Pine Nuts vs Peanuts – Which is Healthier?

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Our Verdict

When comparing pine nuts to peanuts, we picked the pine nuts.

Why?

An argument could be made for either, honestly, as it depends on what we prioritize the most. These are both very high-calorie foods, and/but are far from empty calories, as they both contain main nutrients. Obviously, if you are allergic to nuts, this one is just not a comparison for you, sorry.

Looking at the macros first, peanuts are higher in protein, carbs, and fiber, while pine nuts are higher in fats—though the fats are healthy, being mostly polyunsaturated, with about a third of the total fats monounsaturated, and a low amount of saturated fat (peanuts have nearly 2x the saturated fat). On balance, we’ll call the macros category a moderate win for peanuts, though.

In terms of vitamins, peanuts have more of vitamins B1, B3, B5, B6, and B9, while pine nuts have more of vitamins A, B2, C, E, K, and choline. All in all, a marginal win for pine nuts.

In the category of minerals, peanuts have more calcium and selenium, while pine nuts have more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc. An easy win for pine nuts, even before we take into account that peanuts have nearly 10x as much sodium. And yes, we are talking about the raw nuts, not nuts that have been roasted and salted.

Adding up the categories gives a win for pine nuts—but if you have certain particular priorities, you might still prefer peanuts for the areas in which peanuts are stronger.

Of course, the best solution is to enjoy both!

Want to learn more?

You might like to read:

Why You Should Diversify Your Nuts!

Take care!

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  • Morning Routines That Just FLOW

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    Morning Routines That Just FLOW

    “If the hardest thing you have to do in your day is eat a frog, eat that frog first!”, they say.

    And, broadly speaking, it is indeed good to get anything stressful out of the way early, so that we can relax afterwards. But…

    • Are we truly best at frog-eating when blurry-eyed and sleepy?
    • Is there a spoonful of sugar that could make the medicine go down better?
    • What do we need to turn eating the frog into an enjoyable activity?

    Flow

    “Flow” is a concept brought to public consciousness by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and it refers to a state in which we feel good about what we’re doing, and just keep doing, at a peak performance level.

    Writer’s note: as a writer, for example…

    Sometimes I do not want to write, I pace to and fro near my computer, going on side-quests like getting a coffee or gazing out of the window into my garden. But once I get going, suddenly, something magical happens and before I know it, I have to trim my writing down because I’ve written too much. That magical window of effortless productivity was a state of flow.

    Good morning!

    What is a good morning, to you? Build that into your morning! Set parameters around it so you don’t get carried away timewise and find yourself in the afternoon (unless that would work for you!), but first thing in the morning is the time to light up each part of your brain with appropriate neurotransmitters.

    Getting the brain juices flowing

    Cortisol

    When we wake up, we (unless we have some neurochemical imbalance, such as untreated depression) get a spike of cortisol. Cortisol is much-maligned and feared, and indeed it can be very much deleterious to the health in cases of chronic stress. But a little spike now and again is actually beneficial for us.

    Quick Tip: if you want to artificially stimulate (or enhance) a morning cortisol spike, a cold shower is the way to go. Or even just a face-plunge into a bowl of ice-water (put ice in it, give it a couple of minutes to chill the water, then put your face in for a count of 30 seconds, or less if you can’t hold your breath that long).

    Serotonin

    Serotonin is generally thought of as “the happy chemical”, and it’s stimulated by blue/white light, and also by seeing greenery.

    Quick tip: to artificially stimulate (or enhance) a morning serotonin boost, your best friend is sunlight. Even sun through a partly-clouded sky will tend to outperform artificial lighting, including artificial sunlight lighting. Try to get sun between 08:30 and 09:00, if you can. Best of all, do it in your garden or nearby park, as the greenery will be an extra boost!

    Dopamine

    Generally thought of as “the reward chemical”, but it’s also critical for a lot of kinds of brainwork, including language processing and problem-solving.

