exposure on people. People may be exposed to PFAS chemicals in their everyday life through waterproofing of clothes, non-stick cookware coatings or through food and drinking water. PFAS can also be in pesticides, paints and cosmetics.

    The International Agency for Research on Cancer (on behalf of the World Health Organization) regards PFOA as being carcinogenic to humans and PFOS as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

    child at water fountain outdoors
    Is our drinking water safe? What about long-term risks? Volodymyr TVERDOKHLIB/Shutterstock

    Our guidelines

    Australian drinking water supplies are assessed against national water quality standards. These Australian Drinking Water Guidelines are continuously reviewed by industry and health experts that scan the international literature and update them accordingly.

    All city and town water supplies across Australia are subject to a wide range of physical and chemical water tests. The results are compared to Australian water guidelines.

    Some tests relate to human health considerations, such as levels of lead or bacteria. Others relate to “aesthetic” considerations, such as the appearance or taste of water. Most water authorities across Australia make water quality information and compliance with Australian guidelines freely available.

    What about Australian PFOS and PFOA standards?

    These chemicals can enter our drinking water system from many potential sources, such as via their use in fire-fighting foams or pesticides.

    According to the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines, PFOS should not exceed 0.07 micrograms per litre in drinking water. And PFOA should not exceed 0.56 micrograms per litre. One microgram is equivalent to one part per billion.

    The concentration of these chemicals in water is incredibly small. And much of the advice on their concentration is provided in different units. Sometimes in micrograms or nannograms. The USEPA uses parts per trillion.

    In parts per trillion (ppt) the Australian Guidelines for PFOS is 70 ppt and PFOA is 560 ppt. The USEPA’s new maximum contaminant levels (enforceable levels) are 4 ppt for both PFOS and also PFOA. Previous news reports have pointed out Australian guidelines for these chemicals in drinking water are up to 140 times higher than the USEPA permits.

    Yikes! That seems like a lot

    Today’s news report cites PFOS and PFOA water tests done at many different water supplies across Australia. Some water samples did not detect either chemicals. But most did, with the highest PFOS concentration 15.1–15.6 parts per trillion from Glenunga, South Australia. The highest PFOA concentration was reported from a small water supply in western Sydney, where it was detected at 5.17–9.66 parts per trillion.

    Australia and the US are not alone. This is an enormous global problem.

    One of the obvious challenges for the Australian water industry is that current water treatment processes may not be effective at removing PFOS or PFOA. The Australian Drinking Water Guidelines provide this advice:

    Standard water treatment technologies including coagulation followed by physical separation, aeration, chemical oxidation, UV irradiation, and disinfection have little or no effect on PFOS or PFOA concentrations.

    Filtering with activated carbon and reverse osmosis may remove many PFAS chemicals. But no treatment systems appear to be completely effective at their removal.

    Removing these contaminants might be particularly difficult for small regional water supplies already struggling to maintain their water infrastructure. The NSW Auditor General criticised the planning for, and funding of, town water infrastructure in regional NSW back in 2020.

    Where to from here?

    The Australian water industry likely has little choice but to follow the US lead and address PFOS/PFAS contamination in drinking water. Along with lower thresholds, the US committed US$1 billion to water infrastructure to improve detection and water treatment. They will also now require:

    Public water systems must monitor for these PFAS and have three years to complete initial monitoring (by 2027) […]

    As today’s report notes, it is very difficult to find any recent data on PFOS and PFOA in Australian drinking water supplies. Australian regulators should also require ongoing and widespread monitoring of our major city and regional water supplies for these “forever chemicals”.

    The bottom line for drinking tap water is to keep watching this space. Buying bottled water might not be effective (2021 US research detected PFAS in 39 out of 100 bottled waters). The USEPA suggests people can reduce PFAS exposure with measures including avoiding fish from contaminated waters and considering home filtration systems.

    Correction: this article previously listed the maximum Australian Drinking Water Guidelines PFOA level as 0.056 micrograms per litre. The figure has been updated to show the correct level of 0.56 micrograms per litre.

    Ian A. Wright, Associate Professor in Environmental Science, Western Sydney University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • How do science journalists decide whether a psychology study is worth covering?

