How To Get More Nutrition From The Same Food
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How To Get More Out Of What’s On Your Plate
Where does digestion begin? It’s not the stomach. It’s not even the mouth.
It’s when we see and smell our food; maybe even hear it! “Sell the sizzle, not the steak” has a biological underpinning.
At that point, when we begin to salivate, that’s just one of many ways that our body is preparing itself for what we’re about to receive.
When we grab some ready-meal and wolf it down, we undercut that process. In the case of ready-meals, they often didn’t have much nutritional value, but even the most nutritious food isn’t going to do us nearly as much good if it barely touches the sides on the way down.
We’re not kidding about the importance of that initial stage of our external senses, by the way:
- Food perception primes hepatic endoplasmic reticulum homeostasis via melanocortin-dependent control of mTOR activation
- Olfaction regulates organismal proteostasis and longevity via microRNA-dependent signalling
So, mindful eating is not just something for Instagrammable “what I eat in a day” aesthetic photos, nor is just for monks atop cold mountains. There is actual science here, and a lot of it.
It starts with ingredients
“Eating the rainbow” (no, Skittles do not count) is great health advice for getting a wide variety of micronutrients, but it’s also simply beneficial for our senses, too. Which, as above-linked, makes a difference to digestion and nutrient absorption.
Enough is enough
That phrase always sounds like an expression of frustration, “Enough is enough!”. But, really:
Don’t overcomplicate your cooking, especially if you’re new to this approach. You can add in more complexities later, but for now, figure out what will be “enough”, and let it be enough.
The kitchen flow
Here we’re talking about flow in the Csikszentmihalyi sense of the word. Get “into the swing of things” and enjoy your time in the kitchen. Schedule more time than you need, and take it casually. Listen to your favourite music. Dance while you cook. Taste things as you go.
There are benefits, by the way, not just to our digestion (in being thusly primed and prepared for eating), but also to our cognition:
In The Zone: Flow State and Cognition in Older Adults
Serve
No, not just “put the food on the table”, but serve.
Have a pleasant environment; with sensory pleasures but without too many sensory distractions. Think less “the news on in the background” and more smooth jazz or Mozart or whatever works for you. Use your favourite (small!) plates/bowls, silverware, glasses. Have a candle if you like (unscented!).
Pay attention to presentation on the plate / in the bowl / in any “serve yourself” serving-things. Use a garnish (parsley is great if you want to add a touch of greenery without changing the flavor much). Crack that black pepper at the table. Make any condiments count (less “ketchup bottle” and more “elegant dip”).
Take your time
Say grace if that fits with your religious traditions, and/or take a moment to reflect on gratitude.
In many languages there’s a pre-dinner blessing that most often translates to “good appetite”. This writer is fond of the Norwegian “Velbekommen”, and it means more like “May good come of it for you”, or “May it do you good”.
Then, enjoy the food.
For the most even of blood sugar levels, consider eating fiber, protein/fat, carbs, in that order.
Why? See: 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
Chew adequately and mindfully. Put your fork (or spoon, or chopsticks, or whatever) down between bites. Drink water alongside your meal.
Try to take at least 20 minutes to enjoy your meal, and/but any time you go to reach for another helping, take a moment to check in with yourself with regard to whether you are actually still hungry. If you’re not, and are just eating for pleasure, consider deferring that pleasure by saving the food for later.
At this point, people with partners/family may be thinking “But it won’t be there later! Someone else will eat it!”, and… That’s fine! Be happy for them. You can cook again tomorrow. You prepared delicious wholesome food that your partner/family enjoyed, and that’s always a good thing.
Want to know more about the science of mindful eating?
Check out Harvard’s Dr. Lilian Cheung on Mindful Eating here!
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Train For The Event Of Your Life!
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Mobility As A Sporting Pursuit
As we get older, it becomes increasingly important to treat life like a sporting event. By this we mean:
As an “athlete of life”, there are always events coming up for which we need to train. Many of these events will be surprise tests!
Such events/tests might include:
- Not slipping in the shower and breaking a hip (or worse)
- Reaching an item from a high shelf without tearing a ligament
- Getting out of the car at an awkward angle without popping a vertebra
- Climbing stairs without passing out light-headed at the top
- Descending stairs without making it a sled-ride-without-a-sled
…and many more.
