Mythbusting Moldy Food
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.
Most Food Should Not Be Fuzzy
In yesterday’s newsletter, we asked you for your policy when it comes to mold on food (aside from intentional mold, e.g. blue cheese etc), and the responses were interesting:
- About 49% said “throw the whole thing away no matter what it is; it is dangerous”
- About 24% said “cut the mold off and eat the rest of whatever it is”
- The remainder were divided equally between “eat it all; keep the immune system on its toes” and “cut the mold off bread, but moldy animal products are dangerous”
So what does the science say?
Some molds are safe to eat: True or False?
True! We don’t think this is contentious so we’ll not spend much time on it, but just for the sake of being methodical: foods that are supposed to have mold on, including many kinds of cheese and even some kinds of cured meat (salami is an example; that powdery coating is mold).
We could give a big list of safe and unsafe molds, but that would be a list of names and let’s face it, they don’t introduce themselves by name.
However! The litmus test of “is it safe to eat” is:
Did you acquire it with this mold already in place and exactly as expected and advertised?
- If so, it is safe to eat (unless you have an allergy or such)
- If not, it is almost certainly not safe to eat
(more on why, later)
The “sniff test” is a good way to tell if moldy food is bad: True or False?
False. Very false. Because of how the sense of smell works.
You may feel like smell is a way of knowing about something at a distance, but the only way you can smell something is if particles of it are physically connecting with your olfactory receptors inside you. Yes, that has unfortunate implications about bathroom smells, but for now, let’s keep our attention in the kitchen.
If you sniff a moldy item of food, you will now have its mold spores inside your respiratory system. You absolutely do not want them there.
If we cut off the mold, the rest is safe to eat: True or False?
True or False, depending on what it is:
- Hard vegetables (e.g carrots, cabbage), and hard cheeses (e.g. Gruyère, Gouda) – cut off with an inch margin, and it should be safe
- Soft vegetables (e.g. tomatoes, and any vegetables that were hard but are now soft after cooking) – discard entirely; it is unsafe
- Anything else – discard entirely; it is unsafe
The reason for this is because in the case of the hard products mentioned, the mycelium roots of the mold cannot penetrate far.
In the case of the soft products mentioned, the surface mold is “the tip of the iceberg”, and the mycelium roots, which you will not usually be able to see, will penetrate the rest of it.
“Anything else” seems like quite a sweeping statement, but fruits, soft cheeses, yogurt, liquids, jams and jellies, cooked grains and pasta, meats, and yes, bread, are all things where the roots can penetrate deeply and easily. Regardless of you only being able to see a small amount, the whole thing is probably moldy.
The USDA has a handy downloadable factsheet:
Molds On Food: Are They Dangerous?
Eating a little mold is good for the immune system: True or False?
False, generally. There are of course countless types of mold, but not only are many of them pathogenic (mycotoxins), but also, a food that has mold will usually also have pathogenic bacteria along with the mold.
See for example: Occurrence, Toxicity, and Analysis of Major Mycotoxins in Food
Food poisoning will never make you healthier.
But penicillin is safe to eat: True or False?
False, and also penicillin is not the mold on your bread (or other foods).
Penicillin, an antibiotic* molecule, is produced by some species of Penicillium sp., a mold. There are hundreds of known species of Penicillium sp., and most of them are toxic, usually in multiple ways. Take for example:
Penicillium roqueforti PR toxin gene cluster characterization
*it is also not healthy to consume antibiotics unless it is seriously necessary. Antibiotics will wipe out most of your gut’s “good bacteria”, leaving you vulnerable. People have died from C. diff infections for this reason. So obviously, if you really need to take antibiotics, take them as directed, but if not, don’t.
See also: Four Ways Antibiotics Can Kill You
One last thing…
It may be that someone reading this is thinking “I’ve eaten plenty of mold, and I’m fine”. Or perhaps someone you tell about this will say that.
But there are two reasons this logic is flawed:
- Survivorship bias (like people who smoke and live to 102; we just didn’t hear from the 99.9% of people who smoke and die early)
- Being unaware of illness is not being absent of illness. Anyone who’s had an alarming diagnosis of something that started a while ago will know this, of course. It’s also possible to be “low-level ill” often and get used to it as a baseline for health. It doesn’t mean it’s not harmful for you.
Stay safe!
Don’t Forget…
Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!
Recommended
Learn to Age Gracefully
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
The Whys and Hows of Cutting Meats Out Of Your Diet
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.