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    Complex research papers and data flood academic journals daily, and science journalists play a pivotal role in disseminating that information to the public. This can be a daunting task, requiring a keen understanding of the subject matter and the ability to translate dense academic language into narratives that resonate with the general public.

    Several resources and tip sheets, including the Know Your Research section here at The Journalist’s Resource, aim to help journalists hone their skills in reporting on academic research.

    But what factors do science journalists look for to decide whether a social science research study is trustworthy and newsworthy? That’s the question researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Melbourne in Australia examine in a recent study, “How Do Science Journalists Evaluate Psychology Research?” published in September in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.

    Their online survey of 181 mostly U.S.-based science journalists looked at how and whether they were influenced by four factors in fictitious research summaries: the sample size (number of participants in the study), sample representativeness (whether the participants in the study were from a convenience sample or a more representative sample), the statistical significance level of the result (just barely statistically significant or well below the significance threshold), and the prestige of a researcher’s university.

    The researchers found that sample size was the only factor that had a robust influence on journalists’ ratings of how trustworthy and newsworthy a study finding was.

    University prestige had no effect, while the effects of sample representativeness and statistical significance were inconclusive.

    But there’s nuance to the findings, the authors note.

    “I don’t want people to think that science journalists aren’t paying attention to other things, and are only paying attention to sample size,” says Julia Bottesini, an independent researcher, a recent Ph.D. graduate from the Psychology Department at UC Davis, and the first author of the study.

    Overall, the results show that “these journalists are doing a very decent job” vetting research findings, Bottesini says.

    Also, the findings from the study are not generalizable to all science journalists or other fields of research, the authors note.

    “Instead, our conclusions should be circumscribed to U.S.-based science journalists who are at least somewhat familiar with the statistical and replication challenges facing science,” they write. (Over the past decade a series of projects have found that the results of many studies in psychology and other fields can’t be reproduced, leading to what has been called a ‘replication crisis.’)

    “This [study] is just one tiny brick in the wall and I hope other people get excited about this topic and do more research on it,” Bottesini says.

    More on the study’s findings

    The study’s findings can be useful for researchers who want to better understand how science journalists read their research and what kind of intervention — such as teaching journalists about statistics — can help journalists better understand research papers.

    “As an academic, I take away the idea that journalists are a great population to try to study because they’re doing something really important and it’s important to know more about what they’re doing,” says Ellen Peters, director of Center for Science Communication Research at the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. Peters, who was not involved in the study, is also a psychologist who studies human judgment and decision-making.

    Peters says the study was “overall terrific.” She adds that understanding how journalists do their work “is an incredibly important thing to do because journalists are who reach the majority of the U.S. with science news, so understanding how they’re reading some of our scientific studies and then choosing whether to write about them or not is important.”

    The study, conducted between December 2020 and March 2021, is based on an online survey of journalists who said they at least sometimes covered science or other topics related to health, medicine, psychology, social sciences, or well-being. They were offered a $25 Amazon gift card as compensation.

    Among the participants, 77% were women, 19% were men, 3% were nonbinary and 1% preferred not to say. About 62% said they had studied physical or natural sciences at the undergraduate level, and 24% at the graduate level. Also, 48% reported having a journalism degree. The study did not include the journalists’ news reporting experience level.

    Participants were recruited through the professional network of Christie Aschwanden, an independent journalist and consultant on the study, which could be a source of bias, the authors note.

    “Although the size of the sample we obtained (N = 181) suggests we were able to collect a range of perspectives, we suspect this sample is biased by an ‘Aschwanden effect’: that science journalists in the same professional network as C. Aschwanden will be more familiar with issues related to the replication crisis in psychology and subsequent methodological reform, a topic C. Aschwanden has covered extensively in her work,” they write.

    Participants were randomly presented with eight of 22 one-paragraph fictitious social and personality psychology research summaries with fictitious authors. The summaries are posted on Open Science Framework, a free and open-source project management tool for researchers by the Center for Open Science, with a mission to increase openness, integrity and reproducibility of research.

