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How To April Fool Yourself Into Having A Nutrient-Dense Diet!
Cacao nibs and garlic feature today, and wow, they do so many things
The 10almonds Team
April 01, 2023
Loading Screen Tip: Angels fly because they take themselves lightly!
⏰ IN A RUSH?
Today’s Key Learnings:
Flying by? Here are some key take-away ideas from today’s newsletter:
In terms of nuts and healthiness, almonds came out on top and peanuts came out on the bottom
Hiding nutritional food is not just for “kids and fussy eaters”, it’s a life skill! The simple fact is not everyone loves huge helpings of fruit and veg, and that’s just a preference, not a moral failing as some would paint it.
Everyone knows soups and smoothies are great way to “hide” nutrients… We also present nutrient dense base ingredients for sauces (no recipes today, just ideas—maybe another day, if there’s demand! Use the feedback widget at the bottom to let us know!)
Garnishes can be far more than just a pretty dash of color! With these nutrient-dense foods, you can add a lot to your meal. We especially recommend:
Cacao nibs
Sprouts (yes really, here we do give a kind of recipe, for the skeptical, to make them delicious)
Kale (three ways, to cover all bases of “but I don’t like…”)
Bell peppers (those colors are incredible amounts of nutrients!)
Garlic (what doesn’t it do?)
Think again! Our book of the day presents a welcome challenge…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
3 WORST Nuts & 9 BEST Nuts (For Diabetes, Heart & Clogged Arteries)
Notwithstanding the strange disparity between the name of the channel and the topic of the video, this one’s very good for those of us who have wondered: which nuts?
On the one hand, famously healthy oil, high protein, etc! On the other hand, peanuts have a bajillion calories. And lest we forget, the Brazil nut paradox:
So rich in selenium, so good for healthy shiny hair!
So rich in selenium, eat more than one and it’s too much selenium and can cause hair loss instead
We’re not kidding, see for example: Be Careful with Brazil Nuts and Selenium Poisoning
So with no further ado, on to the video…
Key moments:
💪 MAIN FEATURE
These nutrient-dense foods pack such a punch you only need a bit added to your meal…
“Have 5 servings of fruit per day”—popular wisdom in the West
“Have 7 servings of fruit per day!”—generally held as the norm in Japan
“Have these 12 things that are mostly fruit & veg & nuts each day”—Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen
“Does the pickle that comes with a burger count?”—an indication of how much many people struggle.
For what it’s worth: pickles are a good source of some minerals (and some healthy gut bacteria too), but are generally too high in sodium to be healthy for most people beyond in the most modest moderation.
But! It can be a lot easier, and without sitting down to a salad buffet every day!
Here are some sneaky tips:
(call it our nod to April Fool’s Day, because tricking yourself into eating more healthily is a top-tier prank)
Beyond soups and smoothies
Soups and smoothies are great, because we can take a lot of nutrients that way without actually oing much eating. And if we’ve a want or need to hide something, blending it does a fine job. However, we’re confident you already know how to make soups and smoothies. So…
Sauces are another excellent place to put nutrients—and as a bonus, homemade sauces will mean skipping on the store-bought sauces whose ingredients all-too-often look something like “sugar, water, spirit vinegar, glucose-fructose syrup, modified maize starch, maltodextrin, salt…”
Top things to use as a main base ingredient in sauces:
Tomato purée—so much lycopene, and great vitamins too! Modest flavour, but obviously only sensible for what you intend to be a tomato-based sauce. Use it to make anything from marinara sauce to ketchup, sweet-and-sour to smoky barbecue.
Lentils/beans—if unsure, red lentils or haricot beans have a very mild taste, and edamame beans are almost not-there, flavor-wise. But cooked and blended smooth, these are high-protein, iron-rich, flavonoid-heavy, and a good source of fiber too. Can be used as the base of so many savory creamy sauces!
Corn—that yellow color? It’s all the lutein. Home-made creamed corn goes great as a dipping sauce! Added spices optional.
Vegetables that punch above their weight
Sometimes, you might not want to eat much veg, but a small edible side-dish could be appealing, or even a generous garnish. In those cases, if you choose wisely, you can have a lot of nutrients in a tiny portion. Here are some that have an absurd nutrient-to-size ratio:
Cacao nibs—one for the dessert-lovers here, but can also garnish a frothy coffee, your morning overnight oats, or if we’re honest, can also just be snacked on! And they keep for ages. Botanically technically a fruit, but we’re going to throw it in here. As for health qualities? Where to begin…
They:
and even fight cancer, which is a many-headed beast, but for example:
…which is starting to look like a pattern, isn’t it? It’s good against cancer.