Train for these athletic events now
Not necessarily this very second; we appreciate you finishing reading first. But, now generally in your life, not after the first time you fail such a test; it can (and if we’re not attentive: will) indeed happen to us all.
With regard to falling, you might like to revisit our…
…which covers how to not fall, and to not injure yourself if you do.
You’ll also want to be able to keep control of your legs (without them buckling) all the way between standing and being on the ground.
Slav squats or sitting squats (same exercise, different names, amongst others) are great for building and maintaining this kind of strength and suppleness:
(Click here for a refresher if you haven’t recently seen Zuzka’s excellent video explaining how to do this, especially if it’s initially difficult for you, “The Most Anti-Aging Exercise”)
this exercise is, by the way, great for pretty much everything below the waist!
You will also want to do resistance exercises to keep your body robust:
Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)
And as for those shoulders? If it is convenient for you to go swimming, then backstroke is awesome for increasing and maintaining shoulder mobility (and strength).
If swimming isn’t a viable option for you, then doing the same motion with your arms, while standing, will build the same flexibility. If you do it while holding a small weight (even just 1kg is fine, but feel free to increase if you so wish and safely can) in each hand will build the necessary strength as you go too.
As for why even just 1kg is fine: read on
About that “and strength”, by the way…
Stretching is not everything. Stretching is great, but mobility without strength (in that joint!) is just asking for dislocation.
You don’t have to be built like the Terminator, but you do need to have the structural integrity to move your body and then a little bit more weight than that (or else any extra physical work could be enough to tip you to breaking point) without incurring damage from the strain. So, it needs to not be a strain! See again, the aforementioned resistance exercises.
That said, even very gentle exercise helps too; see for example the impact of walking on osteoporosis:
Living near green spaces linked to higher bone density and lower osteoporosis risk
and…
So you don’t have to run marathons—although you can if you want:
Marathons in Mid- and Later-Life
…to keep your hips and more in good order.
Want to test yourself now?
Check out:
Building & Maintaining Mobility
Take care!
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The Myth of Normal – by Dr. Gabor Maté and Daniel Maté
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A lot of popular beliefs (and books!) start with the assumption that everyone is, broadly speaking, “normal”. That major diversions from “normal” happen only to other people… And that minor diversions from “normal” are just something to suck up and get over—magically effecting a return to “normalcy”.
Dr. Maté, however, will have none of these unhelpful brush-offs, and observes that in fact most if not all of us have been battered by the fates one way or another. We just:
- note that we have more similarities than differences, and
- tend to hide our own differences (to be accepted) or overlook other people’s (to make them more acceptable).
How is this more helpful? Well, the above approach isn’t always, but Mate has an improvement to offer:
We must see flawed humans (including ourselves) as the product of our environments… and/but see this a reason to look at improving those environments!
Beyond that…
The final nine chapters of the books he devotes to “pathways to wholeness” and, in a nutshell, recovery. Recovery from whatever it was for you. And if you’ve had a life free from anything that needs recovering from, then congratulations! You doubtlessly have at least one loved one who wasn’t so lucky, though, so this book still makes for excellent reading.
Dr. Maté was awarded the Order of Canada for his medical work and writing. His work has mostly been about addiction, trauma, stress, and childhood development. He co-wrote this book with his son, Daniel.
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The Sugar Alcohol That Reduces BMI!
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Inositol Does-It-Ol’!
First things first, a quick clarification up-front:
Myo-inositol or D-chiro-inositol?
We’re going to be talking about inositol today, which comes in numerous forms, but most importantly:
- Myo-inositol (myo-Ins)
- D-chiro-inositol (D-chiro-Ins)
These are both inositol, (a sugar alcohol!) and for our purposes today, the most relevant form is myo-inositol.
The studies we’ll look at today are either:
- just about myo-inositol, or
- about myo-inositol in the presence of d-chiro-inositol at a 40:1 ratio.
You have both in your body naturally; wherever supplementation is mentioned, it means supplementing with either:
- extra myo-inositol (because that’s the one the body more often needs more of), or
- both, at the 40:1 ratio that we mentioned above (because that’s one way to help balance an imbalanced ratio)
With that in mind…
Inositol against diabetes?
