Three Critical Kitchen Prescriptions

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Three Critical Kitchen Prescriptions

This is Dr. Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed. She’s a medical doctor—specifically, a gastroenterologist. She’s also a chef, and winner of the BBC’s MasterChef competition. So, from her gastroenterology day-job and her culinary calling, she has some expert insights to share on eating well!

❝Food and medicine are inextricably linked to one another, and it is an honour to be a doctor who specialises in digestive health and can both cook, and teach others to cook❞

~ Dr. Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed, after winning MasterChef and being asked if she’d quit medicine to be a full-time chef

Dr. Mahmood-Ahmed’s 3 “Kitchen Prescriptions”

They are:

  1. Cook, cook, cook
  2. Feed your gut bugs
  3. Do not diet

Let’s take a look at each of those…

Cook, cook, cook

We’re the only species on Earth that cooks food. An easy knee-jerk response might be to think maybe we shouldn’t, then, but… We’ve been doing it for at least 30,000 years, which is about 1,500 generations, while a mere 100 generations is generally sufficient for small evolutionary changes. So, we’ve evolved this way now.

More importantly in this context: we, ourselves, should cook our own food, at least per household.

Not ready meals; we haven’t evolved for those (yet! Give it another few hundred generations maybe)

Feed your gut bugs

The friendly ones. Enjoy prebiotics, probiotics, and plenty of fiber—and then be mindful of what else you do or don’t eat. Feeding the friendly bacteria while starving the unfriendly ones may seem like a tricky task, but it actually can be quite easily understood and implemented. We did a main feature about this a few weeks ago:

Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)

Do not diet

Dr. Mahmood-Ahmed is a strong critic of calorie-counting as a weight-loss strategy:

Rather than focusing on the number of calories consumed, try focusing on introducing enough variety of food into your daily diet, and on fostering good microbial diversity within your gut.

It’s a conceptual shift from restrictive weight loss, to prescriptive adding of things to one’s diet, with fostering diversity of microbiota as a top priority.

This, too, she recommends be undertaken gently, though—making small, piecemeal, but sustainable improvements. Nobody can reasonably incorporate, say, 30 new fruits and vegetables into one’s diet in a week; it’s unrealistic, and more importantly, it’s unsustainable.

Instead, consider just adding one new fruit or vegetable per shopping trip!

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  • How Not to Age – by Dr. Michael Greger

    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.

    First things first: it’s a great book, and it’s this reviewer’s favorite of Dr. Greger’s so far (for posterity: it’s just been published and this reviewer has just finished reading the copy she got on pre-order)

    Unlike many popular physician authors, Dr. Greger doesn’t rehash a lot of old material, and instead favours prioritizing new material in each work. Where appropriate, he’ll send the reader to other books for more specific information (e.g: you want to know how to avoid premature death? Go read How Not To Die. You want to know how to lose weight? How Not To Diet. Etc).

    In the category of new information, he has a lot to offer here. And with over 8,000 references, it’s information, not conjecture. On which note, we recommend the e-book version if that’s possible for you, for three reasons:

    1. It’s possible to just click the references and be taken straight to the cited paper itself online
    2. To try to keep the book’s size down, Dr. Greger has linked to other external resources too
    3. The only negative reviews on Amazon, so far, are people complaining that the print copy’s text is smaller than they’d like

    For all its information-density (those 8,000+ references are packed into 600ish pages), the book is very readable even to a lay reader; the author is a very skilled writer.

    As for the content, we can’t fit more than a few sentences here so forgive the brevity, but we’ll mention that he covers:

    • Slowing 11 pathways of aging
    • The optimal anti-aging regimen according to current best science
    • Preserving function (specific individual aspects of aging, e.g. hearing, sight, cognitive function, sexual function, hair, bones, etc)
    • “Dr. Greger’s Anti-Aging Eight”

    In terms of “flavor” of anti-aging science, his approach can be summed up as: diet and lifestyle as foundation; specific supplements and interventions as cornerstones.

    Bottom line: this is now the anti-aging book.

    Click here to check out How Not To Age, and look after yourself with the best modern science!

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  • Be A Plant-Based Woman Warrior – by Jane Esselstyn & Ann Esselstyn

    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.

    Notwithstanding the title, this book is not about being a woman or a warrior, but let us share what one reviewer on Amazon wrote:

    ❝I don’t want to become a plant based woman warrior. The sex change would be traumatic for me. However, as a man who proudly takes ballet classes and Pilates, I am old enough not to worry about stereotypes. When I see a good thing, I am going to use it❞

    The authors, a mother-and-daughter team in their 80s and 50s respectively, do give a focus on things that disproportionally affect women, and rectifying those things with diet, especially in one of the opening chapters.

    Most the book, however, is about preventing/reversing things that can affect everyone, such as heart disease, diabetes, inflammation and the autoimmune diseases associated with such, and cancer in general, hence the dietary advice being good for most people (unless you have an unusually restrictive diet).

    We get an overview of the pantry we should cultivate and curate, as well as some basic kitchen skills that will see us well for the rest of the book, such as how to make oat flour and other similar mini-recipes, before getting into the main recipes themselves.

    About the recipes: they are mostly quite simple, though often rely on having pre-prepared items from the mini-recipes we mentioned earlier. They’re all vegan, mostly but not all gluten-free, whole foods, no added sugar, and as for oil… Well, it seems to be not necessarily oil-free, but rather oil-taboo. You see, they just don’t mention it. For example, when they say to caramelize onions, they say to heat a skillet, and when it is hot, add the onions, and stir until browned. They don’t mention any oil in the ingredients or in the steps. It is a mystery. 10almonds note: we recommend olive oil, or avocado oil if you prefer a milder taste and/or need a higher smoke point.

    Bottom line: the odd oil taboo aside, this is a good book of simple recipes that teaches some good plant-based kitchen skills while working with a healthy, whole food pantry.

    Click here to check out Be A Plant-Based Woman Warrior, and be a plant-based woman warrior!

    Or at the very least: be a plant-based cook regardless of gender, hopefully without war, and enjoy the additions to your culinary repertoire

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  • Just One Thing – by Dr. Michael Mosley

    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.

    This is a collection of easy-to-implement changes that have good science behind them to show how they can benefit us. Some things are obvious (e.g: drink water); others, less so (e.g: sing, to reduce inflammation).

    The book is divided thematically into times of the day, though in many cases it’s not a hard rule that a thing needs to be done at a certain time. Others are, like a cold shower in the morning and hot bath before bed—you might not want to switch those around!

    The style is very pop-science, and does not have in-line citations for claims, but it does have a bibliography in the bag organized by each “one thing”, e.g. it might say “get some houseplants” and then list a number of references supporting that, with links to the studies showing how that helps. For those with the paper version, don’t worry, you can copy the URL from the book into your browser and see it that way. In any case, there are 2–6 scientific references for each claim, which is very respectable for a pop-sci book.

    Bottom line: if you’re looking for evidence-based “one little thing” changes that can make a big difference, this book has lots!

    Click here to check out Just One Thing, and improve your life!

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    Nutritionist and perimenopause coach Claudia Canu, whom we’ve featured before in our Expert Insights segment, has advice:

    Here’s to good health

    When it comes to alcohol, the advice is: don’t.

    Or at least, cut back, and manage the effects by ensuring good hydration, having an “alcohol curfew” and so forth.

    What’s the relation to menopause? Well, alcohol’s not good for anyone at any time of life, but there are some special considerations when it comes to alcohol and estrogenic hormonal health:

    • The liver works hard to process the alcohol as a matter of urgency, delaying estrogen processing, which can increase the risk of breast and uterine cancer.
    • Alcohol has no positive health effects and is also linked to higher risks of breast and colorectal cancer.
    • Alcohol can also trigger some menopausal symptoms, such as night sweats and hot flashes. So, maybe reaching for that “cooling drink” isn’t the remedy it might seem.
    • During menopause, the body becomes more insulin-resistant, making it more susceptible to blood sugar spikes caused by alcohol. Also not good.

    Common reasons women turn to alcohol include stress, frustration, the need for reward, and social pressure, and all of these can be heightened when undergoing hormonal changes. Yet, alcohol will ultimately only worsen each of those things.

    For more on the science of some of the above, plus tips on how to make positive changes with minimum discomfort, enjoy:

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    Don’t Forget…

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  • How & Why Non-Sleep Deep Rest Works (And What Activities Trigger The Same State)

    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.

    Stress is a natural response that evolved over thousands of years to help humans meet challenges by priming the body and mind for action. However, chronic stress is harmful, as it diverts energy away from essential processes like cell maintenance and repair, leading to deterioration of health (physical and mental).

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    Parasympathetic Response

    Practices as diverse as mindfulness meditation, yoga, prayer, tai chi, qigong, knitting, painting, gardening, and sound baths can help induce states of deep rest—these days often called “Non-Sleep Deep Rest” (NSDR), to differentiate it from deep sleep.

    How it works: these activities send signals to the brain that the body is safe, initiating biological changes that…

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    If we then (reasonably!) conclude from this: “so, we must embrace moments of stillness and mindfulness, and allow ourselves to experience the ease and safety of the present”, that may sound a little wishy-washy, but the neurology of it is clear, the consequences of that neurological response on every living cell in the body are also clear, so by doing NSDR (whether by yoga nidra or knitting or something else) we can significantly improve our overall well-being.

    Note: the list of activities above is far from exhaustive, but do be aware that this doesn‘t mean any activity you enjoy and do to unwind will trigger NSDR. On the contrary, many activities you enjoy and do to unwind may trigger the opposite, a sympathetic nervous system response—watching television is a common example of this “wrong choice for NSDR”. Sure, it can be absorbing and a distraction from your daily stressors, but it also can be exciting (both cognitively and neurologically and thus also physiologically), which is the opposite of what we want.

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    Don’t Forget…

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  • Are GMOs Good Or Bad For Us?

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    Unzipping Our Food’s Genes

    In yesterday’s newsletter, we asked you for your (health-related) views on GMOs.

    But what does the science say?

    First, a note on terms

    Technically, we (humans) have been (g)enetically (m)odifying (o)rganisms for thousands of years.

    If you eat a banana, you are enjoying the product of many generations of artificial selection, to change its genes to produce a fruit that is soft, sweet, high in nutrients, and digestible without cooking. The original banana plant would be barely recognizable to many people now (and also, barely edible). We’ve done similarly with countless other food products.

    So in this article, we’re going to be talking exclusively about modern genetic modification of organisms, using exciting new (ish, new as in “in the last century”) techniques to modify the genes directly, in a copy-paste fashion.

    For more details on the different kinds of genetic modification of organisms, and how they’re each done (including the modern kinds), check out this great article from Sciencing, who explain it in more words than we have room for here:

    Sciencing | How Are GMOs Made?

    (the above also offers tl;dr section summaries, which are great too)

    GMOS are outright dangerous (cancer risks, unknown risks, etc): True or False?

    False, so far as we know, in any direct* fashion. Obviously “unknown risks” is quite a factor, since those are, well, unknown. But GMOs on the market undergo a lot of safety testing, and have invariably passed happily.

    *However! Glyphosate (the herbicide), on the other hand, has a terrible safety profile and is internationally banned in very many countries for this reason.

    Why is this important? Because…

    • in the US (and two out of ten Canadian provinces), glyphosate is not banned
    • In the US (and we may hypothesize, those two Canadian provinces) one of the major uses of genetic modification of foodstuffs is to make it resistant to glyphosate
    • Consequently, GMO foodstuffs grown in those places have generally been liberally doused in glyphosate

    So… It’s not that the genetic modification itself makes the food dangerous and potentially carcinogenic (it doesn’t), but it is that the genetic modification makes it possible to use a lot more glyphosate without losing crops to glyphosate’s highly destructive properties.

    Which results in the end-consumer eating glyphosate. Which is not good. For example:

    ❝Following the landmark case against Monsanto, which saw them being found liable for a former groundskeeper, 46 year old Dewayne Johnson’s cancer, 32 countries have to date banned the use of Glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer. The court awarded Johnson R4.2 billion in damages finding Monsanto “acted with malice or oppression”.❞

    Source: see below!

    You can read more about where glyphosate is and isn’t banned, here:

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    For the science of this (and especially the GMO → glyphosate use → cancer pipeline), see:

    Use of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO)-Containing Food Products in Children

    GMOs are extra healthy because of the modifications (they were designed for that, right?): True or False?

    True or False depending on who made them and why! As we’ve seen above, not all companies seem to have the best interests of consumer health in mind.

    However, they can be! Here are a couple of great examples:

    ❝Recently, two genome-edited crops targeted for nutritional improvement, high GABA tomatoes and high oleic acid soybeans, have been released to the market.

    Nutritional improvement in cultivated crops has been a major target of conventional genetic modification technologies as well as classical breeding methods❞

    Source: Drs. Nagamine & Ezura

    Read in full: Genome Editing for Improving Crop Nutrition

    (note, they draw a distinction of meaning between genome editing and genetic modification, according to which of two techniques is used, but for the purposes of our article today, this is under the same umbrella)

    Want to know more?

    If you’d like to read more about this than we have room for here, here’s a great review in the Journal of Food Science & Nutrition:

    Should we still worry about the safety of GMO foods? Why and why not? A review

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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