When it’s time to tell the meat to beat it…
Meat in general, and red meat and processed meat in particular, have been associated with so many health risks, that it’s very reasonable to want to reduce, if not outright eliminate, our meat consumption.
First, in case anyone’s wondering “what health risks?”
The aforementioned culprits tend to turn out to be a villain in the story of every second health-related thing we write about here. To name just a few:
- Processed Meat Consumption and the Risk of Cancer: A Critical Evaluation of the Constraints of Current Evidence from Epidemiological Studies
- Red Meat Consumption (Heme Iron Intake) and Risk for Diabetes and Comorbidities?
- Health Risks Associated with Meat Consumption: A Review of Epidemiological Studies
- Associations of Processed Meat, Unprocessed Red Meat, Poultry, or Fish Intake With Incident Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality
- Meat consumption: Which are the current global risks? A review of recent (2010-2020) evidences
Seasoned subscribers will know that we rarely go more than a few days without recommending the very science-based Mediterranean Diet which studies find beneficial for almost everything we write about. The Mediterranean Diet isn’t vegetarian per se—by default it consists of mostly plants but does include some fish and a very small amount of meat from land animals. But even that can be improved upon:
- A Pesco-Mediterranean Diet With Intermittent Fasting
- Mediterranean, vegetarian and vegan diets as practical outtakes of EAS and ACC/AHA recommendations for lowering lipid profile
- A Mediterranean Low-Fat Vegan Diet to Improve Body Weight and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors: A Randomized, Cross-over Trial
So that’s the “why”; now for the “how”…
It’s said that with a big enough “why” you can always find a “how”, but let’s make things easy!
Meatless Mondays
One of the biggest barriers to many people skipping the meat is “what will we even eat?”
The idea of “Meatless Mondays” means that this question need only be answered once a week, and in doing that a few Mondays in a row, you’ll soon find you’re gradually building your repertoire of meatless meals, and finding it’s not so difficult after all.
Then you might want to expand to “meat only on the weekends”, for example.
Flexitarian
This can be met with derision, “Yes and I’m teetotal, apart from wine”, but there is a practical aspect here:
The idea is “I will choose vegetarian options, unless it’s really inconvenient for me to do so”, which wipes out any difficulty involved.
After doing this for a while, you might find that as you get more used to vegetarian stuff, it’s almost never inconvenient to eat vegetarian.
Then you might want to expand it to “I will choose vegan options, unless it’s really inconvenient for me to do so”
Like-for-like substitutions
Pretty much anything that can come from an animal, one can get a plant-based version of it nowadays. The healthiness (and cost!) of these substitutions can vary, but let’s face it, meat is neither the healthiest nor the cheapest thing out there these days either.
If you have the money and don’t fancy leaping to lentils and beans, this can be a very quick and easy zero-effort change-over. Then once you’re up and running, maybe you can—at your leisure—see what all the fuss is about when it comes to tasty recipes with lentils and beans!
That’s all we have time for today, but…
We’re thinking of doing a piece making your favorite recipes plant-based (how to pick the right substitutions so the meal still tastes and “feels” the same), so let us know if you’d like that? Feel free to mention your favorite foods/meals too, as that’ll help us know what there’s a market for!
You can do that by hitting reply to any of our emails, or using the handy feedback widget at the bottom!
Curious to know more while you wait?
Check out: The Vegan Diet: A Complete Guide for Beginners ← this is a well-sourced article from Healthline, who—just like us—like to tackle important health stuff in an easy-to-read, well-sourced format
Share This Post
3 signs your diet is causing too much muscle loss – and what to do about it
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.
When trying to lose weight, it’s natural to want to see quick results. So when the number on the scales drops rapidly, it seems like we’re on the right track.
But as with many things related to weight loss, there’s a flip side: rapid weight loss can result in a significant loss of muscle mass, as well as fat.
So how you can tell if you’re losing too much muscle and what can you do to prevent it?
Why does muscle mass matter?
Muscle is an important factor in determining our metabolic rate: how much energy we burn at rest. This is determined by how much muscle and fat we have. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat, meaning it burns more calories.
When we diet to lose weight, we create a calorie deficit, where our bodies don’t get enough energy from the food we eat to meet our energy needs. Our bodies start breaking down our fat and muscle tissue for fuel.
A decrease in calorie-burning muscle mass slows our metabolism. This quickly slows the rate at which we lose weight and impacts our ability to maintain our weight long term.