    Quick Tip: to artificially stimulate* a dopamine surge to get you going, do something that you and/or your body finds rewarding. Examples include:

    • Exercise, especially in a vigorous burst
    • A good breakfast, a nice coffee, whatever feels right to you
    • An app that has motivational bells and whistles, a streak for you to complete, etc

    Note: another very enjoyable activity might come to mind that doesn’t even require you getting out of bed. Be aware, however, gentleman-readers specifically, that if you complete that activity, you’ll get a prolactin spike that will wipe out the dopamine you just worked up (because prolactin is antagonistic to dopamine). So that one’s probably better for a lazy morning when you can go back to sleep, than a day when you want to get up and go! Ladies, this is less of a worry for us as the physiology an orgasm driven by estrogen+progesterone rather than testosterone is different; there will not usually be a prolactin spike following the spike of dopamine; our orgasm-related dopamine spike is followed by a wave of oxytocin instead (“the cuddle chemical”), which is much more pleasant than prolactin.

    *there’s no “(or enhance)” for this one; you won’t get dopamine from doing nothing, that’s just not how “the reward chemical” works

    Flow-building in a stack

    When you’ve just woken up and are in a blurry morning haze, that’s not the time to be figuring out “what should I be doing next?”, so instead:

    • Work out the things you want to incorporate into your morning routine
    • Put them in the order that will be easiest to perform—some things will go a lot better after others!
    • Remember to also include things that are simply necessary—morning bathroom ablutions, for example

    The goal here is to have a this-and-this-and-this-and-this list of items that you can go through without any deviations, and get in the habit of “after item 1 I automatically do item 2, after which I automatically do item 3, after which…”

    Implement this, and your mornings will become practically automated, but in a joyous, life-enhancing way that sets you up in good order for whatever you want/need to do!

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  • From eye exams to blood tests and surgery: how doctors use light to diagnose disease

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    This is the next article in our ‘Light and health’ series, where we look at how light affects our physical and mental health in sometimes surprising ways. Read other articles in the series.

    You’re not feeling well. You’ve had a pounding headache all week, dizzy spells and have vomited up your past few meals.

    You visit your GP to get some answers and sit while they shine a light in your eyes, order a blood test and request some medical imaging.

    Everything your GP just did relies on light. These are just some of the optical technologies that have had an enormous impact in how we diagnose disease.

    megaflopp/Shutterstock

    1. On-the-spot tests

    Point-of-care diagnostics allow doctors to test patients on the spot and get answers in minutes, rather than sending samples to a lab for analysis.

    The “flashlight” your GP uses to view the inside of your eye (known as an ophthalmoscope) is a great example. This allows doctors to detect abnormal blood flow in the eye, deformations of the cornea (the outermost clear layer of the eye), or swollen optical discs (a round section at the back of the eye where the nerve link to the brain begins). Swollen discs are a sign of elevated pressure inside your head (or in the worst case, a brain tumour) that could be causing your headaches.

    The invention of lasers and LEDs has enabled many other miniaturised technologies to be provided at the bedside or clinic rather than in the lab.

    Pulse oximetry is a famous example, where a clip attached to your finger reports how well your blood is oxygenated. It does this by measuring the different responses of oxygenated and de-oxygenated blood to different colours of light.

    Pulse oximetry is used at hospitals (and sometimes at home) to monitor your respiratory and heart health. In hospitals, it is also a valuable tool for detecting heart defects in babies.

    Pulse oximeter on finger of hospital patient, person holding patient's hand
    See that clip on the patient’s finger? That’s a pulse oximeter, which relies on light to monitor respiratory and heart health. CGN089/Shutterstock

    2. Looking at molecules

    Now, back to that blood test. Analysing a small amount of your blood can diagnose many different diseases.

    A machine called an automated “full blood count analyser” tests for general markers of your health. This machine directs focused beams of light through blood samples held in small glass tubes. It counts the number of blood cells, determines their specific type, and reports the level of haemoglobin (the protein in red blood cells that distributes oxygen around your body). In minutes, this machine can provide a snapshot of your overall health.

    For more specific disease markers, blood serum is separated from the heavier cells by spinning in a rotating instrument called a centrifuge. The serum is then exposed to special chemical stains and enzyme assays that change colour depending on whether specific molecules, which may be the sign of a disease, are present.

    These colour changes can’t be detected with the naked eye. However, a light beam from an instrument called a spectrometer can detect tiny amounts of these substances in the blood and determine if the biomarkers for diseases are present, and at what levels.

