Enjoy Bitter Foods For Your Heart & Brain
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When Bitter Is Better
A good general rule of thumb for “does this food contain a lot of healthy polyphenols?” is:
“is this (edible) plant bitter/astringent/pungent”?
If it is, it’s probably rich in polyphenols:
Deciphering the role of bitter and astringent polyphenols in promoting well-being
…which is why it’s no surprise that black coffee and bitter chocolate score highly, as do hot peppers and even garlic.
See also: Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Even fruits, generally considered something sweet to eat, often contain more polyphenols when they are bitter—many berries are great examples of this!
Read more: Goji Berries: Which Benefits Do They Really Have?
You can read more about the science of this here:
Sensory Nutrition and Bitterness and Astringency of Polyphenols
Important for multiple reasons (including heart and brain health)
Polyphenols have many benefits, and they’re most well known for their heart-healthy properties, but their antioxidant effect (and other mechanisms) also means these foods are generally neuroprotectants too:
The science of this is not all as obvious as you might think!
It is reasonable to expect “ok, this has antioxidant effect, so it will reduce oxidative damage to brain cells too”, and while that is true (and yes, polyphenols do cross the blood-brain barrier), they also help in other ways, including through the gut:
What if I don’t like bitter/astringent/pungent foods?
If you do not have a medical condition that proscribes them (do check with your doctor if unsure), the best advice is to simply eat them anyway, and your tastes will adapt.
It will also help if you avoid sweet foods (though this too is also a good general rule of thumb!), as this will move the balance of where your brain’s “set range” is for “good taste”.
Bonus tip: dark chocolate (80%+ cocoa if possible, 95% if you can get it) and chilli peppers go great with each other. Here’s an example of a chilli chocolate product on Amazon; it’s 70% cocoa (which is not bad, but could be better). You might be able to get a higher percentage locally, especially if you ask your local chocolatière, or make it yourself!
Enjoy!
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People with dementia aren’t currently eligible for voluntary assisted dying. Should they be?
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Dementia is the second leading cause of death for Australians aged over 65. More than 421,000 Australians currently live with dementia and this figure is expected to almost double in the next 30 years.
There is ongoing public discussion about whether dementia should be a qualifying illness under Australian voluntary assisted dying laws. Voluntary assisted dying is now lawful in all six states, but is not available for a person living with dementia.
The Australian Capital Territory has begun debating its voluntary assisted dying bill in parliament but the government has ruled out access for dementia. Its view is that a person should retain decision-making capacity throughout the process. But the bill includes a requirement to revisit the issue in three years.
The Northern Territory is also considering reform and has invited views on access to voluntary assisted dying for dementia.
Several public figures have also entered the debate. Most recently, former Australian Chief Scientist, Ian Chubb, called for the law to be widened to allow access.
Others argue permitting voluntary assisted dying for dementia would present unacceptable risks to this vulnerable group.
Inside Creative House/Shutterstock Australian laws exclude access for dementia
Current Australian voluntary assisted dying laws exclude access for people who seek to qualify because they have dementia.
In New South Wales, the law specifically states this.
In the other states, this occurs through a combination of the eligibility criteria: a person whose dementia is so advanced that they are likely to die within the 12 month timeframe would be highly unlikely to retain the necessary decision-making capacity to request voluntary assisted dying.
This does not mean people who have dementia cannot access voluntary assisted dying if they also have a terminal illness. For example, a person who retains decision-making capacity in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease with terminal cancer may access voluntary assisted dying.
What happens internationally?
Voluntary assisted dying laws in some other countries allow access for people living with dementia.
One mechanism, used in the Netherlands, is through advance directives or advance requests. This means a person can specify in advance the conditions under which they would want to have voluntary assisted dying when they no longer have decision-making capacity. This approach depends on the person’s family identifying when those conditions have been satisfied, generally in consultation with the person’s doctor.
Another approach to accessing voluntary assisted dying is to allow a person with dementia to choose to access it while they still have capacity. This involves regularly assessing capacity so that just before the person is predicted to lose the ability to make a decision about voluntary assisted dying, they can seek assistance to die. In Canada, this has been referred to as the “ten minutes to midnight” approach.
But these approaches have challenges
International experience reveals these approaches have limitations. For advance directives, it can be difficult to specify the conditions for activating the advance directive accurately. It also requires a family member to initiate this with the doctor. Evidence also shows doctors are reluctant to act on advance directives.
Particularly challenging are scenarios where a person with dementia who requested voluntary assisted dying in an advance directive later appears happy and content, or no longer expresses a desire to access voluntary assisted dying.
What if the person changes their mind? Jokiewalker/Shutterstock Allowing access for people with dementia who retain decision-making capacity also has practical problems. Despite regular assessments, a person may lose capacity in between them, meaning they miss the window before midnight to choose voluntary assisted dying. These capacity assessments can also be very complex.
Also, under this approach, a person is required to make such a decision at an early stage in their illness and may lose years of otherwise enjoyable life.
Some also argue that regardless of the approach taken, allowing access to voluntary assisted dying would involve unacceptable risks to a vulnerable group.
More thought is needed before changing our laws
There is public demand to allow access to voluntary assisted dying for dementia in Australia. The mandatory reviews of voluntary assisted dying legislation present an opportunity to consider such reform. These reviews generally happen after three to five years, and in some states they will occur regularly.
The scope of these reviews can vary and sometimes governments may not wish to consider changes to the legislation. But the Queensland review “must include a review of the eligibility criteria”. And the ACT bill requires the review to consider “advanced care planning”.
Both reviews would require consideration of who is able to access voluntary assisted dying, which opens the door for people living with dementia. This is particularly so for the ACT review, as advance care planning means allowing people to request voluntary assisted dying in the future when they have lost capacity.
The legislation undergoes a mandatory review. Jenny Sturm/Shutterstock This is a complex issue, and more thinking is needed about whether this public desire for voluntary assisted dying for dementia should be implemented. And, if so, how the practice could occur safely, and in a way that is acceptable to the health professionals who will be asked to provide it.
This will require a careful review of existing international models and their practical implementation as well as what would be feasible and appropriate in Australia.
Any future law reform should be evidence-based and draw on the views of people living with dementia, their family caregivers, and the health professionals who would be relied on to support these decisions.
Ben White, Professor of End-of-Life Law and Regulation, Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology; Casey Haining, Research Fellow, Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology; Lindy Willmott, Professor of Law, Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology, Queensland University of Technology, and Rachel Feeney, Postdoctoral research fellow, Queensland University of Technology
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Why Do We Have Pores, And Could We Not?
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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
❝Do we really need pores, and why are they bigger on the face?❞
Pores secrete sweat or sebum (there are different kinds of pores for each).
If we didn’t have sweat pores, we’d be unable to sweat, which superficially may seem like a bonus, but it’d make us prone to overheating (like dogs, pigs, and other mammals that cannot sweat).
If we didn’t have sebum pores (usually called hair follicles, which are supplied by a sebaceous gland), we’d be completely hairless, and also unable to supply our skin with natural oils that keep it healthy. So we’d have no hair and very unhappy skin.
Which is ironic, because to believe beauty magazines, we must at all costs minimize our pores (and indeed, interventions like botox* can kill them).
*Let’s give that its full name though:
Suffice it to say, we do not recommend getting injected with neurotoxins unless it is truly necessary to ward off a greater harm.
As for being bigger on the face, they need not be, but sebaceous glands are more active and numerous there, being most active and numerous in the face/forehead—which is why oily skin is more likely to appear there than other parts of the body.
If your facial sebaceous glands are too active for your liking…
…there are ways to reduce that, a simple and relatively gentle way (relative, for example, botox) is with retinoids, including retinols or retinoic acids. Here’s some of the science of that; the paper is about treating acne, but the mechanism of action is the same (down-regulating the sebaceous glands’ action):
The potential side-effects, however were noted as:
- Cheilitis
- Desquamation of the skin
- Pruritus
Which, in translation from sciencese, means:
- Chapped lips
- Flaky skin
- Itchiness
Which aren’t necessarily fun, which is why with retinoids are best taken in very small doses at first to see how your skin reacts.
Remember when we said what your skin would be like without pores? This is what would happen, only much worse.
Take care!
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Unlimited Memory – by Kevin Horsley
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Premise: there are easily learnable techniques to rapidly (and greatly) improve one’s memory. We’ve touched on some of these methods before at 10almonds, but being a newsletter rather than a book, we’ve not been able to go as deeply into it as Horsley!
Your memory is far, far, far more powerful than you might realize, and this book will help unlock that. To illustrate…
Some of the book is given over to what are for most purposes “party tricks”, such as remembering pi to 10,000 places. Those things are fun, even if not as practical in today’s world of rarely needing to even know the actual digits of a phone number. However, they do also serve as a good example of just how much of “super memory” isn’t a matter of hard work, so much as being better organized about it.
Most of the book is focused on practical methods to improve the useful aspects of memory—including common mistakes!
If the book has any flaw it’s that the first chapter or so is spent persuading the reader of things we presumably already believe, given that we bought the book. For example, that remembering things is a learnable skill and that memory is functionally limitless. However, we still advise to not skip those chapters as they do contain some useful reframes as well.
Bottom line: if you read this book you will be astonished by how much you just learned—because you’ll be able to recall whole sections in detail! And then you can go apply that whatever areas of your life you wanted to when you bought the book.
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The End of Alzheimer’s – by Dr. Dale Bredesen
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This one didn’t use the “The New Science Of…” subtitle that many books do, and this one actually is a “new science of”!
Which is exciting, and/but comes with the caveat that the overall protocol itself is still undergoing testing, but the results so far are promising. The constituent parts of the protocol are for the most already well-established, but have not previously been put together in this way.
Dr. Bredesen argues that Alzheimer’s Disease is not one condition but three (medical consensus agrees at least that it is a collection of conditions, but different schools of thought slice them differently), and outlines 36 metabolic factors that are implicated, and the good news is, most of them are within our control.
Since there’s a lot to put together, he also offers many workarounds and “crutches”, making for very practical advice.
The style of the book is on the hard end of pop-science, that is to say while the feel and tone is very pop-sciencey, there are nevertheless a lot of words that you might know but your spellchecker probably wouldn’t. He does explain everything along the way, but this does mean that if you’re not already well-versed, you can’t just dip in to a later point without reading the earlier parts.
Bottom line: even if you only implement half the advice in this book, you’ll be doing your long-term cognitive health a huge favor.
Click here to check out The End of Alzheimer’s, and keep cognitive decline at bay!
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Which Plant Milk?
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Plant-based milks—what’s best?
You asked us to look at some popular plant milks and their health properties, and we said we’d do a main feature, so here it is!
We’ll also give a quick nod to environmental considerations at the end too (they might not be quite what you expect!). That said, as a health and productivity newsletter, we’ll be focusing on the health benefits.
While we can give a broad overview, please note that individual brands may vary, especially in two important ways:
- Pro: many (most?) brands of plant milks fortify their products with extra vitamins and minerals, especially vitamin D and calcium.
- Con: some brands also add sugar.
So, by all means use this guide to learn about the different plants’ properties, and/but still do check labels later.
Alternatively, consider making your own!
- Pros: no added sugar + cheaper
- Cons: no added vitamins and minerals + some equipment required
Almond milk
Almond milk is low in carbs and thus good for a carb-controlled diet. It’s also high in vitamin E and a collection of minerals.
Oat milk
Oats are one of the healthiest “staple foods” around, and while drinking oat milk doesn’t convey all the benefits, it does a lot. It also has one of the highest soluble fiber contents of any milk, which is good for reducing LDL (bad) cholesterol levels.
See for example: Consumption of oat milk for 5 weeks lowers serum cholesterol and LDL cholesterol in free-living men with moderate hypercholesterolemia
Coconut milk
Coconut has a higher fat content than most plant milks, but also contains medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs). These raise HDL (good) cholesterol levels.
Read the study: How well do plant based alternatives fare nutritionally compared to cow’s milk?
Hemp milk
Being made from hemp seeds that contain a lot of protein and healthy fats (including omega-3 and omega-6), hemp milk packs a nutritious punch. It’s carb-free. It’s also THC-free, in case you were wondering, which means no, it does not have psychoactive effects.
Pea milk
It’s very high in protein, and contains an array of vitamins and minerals. It’s not very popular yet, so there isn’t as much research about it. This 2021 study found that it had the nutritional profile the closest to cow’s milk (beating soy by a narrow margin) and praised it as a good alternative for those with a soy allergy.
This is Research Review Monday so we try to stick to pure science, but for your interest… here’s an interesting pop-science article (ostensibly in affiliation with the pea milk brand, Ripple) about the nutritional qualities of their pea milk specifically, which uses particularly nutrient-dense yellow peas, plus some extra vitamin and mineral fortifications:
Read: Ripple Milk: 6 Reasons Why You Should Try Pea Milk
Soy milk
Perhaps the most popular plant milk, and certainly usually the cheapest in stores. It’s high in protein, similar to cow’s milk. In fact, nutritionally, it’s one of the closest to cow’s milk without involving cows as a middleman. (Did you know three quarters of all soy in the world is grown to feed to livestock, not humans? Now you do).
And no, gentlemen-readers, it won’t have any feminizing effects. The human body can’t use the plant estrogens in soy for that. It does give some isoflavone benefits though, which are broadly good for everyone’s health. See for example this research review with 439 sources of its own:
Read: Soy and Health Update: Evaluation of the Clinical and Epidemiologic Literature
Quick note on flavor: nut milks have the flavor of the nut they were made from. Coconut milk tastes of coconut. The other milks listed above don’t have much of a flavor—which in many cases may be what you want.