How to tell you’re losing too much muscle
Unfortunately, measuring changes in muscle mass is not easy.
The most accurate tool is an enhanced form of X-ray called a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan. The scan is primarily used in medicine and research to capture data on weight, body fat, muscle mass and bone density.
But while DEXA is becoming more readily available at weight-loss clinics and gyms, it’s not cheap.
There are also many “smart” scales available for at home use that promise to provide an accurate reading of muscle mass percentage.
However, the accuracy of these scales is questionable. Researchers found the scales tested massively over- or under-estimated fat and muscle mass.
Fortunately, there are three free but scientifically backed signs you may be losing too much muscle mass when you’re dieting.
1. You’re losing much more weight than expected each week
Losing a lot of weight rapidly is one of the early signs that your diet is too extreme and you’re losing too much muscle.
Rapid weight loss (of more than 1 kilogram per week) results in greater muscle mass loss than slow weight loss.
Slow weight loss better preserves muscle mass and often has the added benefit of greater fat mass loss.
One study compared people in the obese weight category who followed either a very low-calorie diet (500 calories per day) for five weeks or a low-calorie diet (1,250 calories per day) for 12 weeks. While both groups lost similar amounts of weight, participants following the very low-calorie diet (500 calories per day) for five weeks lost significantly more muscle mass.
2. You’re feeling tired and things feel more difficult
It sounds obvious, but feeling tired, sluggish and finding it hard to complete physical activities, such as working out or doing jobs around the house, is another strong signal you’re losing muscle.
Research shows a decrease in muscle mass may negatively impact your body’s physical performance.
3. You’re feeling moody
Mood swings and feeling anxious, stressed or depressed may also be signs you’re losing muscle mass.
Research on muscle loss due to ageing suggests low levels of muscle mass can negatively impact mental health and mood. This seems to stem from the relationship between low muscle mass and proteins called neurotrophins, which help regulate mood and feelings of wellbeing.
So how you can do to maintain muscle during weight loss?
Fortunately, there are also three actions you can take to maintain muscle mass when you’re following a calorie-restricted diet to lose weight.
1. Incorporate strength training into your exercise plan
While a broad exercise program is important to support overall weight loss, strength-building exercises are a surefire way to help prevent the loss of muscle mass. A meta-analysis of studies of older people with obesity found resistance training was able to prevent almost 100% of muscle loss from calorie restriction.
Relying on diet alone to lose weight will reduce muscle along with body fat, slowing your metabolism. So it’s essential to make sure you’ve incorporated sufficient and appropriate exercise into your weight-loss plan to hold onto your muscle mass stores.
But you don’t need to hit the gym. Exercises using body weight – such as push-ups, pull-ups, planks and air squats – are just as effective as lifting weights and using strength-building equipment.
Encouragingly, moderate-volume resistance training (three sets of ten repetitions for eight exercises) can be as effective as high-volume training (five sets of ten repetitions for eight exercises) for maintaining muscle when you’re following a calorie-restricted diet.
2. Eat more protein
Foods high in protein play an essential role in building and maintaining muscle mass, but research also shows these foods help prevent muscle loss when you’re following a calorie-restricted diet.
But this doesn’t mean just eating foods with protein. Meals need to be balanced and include a source of protein, wholegrain carb and healthy fat to meet our dietary needs. For example, eggs on wholegrain toast with avocado.
3. Slow your weight loss plan down
When we change our diet to lose weight, we take our body out of its comfort zone and trigger its survival response. It then counteracts weight loss, triggering several physiological responses to defend our body weight and “survive” starvation.
Our body’s survival mechanisms want us to regain lost weight to ensure we survive the next period of famine (dieting). Research shows that more than half of the weight lost by participants is regained within two years, and more than 80% of lost weight is regained within five years.
However, a slow and steady, stepped approach to weight loss, prevents our bodies from activating defence mechanisms to defend our weight when we try to lose weight.
Ultimately, losing weight long-term comes down to making gradual changes to your lifestyle to ensure you form habits that last a lifetime.
At the Boden Group, Charles Perkins Centre, we are studying the science of obesity and running clinical trials for weight loss. You can register here to express your interest.
Nick Fuller, Charles Perkins Centre Research Program Leader, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Share This Post
How to Change – by Katy Milkman
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.
Sometimes it seems that we know everything we should be doing… We have systems and goals and principles, we know about the importance of habits, and we do our best to live them. Yet, somehow, life has other plans for us and things don’t quite come together they way they did in our genius masterplan.