Inositol is known to:
- decrease insulin resistance
- increase insulin sensitivity
- have an important role in cell signaling
- have an important role in metabolism
The first two things there both mean that inositol is good against diabetes. It’s not “take this and you’re cured”, but:
- if you’re pre-diabetic it may help you avoid type 2 diabetes
- if you are diabetic (either type) it can help in the management of your diabetes.
It does this by allowing your body to make better use of insulin (regardless of whether that insulin is from your pancreas or from the pharmacy).
How does it do that? Research is still underway and there’s a lot we don’t know yet, but here’s one way, for example:
❝Evidence showed that inositol phosphates might enhance the browning of white adipocytes and directly improve insulin sensitivity through adipocytes❞
Read: Role of Inositols and Inositol Phosphates in Energy Metabolism
We mentioned its role in metabolism in a bullet-point above, and we didn’t just mean insulin sensitivity! There’s also…
Inositol for thyroid function?
The thyroid is one of the largest endocrine glands in the body, and it controls how quickly the body burns energy, makes proteins, and how sensitive the body should be to other hormones. So, it working correctly or not can have a big impact on everything from your mood to your weight to your energy levels.
How does inositol affect thyroid function?
- Inositol has an important role in thyroid function and dealing with autoimmune diseases.
- Inositol is essential to produce H2O2 (yes, really) required for the synthesis of thyroid hormones.
- Depletion of inositol may lead to the development of some thyroid diseases, such as hypothyroidism.
- Inositol supplementation seems to help in the management of thyroid diseases.
Read: The Role of Inositol in Thyroid Physiology and in Subclinical Hypothyroidism Management
Inositol for PCOS?
A systematic review published in the Journal of Gynecological Endocrinology noted:
- Inositol can restore spontaneous ovarian activity (and consequently fertility) in most patients with PCOS.
- Myo-inositol is a safe and effective treatment to improve:
- ovarian function
- healthy metabolism
- healthy hormonal balance
While very comprehensive (which is why we included it here), that review’s a little old, so…
Check out this cutting edge (Jan 2023) study whose title says it all:
Inositol for fertility?
Just last year, Mendoza et al published that inositol supplementation, together with antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, could be an optimal strategy to improve female fertility.
This built from Gambiole and Forte’s work, which laid out how inositol is a safe compound for many issues related to fertility and pregnancy. In particular, several clinical trials demonstrated that:
- inositol can have therapeutic effects in infertile women
- inositol can also be useful as a preventive treatment during pregnancy
- inositol could prevent the onset of neural tube defects
- inositol also reduces the occurrence of gestational diabetes
Due to the safety and efficiency of inositol, it can take the place of many drugs that are contraindicated in pregnancy. Basically: take this, and you’ll need fewer other drugs. Always a win!
Read: Myo-Inositol as a Key Supporter of Fertility and Physiological Gestation
Inositol For Weight Loss
We promised you “this alcohol sugar can reduce your BMI”, and we weren’t making it up!
Zarezadeh et al conducited a very extensive systematic review, and found:
- Oral inositol supplementation has positive effect on BMI reduction.
- Inositol in the form of myo-inositol had the strongest effect on BMI reduction.
- Participants with PCOS and/or who were overweight, experienced the most significant improvement of all.
Want some inositol?
As ever, we don’t sell it (or anything else), but for your convenience, here’s myo-inositol and d-chiro-inositol at a 40:1 ratio, available on Amazon!
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What To Leave Off Your Table (To Stay Off This Surgeon’s)
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Why we eat too much (and how we can fix that)
This is Dr. Andrew Jenkinson. He’s a Consultant Surgeon specializing in the treatment of obesity, gallstones, hernias, heartburn and abdominal pain. He runs regular clinics in both London and Dubai. What he has to offer us today, though, is insight as to what’s on our table that puts us on his table, and how we can quite easily change that up.
So, why do we eat too much?
First things first: some metabolic calculations. No, we’re not going to require you to grab a calculator here… Your body does it for you!
Our body’s amazing homeostatic system (the system that does its best to keep us in the “Goldilocks Zone” of all our bodily systems; not too hot or too cold, not dehydrated or overhydrated, not hyperglycemic or hypoglycemic, blood pressure not too high or too low, etc, etc) keeps track of our metabolic input and output.