    Gloved hand holding tube containing blood sample, more tubes in rack in background
    Light shines through the blood sample and tells us whether biomarkers for disease are present. angellodeco/Shutterstock

    3. Medical imaging

    Let’s re-visit those medical images your GP ordered. The development of fibre-optic technology, made famous for transforming high-speed digital communications (such as the NBN), allows light to get inside the body. The result? High-resolution optical imaging.

    A common example is an endoscope, where fibres with a tiny camera on the end are inserted into the body’s natural openings (such as your mouth or anus) to examine your gut or respiratory tracts.

    Surgeons can insert the same technology through tiny cuts to view the inside of the body on a video screen during laparoscopic surgery (also known as keyhole surgery) to diagnose and treat disease.

    Endoscope tube
    Doctors can insert this flexible fibre-optic tube with a camera on the end into your body. Eduard Valentinov/Shutterstock

    How about the future?

    Progress in nanotechnology and a better understanding of the interactions of light with our tissues are leading to new light-based tools to help diagnose disease. These include:

    • nanomaterials (materials on an extremely small scale, many thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair). These are being used in next-generation sensors and new diagnostic tests
    • wearable optical biosensors the size of your fingernail can be included in devices such as watches, contact lenses or finger wraps. These devices allow non-invasive measurements of sweat, tears and saliva, in real time
    • AI tools to analyse how blood serum scatters infrared light. This has allowed researchers to build a comprehensive database of scatter patterns to detect any cancer
    • a type of non-invasive imaging called optical coherence tomography for more detailed imaging of the eye, heart and skin
    • fibre optic technology to deliver a tiny microscope into the body on the tip of a needle.

    So the next time you’re at the GP and they perform (or order) some tests, chances are that at least one of those tests depend on light to help diagnose disease.

    Matthew Griffith, Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow and Director, UniSA Microscopy and Microanalysis Facilities, University of South Australia

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

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  • Their First Baby Came With Medical Debt. These Illinois Parents Won’t Have Another.

    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.

    JACKSONVILLE, Ill. — Heather Crivilare was a month from her due date when she was rushed to an operating room for an emergency cesarean section.

    The first-time mother, a high school teacher in rural Illinois, had developed high blood pressure, a sometimes life-threatening condition in pregnancy that prompted doctors to hospitalize her. Then Crivilare’s blood pressure spiked, and the baby’s heart rate dropped. “It was terrifying,” Crivilare said.

    She gave birth to a healthy daughter. What followed, though, was another ordeal: thousands of dollars in medical debt that sent Crivilare and her husband scrambling for nearly a year to keep collectors at bay.

    The Crivilares would eventually get on nine payment plans as they juggled close to $5,000 in bills.

    “It really felt like a full-time job some days,” Crivilare recalled. “Getting the baby down to sleep and then getting on the phone. I’d set up one payment plan, and then a new bill would come that afternoon. And I’d have to set up another one.”

    Crivilare’s pregnancy may have been more dramatic than most. But for millions of new parents, medical debt is now as much a hallmark of having children as long nights and dirty diapers.

    About 12% of the 100 million U.S. adults with health care debt attribute at least some of it to pregnancy or childbirth, according to a KFF poll.

    These people are more likely to report they’ve had to take on extra work, change their living situation, or make other sacrifices.

    Overall, women between 18 and 35 who have had a baby in the past year and a half are twice as likely to have medical debt as women of the same age who haven’t given birth recently, other KFF research conducted for this project found.

    “You feel bad for the patient because you know that they want the best for their pregnancy,” said Eilean Attwood, a Rhode Island OB-GYN who said she routinely sees pregnant women anxious about going into debt.

    “So often, they may be coming to the office or the hospital with preexisting debt from school, from other financial pressures of starting adult life,” Attwood said. “They are having to make real choices, and what those real choices may entail can include the choice to not get certain services or medications or what may be needed for the care of themselves or their fetus.”

    Best-Laid Plans

    Crivilare and her husband, Andrew, also a teacher, anticipated some of the costs.

    The young couple settled in Jacksonville, in part because the farming community less than two hours north of St. Louis was the kind of place two public school teachers could afford a house. They saved aggressively. They bought life insurance.

    And before Crivilare got pregnant in 2021, they enrolled in the most robust health insurance plan they could, paying higher premiums to minimize their deductible and out-of-pocket costs.

    Then, two months before their baby was due, Crivilare learned she had developed preeclampsia. Her pregnancy would no longer be routine. Crivilare was put on blood pressure medication, and doctors at the local hospital recommended bed rest at a larger medical center in Springfield, about 35 miles away.

    “I remember thinking when they insisted that I ride an ambulance from Jacksonville to Springfield … ‘I’m never going to financially recover from this,’” she said. “‘But I want my baby to be OK.’”

    For weeks, Crivilare remained in the hospital alone as covid protocols limited visitors. Meanwhile, doctors steadily upped her medications while monitoring the fetus. It was, she said, “the scariest month of my life.”

    Fear turned to relief after her daughter, Rita, was born. The baby was small and had to spend nearly two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit. But there were no complications. “We were incredibly lucky,” Crivilare said.

    When she and Rita finally came home, a stack of medical bills awaited. One was already past due.

    Crivilare rushed to set up payment plans with the hospitals in Jacksonville and Springfield, as well as the anesthesiologist, the surgeon, and the labs. Some providers demanded hundreds of dollars a month. Some settled for monthly payments of $20 or $25. Some pushed Crivilare to apply for new credit cards to pay the bills.

    “It was a blur of just being on the phone constantly with all the different people collecting money,” she recalled. “That was a nightmare.”

    Big Bills, Big Consequences

    The Crivilares’ bills weren’t unusual. Parents with private health coverage now face on average more than $3,000 in medical bills related to a pregnancy and childbirth that aren’t covered by insurance, researchers at the University of Michigan found.

    Out-of-pocket costs are even higher for families with a newborn who needs to stay in a neonatal ICU, averaging $5,000. And for 1 in 11 of these families, medical bills related to pregnancy and childbirth exceed $10,000, the researchers found.

    “This forces very difficult trade-offs for families,” said Michelle Moniz, a University of Michigan OB-GYN who worked on the study. “Even though they have insurance, they still have these very high bills.”

    Nationwide polls suggest millions of these families end up in debt, with sometimes devastating consequences.

    About three-quarters of U.S. adults with debt related to pregnancy or childbirth have cut spending on food, clothing, or other essentials, KFF polling found.

    About half have put off buying a home or delayed their own or their children’s education.

    These burdens have spurred calls to limit what families must pay out-of-pocket for medical care related to pregnancy and childbirth.

    In Massachusetts, state Sen. Cindy Friedman has proposed legislation to exempt all these bills from copays, deductibles, and other cost sharing. This would parallel federal rules that require health plans to cover recommended preventive services like annual physicals without cost sharing for patients. “We want … healthy children, and that starts with healthy mothers,” Friedman said. Massachusetts health insurers have warned the proposal will raise costs, but an independent state analysis estimated the bill would add only $1.24 to monthly insurance premiums.

    Tough Lessons

    For her part, Crivilare said she wishes new parents could catch their breath before paying down medical debt.

    “No one is in the right frame of mind to deal with that when they have a new baby,” she said, noting that college graduates get such a break. “When I graduated with my college degree, it was like: ‘Hey, new adult, it’s going to take you six months to kind of figure out your life, so we’ll give you this six-month grace period before your student loans kick in and you can get a job.’”

    Rita is now 2. The family scraped by on their payment plans, retiring the medical debt within a year, with help from Crivilare’s side job selling resources for teachers online.

    But they are now back in debt, after Rita’s recurrent ear infections required surgery last year, leaving the family with thousands of dollars in new medical bills.

    Crivilare said the stress has made her think twice about seeing a doctor, even for Rita. And, she added, she and her husband have decided their family is complete.

    “It’s not for us to have another child,” she said. “I just hope that we can put some of these big bills behind us and give [Rita] the life that we want to give her.”

    About This Project

    “Diagnosis: Debt” is a reporting partnership between KFF Health News and NPR exploring the scale, impact, and causes of medical debt in America.

    The series draws on original polling by KFF, court records, federal data on hospital finances, contracts obtained through public records requests, data on international health systems, and a yearlong investigation into the financial assistance and collection policies of more than 500 hospitals across the country. 