So, what happened? And more importantly, what are we supposed to do about this? Katy Milkman has answers, right from the start.
Sometimes, it can be as simple as when we try to implement a change. It’s not that there’s a “wrong time” for a good change, so much that there are times that are much more likely to succeed than others… and those times can be identified and used.
Sometimes we’re falling prey to vices—which she explains how to overcome—such as:
- Impulsivity
- Procrastination
- Forgetfulness
- Laziness
We also learn some counterintuitive truths about what can boost or sabotage our confidence along the way!
Milkman writes in a compelling, almost narrative style, that makes for very easy reading. The key ideas, built up to by little (ostensibly true) stories and then revealed, become both clear and memorable. Most importantly, applicable.
Bottom line: this is a great troubleshooting guide for when you know how everything should be working, but somehow, it just doesn’t—and you’d like to fix that.
Click here to check out “How To Change” on Amazon, and get those changes rolling!
Share This Post
Related Posts
The voice in your head may help you recall and process words. But what if you don’t have one?
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.
Can you imagine hearing yourself speak? A voice inside your head – perhaps reciting a shopping list or a phone number? What would life be like if you couldn’t?
Some people, including me, cannot have imagined visual experiences. We cannot close our eyes and conjure an experience of seeing a loved one’s face, or imagine our lounge room layout – to consider if a new piece of furniture might fit in it. This is called “aphantasia”, from a Greek phrase where the “a” means without, and “phantasia” refers to an image. Colloquially, people like myself are often referred to as having a “blind mind”.
While most attention has been given to the inability to have imagined visual sensations, aphantasics can lack other imagined experiences. We might be unable to experience imagined tastes or smells. Some people cannot imagine hearing themselves speak.
A recent study has advanced our understanding of people who cannot imagine hearing their own internal monologue. Importantly, the authors have identified some tasks that such people are more likely to find challenging.
What the study found
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States recruited 93 volunteers. They included 46 adults who reported low levels of inner speech and 47 who reported high levels.
Both groups were given challenging tasks: judging if the names of objects they had seen would rhyme and recalling words. The group without an inner monologue performed worse. But differences disappeared when everyone could say words aloud.
Importantly, people who reported less inner speech were not worse at all tasks. They could recall similar numbers of words when the words had a different appearance to one another. This negates any suggestion that aphants (people with aphantasia) simply weren’t trying or were less capable.
A welcome validation
The study provides some welcome evidence for the lived experiences of some aphants, who are still often told their experiences are not different, but rather that they cannot describe their imagined experiences. Some people feel anxiety when they realise other people can have imagined experiences that they cannot. These feelings may be deepened when others assert they are merely confused or inarticulate.
In my own aphantasia research I have often quizzed crowds of people on their capacity to have imagined experiences.
Questions about the capacity to have imagined visual or audio sensations tend to be excitedly endorsed by a vast majority, but questions about imagined experiences of taste or smell seem to cause more confusion. Some people are adamant they can do this, including a colleague who says he can imagine what combinations of ingredients will taste like when cooked together. But other responses suggest subtypes of aphantasia may prove to be more common than we realise.
The authors of the recent study suggest the inability to imagine hearing yourself speak should be referred to as “anendophasia”, meaning without inner speech. Other authors had suggested anauralia (meaning without auditory imagery). Still other researchers have referred to all types of imagined sensation as being different types of “imagery”.
Having consistent names is important. It can help scientists “talk” to one another to compare findings. If different authors use different names, important evidence can be missed.
We have more than 5 senses
Debate continues about how many senses humans have, but some scientists reasonably argue for a number greater than 20.
In addition to the five senses of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing, lesser known senses include thermoception (our sense of heat) and proprioception (awareness of the positions of our body parts). Thanks to proprioception, most of us can close our eyes and touch the tip of our index finger to our nose. Thanks to our vestibular sense, we typically have a good idea of which way is up and can maintain balance.
It may be tempting to give a new name to each inability to have a given type of imagined sensation. But this could lead to confusion. Another approach would be to adapt phrases that are already widely used. People who are unable to have imagined sensations commonly refer to ourselves as “aphants”. This could be adapted with a prefix, such as “audio aphant”. Time will tell which approach is adopted by most researchers.
Why we should keep investigating
Regardless of the names we use, the study of multiple types of inability to have an imagined sensation is important. These investigations could reveal the essential processes in human brains that bring about a conscious experience of an imagined sensation.