    For instance, one of the vignettes reads:

    “Scientists at Harvard University announced today the results of a study exploring whether introspection can improve cooperation. 550 undergraduates at the university were randomly assigned to either do a breathing exercise or reflect on a series of questions designed to promote introspective thoughts for 5 minutes. Participants then engaged in a cooperative decision-making game, where cooperation resulted in better outcomes. People who spent time on introspection performed significantly better at these cooperative games (t (548) = 3.21, p = 0.001). ‘Introspection seems to promote better cooperation between people,’ says Dr. Quinn, the lead author on the paper.”

    In addition to answering multiple-choice survey questions, participants were given the opportunity to answer open-ended questions, such as “What characteristics do you [typically] consider when evaluating the trustworthiness of a scientific finding?”

    Bottesini says those responses illuminated how science journalists analyze a research study. Participants often mentioned the prestige of the journal in which it was published or whether the study had been peer-reviewed. Many also seemed to value experimental research designs over observational studies.

    Considering statistical significance

    When it came to considering p-values, “some answers suggested that journalists do take statistical significance into account, but only very few included explanations that suggested they made any distinction between higher or lower p values; instead, most mentions of p values suggest journalists focused on whether the key result was statistically significant,” the authors write.

    Also, many participants mentioned that it was very important to talk to outside experts or researchers in the same field to get a better understanding of the finding and whether it could be trusted, the authors write.

    “Journalists also expressed that it was important to understand who funded the study and whether the researchers or funders had any conflicts of interest,” they write.

    Participants also “indicated that making claims that were calibrated to the evidence was also important and expressed misgivings about studies for which the conclusions do not follow from the evidence,” the authors write.

    In response to the open-ended question, “What characteristics do you [typically] consider when evaluating the trustworthiness of a scientific finding?” some journalists wrote they checked whether the study was overstating conclusions or claims. Below are some of their written responses:

    • “Is the researcher adamant that this study of 40 college kids is representative? If so, that’s a red flag.”
    • “Whether authors make sweeping generalizations based on the study or take a more measured approach to sharing and promoting it.”
    • “Another major point for me is how ‘certain’ the scientists appear to be when commenting on their findings. If a researcher makes claims which I consider to be over-the-top about the validity or impact of their findings, I often won’t cover.”
    • “I also look at the difference between what an experiment actually shows versus the conclusion researchers draw from it — if there’s a big gap, that’s a huge red flag.”

    Peters says the study’s findings show that “not only are journalists smart, but they have also gone out of their way to get educated about things that should matter.”

    What other research shows about science journalists

    A 2023 study, published in the International Journal of Communication, based on an online survey of 82 U.S. science journalists, aims to understand what they know and think about open-access research, including peer-reviewed journals and articles that don’t have a paywall, and preprints. Data was collected between October 2021 and February 2022. Preprints are scientific studies that have yet to be peer-reviewed and are shared on open repositories such as medRxiv and bioRxiv. The study finds that its respondents “are aware of OA and related issues and make conscious decisions around which OA scholarly articles they use as sources.”

    A 2021 study, published in the Journal of Science Communication, looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the work of science journalists. Based on an online survey of 633 science journalists from 77 countries, it finds that the pandemic somewhat brought scientists and science journalists closer together. “For most respondents, scientists were more available and more talkative,” the authors write. The pandemic has also provided an opportunity to explain the scientific process to the public, and remind them that “science is not a finished enterprise,” the authors write.

    More than a decade ago, a 2008 study, published in PLOS Medicine, and based on an analysis of 500 health news stories, found that “journalists usually fail to discuss costs, the quality of the evidence, the existence of alternative options, and the absolute magnitude of potential benefits and harms,” when reporting on research studies. Giving time to journalists to research and understand the studies, giving them space for publication and broadcasting of the stories, and training them in understanding academic research are some of the solutions to fill the gaps, writes Gary Schwitzer, the study author.

    Advice for journalists

    We asked Bottesini, Peters, Aschwanden and Tamar Wilner, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas, who was not involved in the study, to share advice for journalists who cover research studies. Wilner is conducting a study on how journalism research informs the practice of journalism. Here are their tips:

    1. Examine the study before reporting it.

    Does the study claim match the evidence? “One thing that makes me trust the paper more is if their interpretation of the findings is very calibrated to the kind of evidence that they have,” says Bottesini. In other words, if the study makes a claim in its results that’s far-fetched, the authors should present a lot of evidence to back that claim.

