Teriyaki Chickpea Burgers
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Burgers are often not considered the healthiest food, but they can be! Ok, so the teriyaki sauce component itself isn’t the healthiest, but the rest of this recipe is, and with all the fiber this contains, it’s a net positive healthwise, even before considering the protein, vitamins, minerals, and assorted phytonutrients.
You will need
- 2 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed (or 2 cups of chickpeas, cooked drained and rinsed)
- ¼ cup chickpea flour (also called gram flour or garbanzo bean flour)
- ¼ cup teriyaki sauce
- 2 tbsp almond butter (if allergic, substitute with a seed butter if available, or else just omit; do not substitute with actual butter—it will not work)
- ½ bulb garlic, minced
- 1 large chili, minced (your choice what kind, color, or even whether or multiply it)
- 1 large shallot, minced
- 1″ piece of ginger, grated
- 2 tsp teriyaki sauce (we’re listing this separately from the ¼ cup above as that’ll be used differently)
- 1 tsp yeast extract (even if you don’t like it; trust us, it’ll work—this writer doesn’t like it either but uses it regularly in recipes like these)
- 1 tbsp black pepper
- 1 tsp fennel powder
- ½ tsp sweet cinnamon
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tsp low-sodium salt
- Extra virgin olive oil for frying
For serving:
- Burger buns (you can use our Delicious Quinoa Avocado Bread recipe)
- Whatever else you want in there; we recommend mung bean sprouts, red onion, and a nice coleslaw
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 400℉ / 200℃.
2) Roast the chickpeas spaced out on a baking tray (lined with baking paper) for about 15 minutes. Leave the oven on afterwards; we still need it.
3) While that’s happening, heat a little oil in a skillet to a medium heat and fry the shallot, chili, garlic, and ginger, for about 2–3 minutes. You want to release the flavors, but not destroy them.
4) Let them cool, and when the chickpeas are done, let them cool for a few minutes too, before putting them all into a food processor along with the rest of the ingredients from the main section, except the oil and the ¼ cup teriyaki sauce. Process them into a dough.
5) Form the dough into patties; you should have enough dough for 4–6 patties depending on how big you want them.
6) Brush them with the teriyaki sauce; turn them onto a baking tray (lined with baking paper) and brush the other side too. Be generous.
7) Bake them for about 15 minutes, turn them (taking the opportunity to add more teriyaki sauce if it seems to merit it) and bake for another 5–10 minutes.
8) Assemble; we recommend the order: bun, a little coleslaw, burger, red onion, more coleslaw, mung bean sprouts, bun, but follow your heart!
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Three Daily Servings of Beans/Legumes?
- Hoisin Sauce vs Teriyaki Sauce – Which is Healthier?
- Sprout Your Seeds, Grains, Beans, Etc
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits? ← we scored 4/5 today!
- Monosodium Glutamate: Sinless Flavor-Enhancer Or Terrible Health Risk?
Take care!
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Spinach vs Kale – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing spinach to kale, we picked the spinach.
Why?
In terms of macros, spinach and kale are very similar. They are mostly water wrapped in fiber, with very small amounts of carbohydrates and protein and trace amounts of fat.
Spinach has a lot more vitamins and minerals—a wider variety, and in most cases, more of them.
Kale is notably higher in vitamin C, though. Everything else, spinach is higher or close to equal.
Spinach is especially notably a lot higher in B vitamins, as well as iron, calcium, magnesium, and zinc.
One downside to spinach, though, which is that it’s high in oxalates, which can increase the risk of kidney stones. If your kidneys are in good health and you eat spinach in moderation, this is not a problem for most people—but if your kidneys aren’t in good health (or you are, for whatever reason, consuming Popeye levels of spinach), you might consider switching to kale.
While spinach swept the board in most categories, kale remains a very good option too, and a diet diverse in many kinds of plants is usually best.
Want to learn more?
Spinach and kale are very both good sources of carotenoids; check out:
Enjoy!