In time, this will not only lead to a better understanding of the diversity of humans, but may help uncover how human brains can create any conscious sensation. This question – how and where our conscious feelings are generated – remains one of the great mysteries of science.
Derek Arnold, Professor, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
The No-Nonsense Meditation Book – by Dr. Steven Laureys
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 reviewed books about meditation before, and when we review books, we try to pick ones that have something that make them stand out from the others. So, what stands out in this case?
The author is a medical doctor and neurologist, with decades of experience focusing on neuronal plasticity and multimodel neural imaging. So, a little beyond “think happy thoughts”-style woo.
The style of the book is pop-science in tone, but with a lot of hard clinical science underpinning it and referenced throughout, as one would expect of a scientist of Dr. Laurey’s stature (with hundreds of peer-reviewed papers in top-level journals).
You may be wondering: is this a “how-to” book or a “why-to” book or a “what-happens” book? It’s all three.
The “how-to” is also, as the title suggests, no-nonsense. We are talking maximum results for minimum mystery here.
Bottom line: if you’d like to be able to take up a meditative practice and know exactly what it’s doing to your brain (quietening these parts, stimulating and physically growing those parts, etc) then this is the book for you.
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
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails:
A drug that can extend your life by 25%? Don’t hold your breath
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.
Every few weeks or months, the media reports on a new study that tantalisingly dangles the possibility of a new drug to give us longer, healthier lives.
The latest study centres around a drug involved in targeting interleukin-11, a protein involved in inflammation. Blocking this protein appeared to help mice stave off disease and extend their life by more than 20%.
If only defying the ravages of time could be achieved through such a simple and effort-free way – by taking a pill. But as is so often the case, the real-world significance of these findings falls a fair way short of the hype.
The role of inflammation in disease and ageing
Chronic inflammation in the body plays a role in causing disease and accelerating ageing. In fact, a relatively new label has been coined to represent this: “inflammaging”.
While acute inflammation is an important response to infection or injury, if inflammation persists in the body, it can be very damaging.
A number of lifestyle, environmental and societal drivers contribute to chronic inflammation in the modern world. These are largely the factors we already know are associated with disease and ageing, including poor diet, lack of exercise, obesity, stress, lack of sleep, lack of social connection and pollution.
While addressing these issues directly is one of the keys to addressing chronic inflammation, disease and ageing, there are a number of research groups also exploring how to treat chronic inflammation with pharmaceuticals. Their goal is to target and modify the molecular and chemical pathways involved in the inflammatory process itself.
What the latest research shows
This new interleukin-11 research was conducted in mice and involved a number of separate components.
In one component of this research, interleukin-11 was genetically knocked out in mice. This means the gene for this chemical mediator was removed from these mice, resulting in the mice no longer being able to produce this mediator at all.
In this part of the study, the mice’s lives were extended by over 20%, on average.
Another component of this research involved treating older mice with a drug that blocks interleukin-11.
Injecting this drug into 75-week old mice (equivalent to 55-year-old humans) was found to extend the life of mice by 22-25%.
These treated mice were less likely to get cancer and had lower cholesterol levels, lower body weight and improved muscle strength and metabolism.
From these combined results, the authors concluded, quite reasonably, that blocking interleukin-11 may potentially be a key to mitigating age-related health effects and improving lifespan in both mice and humans.
Why you shouldn’t be getting excited just yet
There are several reasons to be cautious of these findings.
First and most importantly, this was a study in mice. It may be stating the obvious, but mice are very different to humans. As such, this finding in a mouse model is a long way down the evidence hierarchy in terms of its weight.
Research shows only about 5% of promising findings in animals carry over to humans. Put another way, approximately 95% of promising findings in animals may not be translated to specific therapies for humans.
Second, this is only one study. Ideally, we would be looking to have these findings confirmed by other researchers before even considering moving on to the next stage in the knowledge discovery process and examining whether these findings may be true for humans.
We generally require a larger body of evidence before we get too excited about any new research findings and even consider the possibility of human trials.
Third, even if everything remains positive and follow-up studies support the findings of this current study, it can take decades for a new finding like this to be translated to successful therapies in humans.
Until then, we can focus on doing the things we already know make a huge difference to health and longevity: eating well, exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, reducing stress and nurturing social relationships.
Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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
Join the 98k+ American women taking control of their health & aging with our 100% free (and fun!) daily emails: