The Well Plated Cookbook – by Erin Clarke

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Clarke’s focus here is on what she calls “stealthy healthy”, with the idea of dishes that feel indulgent while being great for the health.

The recipes, of which there are well over 100, are indeed delicious and easy to make without being oversimplified, and since she encourages the use of in-season ingredients, many recipes come with a “market swaps” substitution guide, to make each recipe seasonal.

The book is largely not vegetarian, let alone vegan, but the required substitutions will be second-nature to any seasoned vegetarian or vegan. Indeed, “skip the meat sometimes” is one of the advices she offers near the beginning of the book, in the category of tips to make things even healthier.

Bottom line: if you want to add dishes to your repertoire that are great for entertaining and still super-healthy, this book will be a fine addition to your collection.

Click here to check out The Well Plated Cookbook, and get cooking!

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    Dive into the science behind MCTs: Are they weight-loss wonders or just hype? Plus, insights on MCTs’ effects on cholesterol, heart health, and insulin sensitivity in diabetics.

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  • How much time should you spend sitting versus standing? New research reveals the perfect mix for optimal health

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    People have a pretty intuitive sense of what is healthy – standing is better than sitting, exercise is great for overall health and getting good sleep is imperative.

    However, if exercise in the evening may disrupt our sleep, or make us feel the need to be more sedentary to recover, a key question emerges – what is the best way to balance our 24 hours to optimise our health?

    Our research attempted to answer this for risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. We found the optimal amount of sleep was 8.3 hours, while for light activity and moderate to vigorous activity, it was best to get 2.2 hours each.

    Finding the right balance

    Current health guidelines recommend you stick to a sensible regime of moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity 2.5–5 hours per week.

    However mounting evidence now suggests how you spend your day can have meaningful ramifications for your health. In addition to moderate-to vigorous-intensity physical activity, this means the time you spend sitting, standing, doing light physical activity (such as walking around your house or office) and sleeping.

    Our research looked at more than 2,000 adults who wore body sensors that could interpret their physical behaviours, for seven days. This gave us a sense of how they spent their average 24 hours.

    At the start of the study participants had their waist circumference, blood sugar and insulin sensitivity measured. The body sensor and assessment data was matched and analysed then tested against health risk markers — such as a heart disease and stroke risk score — to create a model.

    Using this model, we fed through thousands of permutations of 24 hours and found the ones with the estimated lowest associations with heart disease risk and blood-glucose levels. This created many optimal mixes of sitting, standing, light and moderate intensity activity.

    When we looked at waist circumference, blood sugar, insulin sensitivity and a heart disease and stroke risk score, we noted differing optimal time zones. Where those zones mutually overlapped was ascribed the optimal zone for heart disease and diabetes risk.

    You’re doing more physical activity than you think

    We found light-intensity physical activity (defined as walking less than 100 steps per minute) – such as walking to the water cooler, the bathroom, or strolling casually with friends – had strong associations with glucose control, and especially in people with type 2 diabetes. This light-intensity physical activity is likely accumulated intermittently throughout the day rather than being a purposeful bout of light exercise.

    Our experimental evidence shows that interrupting our sitting regularly with light-physical activity (such as taking a 3–5 minute walk every hour) can improve our metabolism, especially so after lunch.

    While the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity time might seem a quite high, at more than 2 hours a day, we defined it as more than 100 steps per minute. This equates to a brisk walk.

    It should be noted that these findings are preliminary. This is the first study of heart disease and diabetes risk and the “optimal” 24 hours, and the results will need further confirmation with longer prospective studies.

    The data is also cross-sectional. This means that the estimates of time use are correlated with the disease risk factors, meaning it’s unclear whether how participants spent their time influences their risk factors or whether those risk factors influence how someone spends their time.

    Australia’s adult physical activity guidelines need updating

    Australia’s physical activity guidelines currently only recommend exercise intensity and time. A new set of guidelines are being developed to incorporate 24-hour movement. Soon Australians will be able to use these guidelines to examine their 24 hours and understand where they can make improvements.

    While our new research can inform the upcoming guidelines, we should keep in mind that the recommendations are like a north star: something to head towards to improve your health. In principle this means reducing sitting time where possible, increasing standing and light-intensity physical activity, increasing more vigorous intensity physical activity, and aiming for a healthy sleep of 7.5–9 hours per night.