What this means: if we increase or decrease our caloric consumption, our body will do its best to increase or decrease our metabolism accordingly:
- If we don’t give it enough energy, it will try to conserve energy (first by slowing our activities; eventually by shutting down organs in a last-ditch attempt to save the rest of us)
- If we give it too much energy, it will try to burn it off, and what it can’t burn, it will store
In short: if we eat 10% or 20% more or less than usual, our body will try to use 10% to 20% more or less than usual, accordingly.
So… How does this get out of balance?
The problem is in how our system does that, and how we inadvertently trick it, to our detriment.
For a system to function, it needs at its most base level two things—a sensor and a switch:
- A sensor: to know what’s going on
- A switch: to change what it’s doing accordingly
Now, if we eat the way we’re evolved to—as hunter-gatherers, eating mostly fruit and vegetables, supplemented by animal products when we can get them—then our body knows exactly what it’s eating, and how to respond accordingly.
Furthermore, that kind of food takes some eating! Most fruit these days is mostly water and fiber; in those days it often had denser fiber (before agricultural science made things easier to eat), but either way, our body knows when we are eating fruit and how to handle that. Vegetables, similarly. Unprocessed animal products, again, the gut goes “we know what this is” and responds accordingly.
But modern ultra-processed foods with trans-fatty acids, processed sugar and flour?
These foods zip calories straight into our bloodstream like greased lightning. We get them so quickly so easily and in such great caloric density, that our body doesn’t have the chance to count them on the way in!
What this means is: the body has no idea what it’s just consumed or how much or what to do with it, and doesn’t adjust our metabolism accordingly.
Bottom line:
Evolutionarily speaking, your body has no idea what ultra-processed food is. If you skip it and go for whole foods, you can, within the bounds of reason, eat what you like and your body will handle it by adjusting your metabolism accordingly.
Now, advising you “avoid ultra-processed foods and eat whole foods” was probably not a revelation in and of itself.
But: sometimes knowing a little more about the “why” makes the difference when it comes to motivation.
Want to know more about Dr. Jenkinson’s expert insights on this topic?
If you like, you can check out his website here—he has a book too
Why We Eat (Too Much) – Dr. Andrew Jenkinson on the Science of Appetite
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Small Changes For A Healthier Life
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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
I am interested in what I can substitute for ham in bean soup?
Well, that depends on what the ham was like! You can certainly buy ready-made vegan lardons (i.e. small bacon/ham bits, often in tiny cubes or similar) in any reasonably-sized supermarket. Being processed, they’re not amazing for the health, but are still an improvement on pork.
Alternatively, you can make your own seitan! Again, seitan is really not a health food, but again, it’s still relatively less bad than pork (unless you are allergic to gluten, in which case, definitely skip this one).
Alternatively alternatively, in a soup that already contains beans (so the protein element is already covered), you could just skip the ham as an added ingredient, and instead bring the extra flavor by means of a little salt, a little yeast extract (if you don’t like yeast extract, don’t worry, it won’t taste like it if you just use a teaspoon in a big pot, or half a teaspoon in a smaller pot), and a little smoked paprika. If you want to go healthier, you can swap out the salt for MSG, which enhances flavor in a similar fashion while containing less sodium.
Wondering about the health aspects of MSG? Check out our main feature on this, from last month:
I thoroughly enjoy your daily delivery. I’d love to see one for teens too!
That’s great to hear! The average age of our subscribers is generally rather older, but it’s good to know there’s an interest in topics for younger people. We’ll bear that in mind, and see what we can do to cater to that without alienating our older readers!
That said: it’s never too soon to be learning about stuff that affects us when we’re older—there are lifestyle factors at 20 that affect Alzheimer’s risk at 60, for example (e.g. drinking—excessive drinking at 20* is correlated to higher Alzheimer’s risk at 60).
*This one may be less of an issue for our US readers, since the US doesn’t have nearly as much of a culture of drinking under 21 as some places. Compare for example with general European practices of drinking moderately from the mid-teens, or the (happily, diminishing—but historically notable) British practice of drinking heavily from the mid-teens.
How much turmeric should I take each day?
Dr. Michael Greger’s research (of “Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen” and “How Not To Die” fame) recommends getting at least ¼ tsp turmeric per day
Remember to take it with black pepper though, for a 2000% absorption bonus!