    Not all surprising results are newsworthy. If you come across a surprising finding from a single study, Peters advises you to step back and remember Carl Sagan’s quote: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

    How transparent are the authors about their data? For instance, are the authors posting information such as their data and the computer codes they use to analyze the data on platforms such as Open Science Framework, AsPredicted, or The Dataverse Project? Some researchers ‘preregister’ their studies, which means they share how they’re planning to analyze the data before they see them. “Transparency doesn’t automatically mean that a study is trustworthy,” but it gives others the chance to double-check the findings, Bottesini says.

    Look at the study design. Is it an experimental study or an observational study? Observational studies can show correlations but not causation.

    “Observational studies can be very important for suggesting hypotheses and pointing us towards relationships and associations,” Aschwanden says.

    Experimental studies can provide stronger evidence toward a cause, but journalists must still be cautious when reporting the results, she advises. “If we end up implying causality, then once it’s published and people see it, it can really take hold,” she says.

    Know the difference between preprints and peer-reviewed, published studies. Peer-reviewed papers tend to be of higher quality than those that are not peer-reviewed. Read our tip sheet on the difference between preprints and journal articles.

    Beware of predatory journals. Predatory journals are journals that “claim to be legitimate scholarly journals, but misrepresent their publishing practices,” according to a 2020 journal article, published in the journal Toxicologic Pathology,Predatory Journals: What They Are and How to Avoid Them.”

    2. Zoom in on data.

    Read the methods section of the study. The methods section of the study usually appears after the introduction and background section. “To me, the methods section is almost the most important part of any scientific paper,” says Aschwanden. “It’s amazing to me how often you read the design and the methods section, and anyone can see that it’s a flawed design. So just giving things a gut-level check can be really important.”

    What’s the sample size? Not all good studies have large numbers of participants but pay attention to the claims a study makes with a small sample size. “If you have a small sample, you calibrate your claims to the things you can tell about those people and don’t make big claims based on a little bit of evidence,” says Bottesini.

    But also remember that factors such as sample size and p-value are not “as clear cut as some journalists might assume,” says Wilner.

    How representative of a population is the study sample? “If the study has a non-representative sample of, say, undergraduate students, and they’re making claims about the general population, that’s kind of a red flag,” says Bottesini. Aschwanden points to the acronym WEIRD, which stands for “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic,” and is used to highlight a lack of diversity in a sample. Studies based on such samples may not be generalizable to the entire population, she says.

    Look at the p-value. Statistical significance is both confusing and controversial, but it’s important to consider. Read our tip sheet, “5 Things Journalists Need to Know About Statistical Significance,” to better understand it.

    3. Talk to scientists not involved in the study.

    If you’re not sure about the quality of a study, ask for help. “Talk to someone who is an expert in study design or statistics to make sure that [the study authors] use the appropriate statistics and that methods they use are appropriate because it’s amazing to me how often they’re not,” says Aschwanden.

    Get an opinion from an outside expert. It’s always a good idea to present the study to other researchers in the field, who have no conflicts of interest and are not involved in the research you’re covering and get their opinion. “Don’t take scientists at their word. Look into it. Ask other scientists, preferably the ones who don’t have a conflict of interest with the research,” says Bottesini.

    4. Remember that a single study is simply one piece of a growing body of evidence.

    “I have a general rule that a single study doesn’t tell us very much; it just gives us proof of concept,” says Peters. “It gives us interesting ideas. It should be retested. We need an accumulation of evidence.”

    Aschwanden says as a practice, she tries to avoid reporting stories about individual studies, with some exceptions such as very large, randomized controlled studies that have been underway for a long time and have a large number of participants. “I don’t want to say you never want to write a single-study story, but it always needs to be placed in the context of the rest of the evidence that we have available,” she says.

    Wilner advises journalists to spend some time looking at the scope of research on the study’s specific topic and learn how it has been written about and studied up to that point.