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The Sugary Food That Lowers Blood Sugars
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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
❝Loved the article on goji berries! I read they are good for blood sugars, is that true despite the sugar content?❞
Most berries are! Fruits that are high in polyphenols (even if they’re high in sugar), like berries, have a considerable net positive impact on glycemic health:
- Polyphenols and Glycemic Control
- Polyphenols and their effects on diabetes management: A review
- Dietary polyphenols as antidiabetic agents: Advances and opportunities
And more specifically:
Dietary berries, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes: an overview of human feeding trials
Read more: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
As for goji berries specifically, they’re very high indeed in polyphenols, and also have a hypoglycemic effect, i.e., they lower blood sugar levels (and as a bonus, increases HDL (“good” cholesterol) levels too, but that’s not the topic here):
❝The results of our study indicated a remarkable protective effect of LBP in patients with type 2 diabetes. Serum glucose was found to be significantly decreased and insulinogenic index increased during OMTT after 3 months administration of LBP. LBP also increased HDL levels in patients with type 2 diabetes. It showed more obvious hypoglycemic efficacy for those people who did not take any hypoglycemic medicine compared to patients taking hypoglycemic medicines. This study showed LBP to be a good potential treatment aided-agent for type 2 diabetes.❞
- LBP = Lycium barbarum polysaccharide, i.e. polysaccharide in/from goji berries
- OMTT = Oral metabolic tolerance test, a test of how well the blood sugars avoid spiking after a meal
For more about goji berries (and also where to get them), for reference our previous article is at:
Goji Berries: Which Benefits Do They Really Have?
Take care!
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Constipation increases your risk of a heart attack, new study finds – and not just on the toilet
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If you Google the terms “constipation” and “heart attack” it’s not long before the name Elvis Presley crops up. Elvis had a longstanding history of chronic constipation and it’s believed he was straining very hard to poo, which then led to a fatal heart attack.
We don’t know what really happened to the so-called King of Rock “n” Roll back in 1977. There were likely several contributing factors to his death, and this theory is one of many.
But after this famous case researchers took a strong interest in the link between constipation and the risk of a heart attack.
This includes a recent study led by Australian researchers involving data from thousands of people.
Elvis Presley was said to have died of a heart attack while straining on the toilet. But is that true? Kraft74/Shutterstock Are constipation and heart attacks linked?
Large population studies show constipation is linked to an increased risk of heart attacks.
For example, an Australian study involved more than 540,000 people over 60 in hospital for a range of conditions. It found constipated patients had a higher risk of high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes compared to non-constipated patients of the same age.
A Danish study of more than 900,000 people from hospitals and hospital outpatient clinics also found that people who were constipated had an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.
It was unclear, however, if this relationship between constipation and an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes would hold true for healthy people outside hospital.
These Australian and Danish studies also did not factor in the effects of drugs used to treat high blood pressure (hypertension), which can make you constipated.
Researchers have studied thousands of people to see if there’s a link between constipation and heart attacks. fongbeerredhot/Shutterstock How about this new study?
The recent international study led by Monash University researchers found a connection between constipation and an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and heart failure in a general population.
The researchers analysed data from the UK Biobank, a database of health-related information from about half a million people in the United Kingdom.
The researchers identified more than 23,000 cases of constipation and accounted for the effect of drugs to treat high blood pressure, which can lead to constipation.
People with constipation (identified through medical records or via a questionnaire) were twice as likely to have a heart attack, stroke or heart failure as those without constipation.
The researchers found a strong link between high blood pressure and constipation. Individuals with hypertension who were also constipated had a 34% increased risk of a major heart event compared to those with just hypertension.
The study only looked at the data from people of European ancestry. However, there is good reason to believe the link between constipation and heart attacks applies to other populations.
A Japanese study looked at more than 45,000 men and women in the general population. It found people passing a bowel motion once every two to three days had a higher risk of dying from heart disease compared with ones who passed at least one bowel motion a day.
How might constipation cause a heart attack?
Chronic constipation can lead to straining when passing a stool. This can result in laboured breathing and can lead to a rise in blood pressure.
In one Japanese study including ten elderly people, blood pressure was high just before passing a bowel motion and continued to rise during the bowel motion. This increase in blood pressure lasted for an hour afterwards, a pattern not seen in younger Japanese people.
One theory is that older people have stiffer blood vessels due to atherosclerosis (thickening or hardening of the arteries caused by a build-up of plaque) and other age-related changes. So their high blood pressure can persist for some time after straining. But the blood pressure of younger people returns quickly to normal as they have more elastic blood vessels.
As blood pressure rises, the risk of heart disease increases. The risk of developing heart disease doubles when systolic blood pressure (the top number in your blood pressure reading) rises permanently by 20 mmHg (millimetres of mercury, a standard measure of blood pressure).
The systolic blood pressure rise with straining in passing a stool has been reported to be as high as 70 mmHg. This rise is only temporary but with persistent straining in chronic constipation this could lead to an increased risk of heart attacks.
High blood pressure from straining on the toilet can last after pooing, especially in older people. Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock Some people with chronic constipation may have an impaired function of their vagus nerve, which controls various bodily functions, including digestion, heart rate and breathing.
This impaired function can result in abnormalities of heart rate and over-activation of the flight-fight response. This can, in turn, lead to elevated blood pressure.
Another intriguing avenue of research examines the imbalance in gut bacteria in people with constipation.
This imbalance, known as dysbiosis, can result in microbes and other substances leaking through the gut barrier into the bloodstream and triggering an immune response. This, in turn, can lead to low-grade inflammation in the blood circulation and arteries becoming stiffer, increasing the risk of a heart attack.
This latest study also explored genetic links between constipation and heart disease. The researchers found shared genetic factors that underlie both constipation and heart disease.
What can we do about this?
Constipation affects around 19% of the global population aged 60 and older. So there is a substantial portion of the population at an increased risk of heart disease due to their bowel health.
Managing chronic constipation through dietary changes (particularly increased dietary fibre), increased physical activity, ensuring adequate hydration and using medications, if necessary, are all important ways to help improve bowel function and reduce the risk of heart disease.
Vincent Ho, Associate Professor and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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What Grief Does To Your Body (And How To Manage It)
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What Grief Does To The Body (And How To Manage It)
In life, we will almost all lose loved ones and suffer bereavement. For most people, this starts with grandparents, eventually moves to parents, and then people our own generation; partners, siblings, close friends. And of course, sometimes and perhaps most devastatingly, we can lose people younger than ourselves.
For something that almost everyone suffers, there is often very little in the way of preparation given beforehand, and afterwards, a condolences card is nice but can’t do a lot for our mental health.
And with mental health, our physical health can go too, if we very understandably neglect it at such a time.
So, how to survive devastating loss, and come out the other side, hopefully thriving? It seems like a tall order indeed.
First, the foundations:
You’re probably familiar with the stages of grief. In their most commonly-presented form, they are:
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
You’ve probably also heard/read that we won’t always go through them in order, and also that grief is deeply personal and proceeds on its own timescale.
It is generally considered healthy to go through them.
What do they look like?
Naturally this can vary a lot from person to person, but examples in the case of bereavement could be:
- Denial: “This surely has not really happened; I’ll carry on as though it hasn’t”
- Anger: “Why didn’t I do xyz differently while I had the chance?!”
- Bargaining: “I will do such-and-such in their honor, and this will be a way of expressing the love I wish I could give them in a way they could receive”
- Depression: “What is the point of me without them? The sooner I join them, the better.”
- Acceptance: “I was so lucky that we had the time together that we did, and enriched each other’s lives while we could”
We can speedrun these or we can get stuck on one for years. We can bounce back and forth. We can think we’re at acceptance, and then a previous stage will hit us like a tonne of bricks.
What if we don’t?
Assuming that our lost loved one was indeed a loved one (as opposed to someone we are merely societally expected to mourn), then failing to process that grief will tend to have a big impact on our life—and health. These health problems can include:
As you can see, three out of five of those can result in death. The other two aren’t great either. So why isn’t this taken more seriously as a matter of health?
Death is, ironically, considered something we “just have to live with”.
But how?
Coping strategies
You’ll note that most of the stages of grief are not enjoyable per se. For this reason, it’s common to try to avoid them—hence denial usually being first.
But, that is like not getting a lump checked out because you don’t want a cancer diagnosis. The emotional reasoning is understandable, but it’s ultimately self-destructive.
First, have a plan. If a death is foreseen, you can even work out this plan together.
But even if that time has now passed, it’s “better late than never” to make a plan for looking after yourself, e.g:
- How you will try to get enough sleep (tricky, but sincerely try)
- How you will remember to eat (and ideally, healthily)
- How you will still get exercise (a walk in the park is fine; see some greenery and get some sunlight)
- How you will avoid self-destructive urges (from indirect, e.g. drinking, to direct, e.g. suicidality)
- How you will keep up with the other things important in your life (work, friends, family)
- How you will actively work to process your grief (e.g. journaling, or perhaps grief counselling)
Some previous articles of ours that may help:
- How To Keep On Keeping On ← this is about looking after general health when motivation is low
- The Mental Health First-Aid You’ll Hopefully Never Need ← this is about managing depression
- How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To) ← this is about managing suicidality
If it works, it works
If we are all unique, then any relationship between any two people is uniqueness squared. Little wonder, then, that our grief may be unique too. And it can be complicated further:
- Sometimes we had a complicated relationship with someone
- Sometimes the circumstances of their death were complicated
There is, for that matter, such a thing as “complicated grief”:
Read more: Complicated grief and prolonged grief disorder (Medical News Today)
We also previously reviewed a book on “ambiguous loss”, exploring grieving when we cannot grieve in the normal way because someone is gone and/but/maybe not gone.
For example, if someone is in a long-term coma from which they may never recover, or if they are missing-presumed-dead. Those kinds of situations are complicated too.
Unusual circumstances may call for unusual coping strategies, so how can we discern what is healthy and what isn’t?
The litmus test is: is it enabling you to continue going about your life in a way that allows you to fulfil your internal personal aspirations and external social responsibilities? If so, it’s probably healthy.
Look after yourself. And if you can, tell your loved ones you love them today.
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How to Eat (And Still Lose Weight) – by Dr. Andrew Jenkinson
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You may be wondering: what diet is he recommending?
The answer is: some guiding principles aside…. He’s not recommending a diet, per se.
What this book does instead is outline why we eat too much ← link is to where we previously had this author as a spotlight featured expert on this topic! Check it out!
He goes into a lot more detail than we ever could have in our little article, though, and this book is one of those where the reader may feel as though we have had a few classes at medical school. The style, however, is very comprehensible and accessible; there’s no obfuscating jargon here.
Once we understand the signalling that goes on in terms of hunger/satiety, and the signalling that goes on in terms of fat storage/metabolism, we can simply choose to not give our bodies the wrong signals. Yes, it’s really that simple. It feels quite like a cheat code!
Bottom line: if you’d like a better understanding of what regulates our body’s “set point” in weight/adiposity, and what can change it (for better or for worse), then this is the book for you.
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The Philosophy Gym – by Dr. Stephen Law
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If you’d like to give those “little gray cells” an extra workout, this book is a great starting place.
Dr. Stephen Law is Director of Philosophy at the Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford. As such, he’s no stranger to providing education that’s both attainable and yet challenging. Here, he lays out important philosophical questions, and challenges the reader to get to grips with them in a systematic fashion.
Each of the 25 questions/problems has a chapter devoted to it, and is ranked:
- Warm-up
- Moderate
- More Challenging
But, he doesn’t leave us to our own devices, nor does he do like a caricature of a philosopher and ask us endless rhetorical questions. Instead, he looks at various approaches taken by other philosophers over time, and invites the reader to try out those methods.
The real gain of this book is not the mere enjoyment of reading, but rather in taking those thinking skills and applying them in life… because most if not all of them do have real-world applications and/or implications too.
The book’s strongest point? That it doesn’t assume prior knowledge (and yet also doesn’t patronize the reader). Philosophy can be difficult to dip one’s toes into without a guide, because philosophers writing about philosophy can at first be like finding yourself at a party where you know nobody, but they all know each other.
In contrast, Law excels at giving quick, to-the-point ground-up summaries of key ideas and their progenitors.
In short: a wonderful way to get your brain doing things it might not have tried before!
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