A great way to get it, if you don’t want to take capsules and don’t want to eat spicy food every day, is to throw a teaspoon of turmeric in when making a pot of (we recommend wholegrain!) rice. Turmeric is very water-soluble, so it’ll be transferred into the rice easily during cooking. It’ll make the rice a nice golden yellow color, and/but won’t noticeably change the taste.
Again remember to throw in some black pepper, and if you really want to boost the nutritional content,some chia seeds are a great addition too (they’ll get cooked with the rice and so it won’t be like eating seeds later, but the nutrients will be there in the rice dish).
You can do the same with par-boiled potatoes or other root vegetables, but because cooking those has water to be thrown away at the end (unlike rice), you’ll lose some turmeric in the water.
Request: more people need to be aware of suicidal tendencies and what they can do to ward them off
That’s certainly a very important topic! We’ll cover that properly in one of our Psychology Sunday editions. In the meantime, we’ll mention a previous special that we did, that was mostly about handling depression (in oneself or a loved one), and obviously there’s a degree of crossover:
The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
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Body Language (In The Real World)
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Forget What You Think You Know About Body Language
…unless it’s about a specific person whose habits and mannerisms you know intimately, in which case, you probably have enough personal data stored up to actually recognize patterns à la “when my spouse does this, then…”, and probably do know what’s going on.
For everyone else… our body language can be as unique as our idiolect
What’s an idiolect? It’s any one given person’s way of speaking/writing, in their natural state (i.e. without having to adjust their style for some reason, for example in a public-facing role at work, where style often becomes much narrower and more consciously-chosen).
Extreme example first
To give an extreme example of how non-verbal communication can be very different than a person thinks, there’s an anecdote floating around the web of someone whose non-verbal autistic kid would, when he liked someone who was visiting the house, hide their shoes when they were about to leave, to cause them to stay longer. Then one day some relative visited and when she suggested that she “should be going sometime soon”, he hurried to bring her her shoes. She left, happy that the kid liked her (he did not).
The above misunderstanding happened because the visitor had the previous life experience of “a person who brings me things is being helpful, and if they do it of their own free will, it’s because they like me”.
In other words…
Generalizations are often sound… In general
…which does not help us when dealing with individuals, which as it turns out, everyone is.
Clenched fists = tense and angry… Except when it’s just what’s comfortable for someone, or they have circulation issues, or this, or that, or the other.
Pacing = agitated… Except when it’s just someone who finds the body in motion more comfortable
Relaxed arms and hands = at ease and unthreatening… Unless it’s a practitioner of various martial arts for whom that is their default ready-for-action state.
Folded arms = closed-off, cold, distant… Or it was just somewhere to put one’s hands.
Lack of eye contact = deceitful, hiding something… Unless it’s actually for any one of a wide number of reasons, which brings us to our next section:
A liar’s “tells”
Again, if you know someone intimately and know what signs are associated with deceit in them, then great, that’s a thing you know. But for people in general…
A lot of what is repeated about “how to know if someone is lying” has seeped into public consciousness from “what police use to justify their belief that someone is lying”.
This is why many of the traditional “this person is lying” signs are based around behaviors that show up when in fact “this person is afraid, under pressure, and talking to an authority figure who has the power to ruin their life”:
Research on Non-verbal Signs of Lies and Deceit: A Blind Alley
But what about eye-accessing cues? They have science to them, right?
For any unfamiliar: this is about the theory that when we are accessing different parts of our mind (such as memory or creativity, thus truthfulness or lying), our eyes move one way or another according to what faculty we’re accessing.
Does it work? No
But, if you carefully calibrate it for a specific person, such as by asking them questions along the lines of “describe your front door” or “describe your ideal holiday”, to see which ways they look for recall or creativity… Then also no:
The Eyes Don’t Have It: Lie Detection and Neuro-Linguistic Programming
How can we know what non-verbal communication means, then?
With strangers? We can’t, simply. It’s on us to be open-minded, with a healthy balance of optimism and wariness.
With people we know? We can build up a picture over time, learn the person’s patterns. Best of all, we can ask them. In the moment, and in general.
For more on optimizing interpersonal communication, check out:
Save Time With Better Communication
…and the flipside of that:
The Problem With Active Listening (And How To Do It Better)
Take care!
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