    Beneficial changes could come in the form of reducing screen time in the evening or opting for an active commute over driving commute, or prioritising an earlier bed time over watching television in the evening.

    It’s also important to acknowledge these are recommendations for an able adult. We all have different considerations, and above all, movement should be fun.

    Christian Brakenridge, Postdoctoral research fellow at Swinburne University Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology

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

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  • Bath vs Shower – Which is Healthier?

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    Our Verdict

    When comparing bathing to showering, we picked the shower.

    Why?

    For the basic task of getting your body clean, the shower is better as it is an entirely one-way process. Clean water hits your body, dirty water leaves it, and no dirt is making its way back.

    Baths do not have this advantage, and if you enter a bath dirty, you will then be sitting in dirty water. You will leave it a lot cleaner than you entered it (because a lot of the dirt stayed in the bathwater to be drained away after the bath), but not as clean as if you had showered.

    One could argue soap or equivalent will prevent the dirt re-sticking, and that’s true, but it’s true for soap in the shower too, so it doesn’t offset anything.

    Additionally, being immersed in water for more than 15 minutes can start to have a (paradoxically) dehydrating effect on the skin; this happens not only because of losing skin oils to the water, but also because of osmosis, the resultant mild edema, the body’s homeostatic response to the mild edema, then getting out the bath and drying, leaving one with the response having now just caused dehydrated skin.

    Baths do have some health advantages! And these come primarily from the mental health benefits of relaxation in warm water and/or generally pampering oneself. Additionally, some bath oils or bath salts can be beneficial in a way that couldn’t be administered the same way in the shower.

    Best of both worlds?

    In some parts of the world (Thailand and Turkey come to mind; doubtlessly there are many others) there are traditions of first taking a shower to get clean, and then taking a bath for the rest of the bathing experience. As a bonus, the bathing experience is then all the more pleasant for the water remaining just as clean as it was to start with.

    However, if you do have to pick one (and for the purpose of our “This or That” exercise, we do), then it’s the shower, hands-down.

    Want to read more?

    You might want to also take into account how it’s still possible to have too much of a good thing:

    Enjoy!

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  • Just Be Well – by Dr. Thomas Sult

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    Firstly, what this is not: a “think yourself well” book. It’s not about just deciding to be well.

    Rather, it’s about ensuring the foundations of wellness, from which the rest of good health can spring, and notably, an absence of chronic illness. In essence: enjoying chronic good health.

    The prescription here is functional medicine, which stands on the shoulders of lifestyle medicine. This latter is thus briefly covered and the basics presented, but most of the book is about identifying the root causes of disease and eliminating them one by one, by taking into account the functions of the body’s processes, both in terms of pathogenesis (and thus, seeking to undermine that) and in terms of correct functioning (i.e., good health).

    While the main focus of the book is on health rather than disease, he does cover a number of very common chronic illnesses, and how even in those cases where they cannot yet be outright cured, there’s a lot more that can be done for them than “take two of these and call your insurance company in the morning”, when the goal is less about management of symptoms (though that is also covered) and more about undercutting causes, and ensuring that even if one thing goes wrong, it doesn’t bring the entire rest of the system down with it (something that often happens without functional medicine).

    The style is clear, simple, and written for the layperson without unduly dumbing things down.

    Bottom line: if you would like glowingly good health regardless of any potential setbacks, this book can help your body do what it needs to for you.

    Click here to check out Just Be Well, and just be well!

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  • There are ‘forever chemicals’ in our drinking water. Should standards change to protect our health?

    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.

    Today’s news coverage reports potentially unsafe levels of “forever chemicals” detected in drinking water supplies around Australia. These include human-made chemicals: perfluorooctane sulfonate (known as PFOS) and perflurooctanic acid (PFOA). They are classed under the broader category of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS chemicals.

    The contaminants found in our drinking water are the same ones United States authorities warn can cause cancer over a long period of time, with reports warning there is “no safe level of exposure”.

    In April, the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) sent shock waves through the water industry around the world when it announced stricter advice on safe levels of PFOS/PFOA in drinking water. This reduced limits considered safe in supplies to zero and gave the water industry five years to meet legally enforceable limits of 4 parts per trillion.

    So, should the same limits be enforced here in Australia? And how worried should we be that the drinking in many parts of Australia would fail the new US standards?

    What are the health risks?

    Medical knowledge about the human health effects of PFOS/PFOA is still emerging. An important factor is the bioaccumulation of these chemicals in different organs in the body over time.

    Increased exposure of people to these chemicals has been associated with several adverse health effects. These include higher cholesterol, lower birth weights, modified immune responses, kidney and testicular cancer.

    It has been very difficult to accurately track and measure effects of different levels of PFAS exposure on people. People may be exposed to PFAS chemicals in their everyday life through waterproofing of clothes, non-stick cookware coatings or through food and drinking water. PFAS can also be in pesticides, paints and cosmetics.

    The International Agency for Research on Cancer (on behalf of the World Health Organization) regards PFOA as being carcinogenic to humans and PFOS as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

    child at water fountain outdoors
    Is our drinking water safe? What about long-term risks? Volodymyr TVERDOKHLIB/Shutterstock

    Our guidelines

    Australian drinking water supplies are assessed against national water quality standards. These Australian Drinking Water Guidelines are continuously reviewed by industry and health experts that scan the international literature and update them accordingly.

    All city and town water supplies across Australia are subject to a wide range of physical and chemical water tests. The results are compared to Australian water guidelines.

    Some tests relate to human health considerations, such as levels of lead or bacteria. Others relate to “aesthetic” considerations, such as the appearance or taste of water. Most water authorities across Australia make water quality information and compliance with Australian guidelines freely available.

    What about Australian PFOS and PFOA standards?

    These chemicals can enter our drinking water system from many potential sources, such as via their use in fire-fighting foams or pesticides.

    According to the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines, PFOS should not exceed 0.07 micrograms per litre in drinking water. And PFOA should not exceed 0.56 micrograms per litre. One microgram is equivalent to one part per billion.

    The concentration of these chemicals in water is incredibly small. And much of the advice on their concentration is provided in different units. Sometimes in micrograms or nannograms. The USEPA uses parts per trillion.

    In parts per trillion (ppt) the Australian Guidelines for PFOS is 70 ppt and PFOA is 560 ppt. The USEPA’s new maximum contaminant levels (enforceable levels) are 4 ppt for both PFOS and also PFOA. Previous news reports have pointed out Australian guidelines for these chemicals in drinking water are up to 140 times higher than the USEPA permits.

    Yikes! That seems like a lot

    Today’s news report cites PFOS and PFOA water tests done at many different water supplies across Australia. Some water samples did not detect either chemicals. But most did, with the highest PFOS concentration 15.1–15.6 parts per trillion from Glenunga, South Australia. The highest PFOA concentration was reported from a small water supply in western Sydney, where it was detected at 5.17–9.66 parts per trillion.

    Australia and the US are not alone. This is an enormous global problem.

    One of the obvious challenges for the Australian water industry is that current water treatment processes may not be effective at removing PFOS or PFOA. The Australian Drinking Water Guidelines provide this advice:

    Standard water treatment technologies including coagulation followed by physical separation, aeration, chemical oxidation, UV irradiation, and disinfection have little or no effect on PFOS or PFOA concentrations.

    Filtering with activated carbon and reverse osmosis may remove many PFAS chemicals. But no treatment systems appear to be completely effective at their removal.

    Removing these contaminants might be particularly difficult for small regional water supplies already struggling to maintain their water infrastructure. The NSW Auditor General criticised the planning for, and funding of, town water infrastructure in regional NSW back in 2020.

    Where to from here?

    The Australian water industry likely has little choice but to follow the US lead and address PFOS/PFAS contamination in drinking water. Along with lower thresholds, the US committed US$1 billion to water infrastructure to improve detection and water treatment. They will also now require:

    Public water systems must monitor for these PFAS and have three years to complete initial monitoring (by 2027) […]

    As today’s report notes, it is very difficult to find any recent data on PFOS and PFOA in Australian drinking water supplies. Australian regulators should also require ongoing and widespread monitoring of our major city and regional water supplies for these “forever chemicals”.

    The bottom line for drinking tap water is to keep watching this space. Buying bottled water might not be effective (2021 US research detected PFAS in 39 out of 100 bottled waters). The USEPA suggests people can reduce PFAS exposure with measures including avoiding fish from contaminated waters and considering home filtration systems.

    Correction: this article previously listed the maximum Australian Drinking Water Guidelines PFOA level as 0.056 micrograms per litre. The figure has been updated to show the correct level of 0.56 micrograms per litre.

    Ian A. Wright, Associate Professor in Environmental Science, Western Sydney University

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

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  • People on Ozempic may have fewer heart attacks, strokes and addictions – but more nausea, vomiting and stomach pain

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    Ozempic and Wegovy are increasingly available in Australia and worldwide to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity.

    The dramatic effects of these drugs, known as GLP-1s, on weight loss have sparked huge public interest in this new treatment option.

    However, the risks and benefits are still being actively studied.

    In a new study in Nature Medicine, researchers from the United States reviewed health data from about 2.4 million people who have type 2 diabetes, including around 216,000 people who used a GLP-1 drug, between 2017 and 2023.

    The researchers compared a range of health outcomes when GLP-1s were added to a person’s treatment plan, versus managing their diabetes in other ways, often using glucose-lowering medications.

    Overall, they found people who used GLP-1s were less likely to experience 42 health conditions or adverse health events – but more likely to face 19 others.

    myskin/Shutterstock

    What conditions were less common?

    Cardiometabolic conditions

    GLP-1 use was associated with fewer serious cardiovascular and coagulation disorders. This includes deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, stroke, cardiac arrest, heart failure and myocardial infarction.

    Neurological and psychiatric conditions

    GLP-1 use was associated with fewer reported substance use disorders or addictions, psychotic disorders and seizures.

    Infectious conditions

    GLP-1 use was associated with fewer bacterial infections and pneumonia.

    What conditions were more common?

    Gastrointestinal conditions

    Consistent with prior studies, GLP-1 use was associated with gastrointestinal conditions such as nausea, vomiting, gastritis, diverticulitis and abdominal pain.

    Other adverse effects

    Increased risks were seen for conditions such as low blood pressure, syncope (fainting) and arthritis.

    Ozempic in the fridge
    People who took Ozempic were more likely to experience stomach upsets than those who used other type 2 diabetes treatments. Douglas Cliff/Shutterstock

    How robust is this study?

    The study used a large and reputable dataset from the US Department of Veterans Affairs. It’s an observational study, meaning the researchers tracked health outcomes over time without changing anyone’s treatment plan.

    A strength of the study is it captures data from more than 2.4 million people across more than six years. This is much longer than what is typically feasible in an intervention study.

    Observational studies like this are also thought to be more reflective of the “real world”, because participants aren’t asked to follow instructions to change their behaviour in unnatural or forced ways, as they are in intervention studies.

    However, this study cannot say for sure that GLP-1 use was the cause of the change in risk of different health outcomes. Such conclusions can only be confidently made from tightly controlled intervention studies, where researchers actively change or control the treatment or behaviour.

    The authors note the data used in this study comes from predominantly older, white men so the findings may not apply to other groups.

    Also, the large number of participants means that even very small effects can be detected, but they might not actually make a real difference in overall population health.

    Woman runs on a road
    Observational studies track outcomes over time, but can’t say what caused the changes. Jacob Lund/Shutterstock

    Other possible reasons for these links

    Beyond the effect of GLP-1 in the body, other factors may explain some of the findings in this study. For example, it’s possible that:

    • people who used GLP-1 could be more informed about treatment options and more motivated to manage their own health
    • people who used GLP-1 may have received it because their health-care team were motivated to offer the latest treatment options, which could lead to better care in other areas that impact the risk of various health outcomes
    • people who used GLP-1 may have been able to do so because they lived in metropolitan centres and could afford the medication, as well as other health-promoting services and products, such as gyms, mental health care, or healthy food delivery services.

    Did the authors have any conflicts of interest?

    Two of the study’s authors declared they were “uncompensated consultants” for Pfizer, a global pharmaceutical company known for developing a wide range of medicines and vaccines. While Pfizer does not currently make readily available GLP-1s such as Ozempic or Wegovy, they are attempting to develop their own GLP-1s, so may benefit from greater demand for these drugs.

    This research was funded by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, a government agency that provides a wide range of services to military veterans.

    No other competing interests were reported.

    Diabetes vs weight-loss treatments

    Overall, this study shows people with type 2 diabetes using GLP-1 medication generally have more positive health outcomes than negative health outcomes.

    However, the study didn’t include people without type 2 diabetes. More research is needed to understand the effects of these medications in people without diabetes who are using them for other reasons, including weight loss.

    While the findings highlight the therapeutic benefits of GLP-1 medications, they also raise important questions about how to manage the potential risks for those who choose to use this medication.

    The findings of this study can help many people, including:

    • policymakers looking at ways to make GLP-1 medications more widely available for people with various health conditions
    • health professionals who have regular discussions with patients considering GLP-1 use
    • individuals considering whether a GLP-1 medication is right for them.

    Lauren Ball, Professor of Community Health and Wellbeing, The University of Queensland and Emily Burch, Accredited Practising Dietitian and Lecturer, Southern Cross University

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

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  • Policosanol: A Rival To Statins, Without The Side Effects?

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    Policosanol (which can be extracted from various sources, but is mostly made from sugar cane extract) is marketed as lipid-lowering agent for improving cholesterol levels, but its research history has not been without controversy:

    2001: it works!

    After a lot of research in the 1990s, it came out of the gate strong in 2001, with:

    ❝Policosanol (5 and 10 mg/day) significantly decreased LDL-cholesterol (17.3% and 26.7%, respectively), total cholesterol (12.9% and 19.5%), as well as the ratios of LDL-cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol (17.2% and 26.5%) and total cholesterol to HDL-cholesterol (16.3% and 21.0%) compared with baseline and placebo❞

    This, by the way, is comparable in efficacy to the most powerful statins, but without the adverse side effects.

    Source: Efficacy and tolerability of policosanol in hypercholesterolemic postmenopausal women

    Furthermore, its effects were not limited to postmenopausal women, and additionally, it was found that 20mg/day was sufficient for optimal effects; 40mg worked exactly the same as 20mg:

    Read: Effects of policosanol 20 versus 40 mg/day in the treatment of patients with type II hypercholesterolemia: a 6-month double-blind study

    2006–2010: we do not trust the Cubans!

    After it had been marketed and used in much of the world for some years, extra scrutiny was brought upon it, because the initial studies had been performed by the same lab in Cuba, a commercial lab that had tested them for a private interest (i.e., a company selling the supplement):

    Heart Beat: Policosanol: A sweet nothing for high cholesterol

    And furthermore, US-based labs were unable to replicate the results:

    Policosanols as Nutraceuticals: Fact or Fiction

    The Cuban researchers countered that the composition of policosanol as produced in their lab was different than the composition of the policosanol as produced in the US labs, because of the purity of the ingredients used in the Cuban lab.

    Which, on the face of it, could be true or could just be the claim of a commercial lab with an association with a company selling a product.

    Of course, importing Cuban ingredients to test them in the US was not a reasonably accessible option for the US-based labs, because of the US’s embargo of Cuba. In principle it could be done, but unless there is already a huge clear profit incentive, research scientists are usually on their hands and knees begging for grants already, so getting extra funding for specially-important Cuban ingredients was not going to be likely.

    2012: never mind, it does work after all!

    An American meta-analysis of 4596 patients from 52 eligible studies (from around the world, so many of them not affected by the US’s embargo; some were from within the US using non-Cuban ingredients, though), found:

    ❝policosanol is more effective than plant sterols and stanols for LDL level reduction and more favorably alters the lipid profile, approaching antilipemic drug efficacy❞

    Those last words there, to be clear, mean “yes, the original claim of being on a par with statins is at least more or less true”.

    Source: Meta-Analysis of Natural Therapies for Hyperlipidemia: Plant Sterols and Stanols versus Policosanol

    2018: also yes, the Cuban kind does get those extra-effective results, even when tested outside of Cuba

    A Korean research team verified this; it’s quite straightforward so for brevity we’ll just drop links:

    Mystery resolved!

    Want to try some?

    We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon—it’s not the Cuban kind, because the US’s trade embargo makes it difficult for the US to import even things that are theoretically now exempt from the embargo such as food and medicines. In principle they can now be imported, but in practice, the extra regulations added to Cuban imports make it nearly impossible, especially for small sellers.

    Still, it’s 40mg/tablet policosanol from sugar cane extract, and 3rd party lab tested, so it’s the next best thing 😎

    Enjoy!

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