Brussels sprouts—if your knee-jerk reaction here wasn’t one of great appeal, then consider: these are delicious if done right.
Buy them fresh, not frozen (nothing nutritionally wrong with frozen if you like them—we’re just doing the extra-level tastiness here). Wash them and peel them, then cut twice from the top to almost-the-bottom, to quarter them in a way that they still stay in one piece. Rub them (or if you’re going easier on the fats, spray them) with a little olive oil, a tiny touch of lemon juice, and sprinkle a little cracked black pepper. Sautée them. We know people will advise roasting, which is also great, but try the sautée approach, and thank us later.
Four sprouts is already a sufficient daily serving of cruciferous vegetables, and provides so many health benefits, with not just a stack of vitamins and minerals, but also have anti-cancer properties, are great for your heart in multiple ways, and reduce inflammation too. They’re literally one of the healthiest foods out there and you only need a tiny portion to benefit.
Kale—Don’t like the taste/texture? That’s OK, read on… No surprises here, but it’s crammed with vitamins and minerals.
If you don’t care for the bitter taste, cooking it (such as by steaming it) takes that away.
If you don’t care for the texture, baking it with a little sprayed-on olive oil changes that completely (and is how “kale chips” are made).
If you don’t care for either? Do the “kale chips” thing mentioned above, but do it on a lower heat for longer—dry it out, basically. Then either blend it in a food processor, or by hand with a pestle and mortar (it turns to powder very easily, so this won’t be hard work), and you now have a very nutrient-dense powder that tastes of very little. While fries are not a health food, an example here is that you can literally dust fries with it and they won’t taste any different but you got a bunch of vitamins and minerals added from a whole food source.
If going for the above approach, do it in batch and make yourself a jar of it to keep handy with your seasonings collection!
Bell peppers—Working hard to justify their high prices in the grocery store, these are very high in vitamins, especially rich in carotenoids, including lutein, and as a bonus, they’re also full of antioxidants. So, slice some and throw them at whatever else you’re cooking, and you’ve added a lot of nutrients for negligible effort.
Garlic—once you’ve done the paperwork, garlic not only makes bland meals delicious, but is also a treasure trove of micronutrients. It has a stack of vitamins and minerals, and also contains allicin. If you’ve not heard of that one, it’s the compound in garlic that is so good for blood pressure and heart health. See for example:
If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, just imagine what a bulb of garlic can do (come on, we can’t be the only ones who measure garlic by the bulb instead of by the clove, right?)!
But in seriousness: measure garlic with your heart—have lots or a little, per your preference. The whole point here is that even a little of these superfoods can make a huge difference to your health!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know - by Adam Grant
Warning: this book may cause some feelings of self-doubt! Ride them out and see where they go, though.
It was Socrates who famously (allegedly) said "ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα"—"I know that I know nothing".
Adam Grant wants us to take this philosophy and apply it usefully to modern life. How?
The main premise is that rethinking our plans, answers and decisions is a good thing... Not a weakness. In contrast, he says, a fixed mindset closes us to opportunities—and better alternatives.
He wants us to be sure that we don't fall into the trap of the Dunning-Kruger Effect (overestimating our abilities because of being unaware of how little we know), but he also wants us to rethink whole strategies, too. For example:
Grant's approach to interpersonal conflict is very remniscent of another book we might review sometime, "Aikido in Everyday Life". The idea here is to not give in to our knee-jerk responses to simply retaliate in kind, but rather to sidestep, pivot, redirect. This is, admittedly, the kind of "rethinking" that one usually has to rethink in advance—it's too late in the moment! Hence the value of a book.
Nor is the book unduly subjective. "Wishy-washiness" has a bad rep, but Grant gives us plenty in the way of data and examples of how we can, for example, avoid losses by not doubling down on a mistake.
What, then, of strongly-held core principles? Rethinking doesn't mean we must change our mind—it simply means being open to the possibility in contexts where such makes sense.
Grant borrows, in effect, from:
❝Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better... do better!❞
So, not so much undercutting the principles we hold dear, and instead rather making sure they stand on firm foundations.
All in all, a thought-provokingly inspiring read!
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Wishing you the best possible month ahead,
The 10almonds Team