    Additional research was conducted by the Urban Institute, which analyzed credit bureau and other demographic data on poverty, race, and health status for KFF Health News to explore where medical debt is concentrated in the U.S. and what factors are associated with high debt levels.

    The JPMorgan Chase Institute analyzed records from a sampling of Chase credit card holders to look at how customers’ balances may be affected by major medical expenses. And the CED Project, a Denver nonprofit, worked with KFF Health News on a survey of its clients to explore links between medical debt and housing instability. 

    KFF Health News journalists worked with KFF public opinion researchers to design and analyze the “KFF Health Care Debt Survey.” The survey was conducted Feb. 25 through March 20, 2022, online and via telephone, in English and Spanish, among a nationally representative sample of 2,375 U.S. adults, including 1,292 adults with current health care debt and 382 adults who had health care debt in the past five years. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full sample and 3 percentage points for those with current debt. For results based on subgroups, the margin of sampling error may be higher.

    Reporters from KFF Health News and NPR also conducted hundreds of interviews with patients across the country; spoke with physicians, health industry leaders, consumer advocates, debt lawyers, and researchers; and reviewed scores of studies and surveys about medical debt.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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Related Posts

  • Tahini vs Hummus – Which is Healthier?
  • Yoga Safety: Simple Guidelines

    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

    ❝I was wondering whether there were very simple, clear bullet points or instructions on things to be wary of in Yoga.❞

    That’s quite a large topic, and not one that lends itself well to being conveyed in bullet points, but first we’ll share the article you sent us when sending this question:

    Tips for Avoiding Yoga Injuries

    …and next we’ll recommend the YouTube channel @livinleggings, whose videos we feature here from time to time. She (Liv) has a lot of good videos on problems/mistakes/injuries to avoid.

    Here’s a great one to get you started:

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Cherries vs Grapes – Which is Healthier?

    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.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing cherries to grapes, we picked the cherries.

    Why?

    First, let’s mention: we are looking at sour cherries and Californian grapes. Even those will of course vary in quality, but the nutritional values here are quite reliable averages.

    In terms of macros you might have guessed this one: cherries have nearly 2x the fiber and grapes have about 50% more carbs. So, while neither fruit is bad and they are both low glycemic index foods, cherry is the winner in this category.

    When it comes to vitamins, cherries have more of vitamins A, B3, B5, B9, C, and choline, while grapes have more of vitamins B1, B2, B6, E, and K. That’s a 6:5 win for cherries, and the respective margins of difference bear that out too.

    In the category of minerals, cherries have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, and zinc, while grapes have more manganese and potassium. An easy 6:2 win for cherries.

    You might be wondering about polyphenols: both are very abundant in very many polyphenols; so much and so many, in fact, that we couldn’t possibly try to adjudicate between them without doing some complex statistical modeling (especially given how much this can vary from one sample to another, much more so than the micro-and macronutrient values discussed above), so we’ll call it a tie on these.

    Adding up the section makes for a clear win for cherries, but of course, enjoy either or both!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Cherries’ Very Healthy Wealth Of Benefits!
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    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Sleep Smarter – by Shawn Stevenson

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    You probably know to avoid blue light before bed, put a curfew on the caffeine, and have fresh bedding. So, what does this book offer that’s new?

    As the subtitle suggests, it’s 21 tips for better sleep, so if even half of them are new, then it’ll still be adding value.

    This is a book review, not a book summary, but to give an idea of the kind of thing you might not already know: there’s a section on bedroom houseplants! For example…

    • Which plants filter the air best according to NASA, rather than “according to tradition”
    • Which plants will thrive in what will hopefully be a cool dark environment
    • Which plants produce oxygen even at night, rather than just during the day

    The writing style is personable without losing clarity or objectivity:

    • We read personal anecdotes, and we read science
    • We get “I tried this”, and we get “this sleep study found such-and-such”
    • We get not just the “what”, but also the “why” and the “how”

    We get the little changes that make a big differencesometimes the difference between something working or not!

    Bottom line: if you’d like to get better sleep and a blue light filter hasn’t wowed you and changed your life, this book will bring your sleep knowledge (and practice) to the next level.

    Click here to check out Sleep Smarter, and if those 21 ways improve your sleep 5% each, just think what that total can do for your life!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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