    “We would want science journalists to be reporting balance of evidence, and not focusing unduly on the findings that are just in front of them in a most recent study,” Wilner says. “And that’s a very difficult thing to as journalists to do because they’re being asked to make their article very newsy, so it’s a difficult balancing act, but we can try and push journalists to do more of that.”

    5. Remind readers that science is always changing.

    “Science is always two steps forward, one step back,” says Peters. Give the public a notion of uncertainty, she advises. “This is what we know today. It may change tomorrow, but this is the best science that we know of today.”

    Aschwanden echoes the sentiment. “All scientific results are provisional, and we need to keep that in mind,” she says. “It doesn’t mean that we can’t know anything, but it’s very important that we don’t overstate things.”

    Authors of a study published in PNAS in January analyzed more than 14,000 psychology papers and found that replication success rates differ widely by psychology subfields. That study also found that papers that could not be replicated received more initial press coverage than those that could. 

    The authors note that the media “plays a significant role in creating the public’s image of science and democratizing knowledge, but it is often incentivized to report on counterintuitive and eye-catching results.”

    Ideally, the news media would have a positive relationship with replication success rates in psychology, the authors of the PNAS study write. “Contrary to this ideal, however, we found a negative association between media coverage of a paper and the paper’s likelihood of replication success,” they write. “Therefore, deciding a paper’s merit based on its media coverage is unwise. It would be valuable for the media to remind the audience that new and novel scientific results are only food for thought before future replication confirms their robustness.”

    Additional reading

    Uncovering the Research Behaviors of Reporters: A Conceptual Framework for Information Literacy in Journalism
    Katerine E. Boss, et al. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, October 2022.

    The Problem with Psychological Research in the Media
    Steven Stosny. Psychology Today, September 2022.

    Critically Evaluating Claims
    Megha Satyanarayana, The Open Notebook, January 2022.

    How Should Journalists Report a Scientific Study?
    Charles Binkley and Subramaniam Vincent. Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, September 2020.

    What Journalists Get Wrong About Social Science: Full Responses
    Brian Resnick. Vox, January 2016.

    From The Journalist’s Resource

    8 Ways Journalists Can Access Academic Research for Free

    5 Things Journalists Need to Know About Statistical Significance

    5 Common Research Designs: A Quick Primer for Journalists

    5 Tips for Using PubPeer to Investigate Scientific Research Errors and Misconduct

    Percent Change versus Percentage-Point Change: What’s the Difference? 4 Tips for Avoiding Math Errors

    What’s Standard Deviation? 4 Things Journalists Need to Know

    This article first appeared on The Journalist’s Resource and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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  • Kidney Beans vs White Beans – Which is Healthier?
  • Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It – by Gary Taubes

    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.

    We’ve previously reviewed Taubes’ “The Case Against Sugar“. What does this one bring differently?

    Mostly, it’s a different focus. Unsurprisingly, Taubes’ underlying argument is the same: sugar is the biggest dietary health hazard we face. However, this book looks at it specifically through the lens of weight loss, or avoiding weight gain.

    Taubes argues for low-carb in general; he doesn’t frame it specifically as the ketogenic diet here, but that is what he is advocating. However, he also acknowledges that not all carbs are created equal, and looks at several categories that are relatively better or worse for our insulin response, and thus, fat management.

    If the book has a fault it’s that it does argue a bit too much for eating large quantities of meat, based on Weston Price’s outdated and poorly-conducted research. However, if one chooses to disregard that, the arguments for a low-carb diet for weight management remain strong.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to cut some fat without eating less (or exercising more), this book offers a good, well-explained guide for doing so.

    Click here to check out Why We Get Fat, and manage yours!

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  • Dealing With Back Acne

    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? We love to hear from you!

    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 😎

    ❝Lately I’ve increasingly been getting zits on my back, I don’t think my shower habits have changed at all, is this just an age thing or is there something I can do about it?❞

    Well, we cannot diagnose from afar, so definitely consider seeing a dermatologist if it persists and/or it’s more than a small nuisance to you, but…

    Yes and no, with regard to age.