Note on environmental considerations:
A lot of us try to be as socially responsible as reasonably possible in our choices, so this may be an influencing factor. In a nutshell:
- Oats and Soy are generally grown as vast monocrops, and these are bad for the environment
- They are still better for the environment than cow’s milk though, as for example most soy is grown to feed to cows, not humans. So including cows in the process means four times as much monocrop farming, plus adds several other environmental issues that are beyond the scope of this newsletter.
- Almonds are particularly resource-intensive when it comes to water use.
- Still nowhere near as much as cows, though.
- Peas are grown in places that naturally have very high rainfall, so are a good option here. Same generally goes for rice, which didn’t make the cut today. (Nor did hazelnuts, sorry—we can only include so much!)
- Hemp is by far and away the most environmentally friendly, assuming it is grown in a climate naturally conducive to such.
- Making plant milk at home is usually most environmentally friendly, depending on where your ingredients came from.
- Literally any plant milk is much more environmentally friendly than cow’s milk.
See the science for yourself: Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers
See also (if you like graphs and charts): Environmental footprints of dairy and plant-based milks
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Hate salad or veggies? Just keep eating them. Here’s how our tastebuds adapt to what we eat
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Do you hate salad? It’s OK if you do, there are plenty of foods in the world, and lots of different ways to prepare them.
But given almost all of us don’t eat enough vegetables, even though most of us (81%) know eating more vegetables is a simple way to improve our health, you might want to try.
If this idea makes you miserable, fear not, with time and a little effort you can make friends with salad.
Why don’t I like salads?
It’s an unfortunate quirk of evolution that vegetables are so good for us but they aren’t all immediately tasty to all of us. We have evolved to enjoy the sweet or umami (savoury) taste of higher energy foods, because starvation is a more immediate risk than long-term health.
Vegetables aren’t particularly high energy but they are jam-packed with dietary fibre, vitamins and minerals, and health-promoting compounds called bioactives.
Those bioactives are part of the reason vegetables taste bitter. Plant bioactives, also called phytonutrients, are made by plants to protect themselves against environmental stress and predators. The very things that make plant foods bitter, are the things that make them good for us.
Unfortunately, bitter taste evolved to protect us from poisons, and possibly from over-eating one single plant food. So in a way, plant foods can taste like poison.
For some of us, this bitter sensing is particularly acute, and for others it isn’t so bad. This is partly due to our genes. Humans have at least 25 different receptors that detect bitterness, and we each have our own genetic combinations. So some people really, really taste some bitter compounds while others can barely detect them.
This means we don’t all have the same starting point when it comes to interacting with salads and veggies. So be patient with yourself. But the steps toward learning to like salads and veggies are the same regardless of your starting point.
It takes time
We can train our tastes because our genes and our receptors aren’t the end of the story. Repeat exposures to bitter foods can help us adapt over time. Repeat exposures help our brain learn that bitter vegetables aren’t posions.
And as we change what we eat, the enzymes and other proteins in our saliva change too. This changes how different compounds in food are broken down and detected by our taste buds. How exactly this works isn’t clear, but it’s similar to other behavioural cognitive training.
Add masking ingredients
The good news is we can use lots of great strategies to mask the bitterness of vegetables, and this positively reinforces our taste training.
Salt and fat can reduce the perception of bitterness, so adding seasoning and dressing can help make salads taste better instantly. You are probably thinking, “but don’t we need to reduce our salt and fat intake?” – yes, but you will get more nutritional bang-for-buck by reducing those in discretionary foods like cakes, biscuits, chips and desserts, not by trying to avoid them with your vegetables.
Adding heat with chillies or pepper can also help by acting as a decoy to the bitterness. Adding fruits to salads adds sweetness and juiciness, this can help improve the overall flavour and texture balance, increasing enjoyment.
Pairing foods you are learning to like with foods you already like can also help.
The options for salads are almost endless, if you don’t like the standard garden salad you were raised on, that’s OK, keep experimenting.
Experimenting with texture (for example chopping vegetables smaller or chunkier) can also help in finding your salad loves.
Challenge your biases
Challenging your biases can also help the salad situation. A phenomenon called the “unhealthy-tasty intuition” makes us assume tasty foods aren’t good for us, and that healthy foods will taste bad. Shaking that assumption off can help you enjoy your vegetables more.
When researchers labelled vegetables with taste-focused labels, priming subjects for an enjoyable taste, they were more likely to enjoy them compared to when they were told how healthy they were.
The bottom line
Vegetables are good for us, but we need to be patient and kind with ourselves when we start trying to eat more.
Try working with biology and brain, and not against them.
And hold back from judging yourself or other people if they don’t like the salads you do. We are all on a different point of our taste-training journey.
Emma Beckett, Senior Lecturer (Food Science and Human Nutrition), School of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Newcastle
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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