    Rather, it’s not really about age, but (in most cases, anyway) hormonal fluctuations. That’s why teenagers often get it; it’s also why acne breakouts can occur during pregnancy, and it can happen again in perimenopause, menopause, or in the postmenopause climb-down, due to imbalanced hormones during the change, and while it’s less likely for men undergoing the andropause (the noticeable drop of testosterone levels after a certain age), it can absolutely occur if taking certain androgenic supplements, including simply taking testosterone (or conversely, if taking something to dial down antagonistic hormones). It can also happen if you’re taking something that throws out your free testosterone to DHT ratio.

    See also: Prevalence and Demographics of Truncal Involvement Among Acne Patients: Survey Data and a Review of the Literature

    As for what to do in this case? The usual process is: just wait it out. At some point your hormones will become stable again (nature loves equilibrium, and the body is mostly a self-righting system if given what it needs to do that), and your skin will return to normal. To be clear: the acne occurs because of the change, not necessarily the end place. So whatever hormone levels you have, be they medicated or otherwise, you just need to keep them stable now (assuming the levels are fine; if not, get them fine, and then keep them stable—speak to an endocrinologist for that) in order to come out the other side acne-free.

    However, that’s “the usual process”, and obviously we cannot guarantee it’s not something else. It can also be caused by stress:

    The Impact of Pyschological Stress on Acne ← teehee, a typo made it into the publication title

    …in which case, of course, simply manage your stress (we know, often easier said than done, but the point is, that’s the remedy in this case).

    See also: How To Reduce Chronic Stress

    Diet is not the cause (or cure), but enjoying an anti-inflammatory diet will be beneficial, and consuming inflammatory things, exacerbatory:

    Effects of Diet on Acne and Its Response to Treatment

    Hygiene is also rarely to blame, but it can make a difference, so: do wash gently, wear clean clothes, and wash your bedsheets more often than you think necessary. And about that showering:

    Body Scrubs: Benefits, Risks, and Guidance

    Take care!

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  • Anti-Aging Risotto With Mushrooms, White Beans, & Kale

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    This risotto is made with millet, which as well as being gluten-free, is high in resistant starch that’s great for both our gut and our blood sugars. Add the longevity-inducing ergothioneine in the shiitake and portobello mushrooms, as well as the well-balanced mix of macro- and micronutrients, polyphenols such as lutein (important against neurodegeneration) not to mention more beneficial phytochemicals in the seasonings, and we have a very anti-aging dish!

    You will need

    • 3 cups low-sodium vegetable stock
    • 3 cups chopped fresh kale, stems removed (put the removed stems in the freezer with the vegetable offcuts you keep for making low-sodium vegetable stock)
    • 2 cups thinly sliced baby portobello mushrooms
    • 1 cup thinly sliced shiitake mushroom caps
    • 1 cup millet, as yet uncooked
    • 1 can white beans, drained and rinsed (or 1 cup white beans, cooked, drained, and rinsed)
    • ½ cup finely chopped red onion
    • ½ bulb garlic, finely chopped
    • ¼ cup nutritional yeast
    • 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
    • 2 tsp ground black pepper
    • 1 tsp white miso paste
    • ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
    • Extra virgin olive oil

    Method

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

    1) Heat a little oil in a sauté or other pan suitable for both frying and volume-cooking. Fry the onion for about 5 minutes until soft, and then add the garlic, and cook for a further 1 minute, and then turn the heat down low.

    2) Add about ¼ cup of the vegetable stock, and stir in the miso paste and MSG/salt.

    3) Add the millet, followed by the rest of the vegetable stock. Cover and allow to simmer for 30 minutes, until all the liquid is absorbed and the millet is tender.

    4) Meanwhile, heat a little oil to a medium heat in a skillet, and cook the mushrooms (both kinds), until lightly browned and softened, which should only take a few minutes. Add the vinegar and gently toss to coat the mushrooms, before setting side.

    5) Remove the millet from the heat when it is done, and gently stir in the mushrooms, nutritional yeast, white beans, and kale. Cover, and let stand for 10 minutes (this will be sufficient to steam the kale in situ).

    6) Uncover and fluff the risotto with a fork, sprinkling in the black pepper as you do so.

    7) Serve. For a bonus for your tastebuds and blood sugars, drizzle with aged balsamic vinegar.

    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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