Fruit, Fiber, & Leafy Greens... On A Low-FODMAP Diet!

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

In A Rush?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• FODMAPs (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols) are quite healthy for most people, but not for everyone

  • For some people, FODMAPs can trigger IBS symptoms

  • Today’s main feature shows how to get a good amount of fiber (plenty of fruit and veg) while keeping low on FODMAPs

• When did you last have your hearing checked? It’s easy to let things slip away from us, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

  • Today’s sponsor, Hear.com, are offering the most cutting-edge dual-processing technology in hearing aids that isolate and separate speech from background noise, now with their latest most advanced device yet!

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

Five Natural Alternatives To Ozempic

Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!

Saturday Life Hacks

Fiber For FODMAP-Avoiders

First, let’s quickly cover: what are FODMAPs?

FODMAPs are fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols.

In plainer English: they’re carbohydrates that are resistant to digestion.

This is, for most people most of the time, a good thing, for example:

When Is A Fiber Not A Fiber? When It’s A Resistant Starch.

Not for everyone…

However, if you have inflammatory bowel syndrome (IBS), including ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, or similar, then suddenly a lot of common dietary advice gets flipped on its head:

Dietary Intolerances & More

While digestion-resistant carbohydrates making it to the end parts of our digestive tract are good for our bacteria there, in the case of people with IBS or similar, it can be a bit too good for our bacteria there.

Which can mean gas (a natural by-product of bacterial respiration) accumulation, discomfort, water retention (as the pseudo-fiber draws water in and keeps it), and other related symptoms, causing discomfort, and potentially disease such as diarrhea.

Again: for most people this is not so (usually: quite the opposite; resistant starches improve things down there), but for those for whom it’s a thing, it’s a Big Bad Thing™.

Hold the veg? Hold your horses.

A common knee-jerk reaction is “I will avoid fruit and veg, then”.

Superficially, this can work, as many fruit & veg are high in FODMAPs (as are fermented dairy products, by the way).

However, a diet free from fruit and veg is not going to be healthy in any sustainable fashion.

There are, however, options for low-FODMAP fruit & veg, such as:

Fruits: bananas (if not overripe), kiwi, grapefruit, lemons, limes, melons, oranges, passionfruit, strawberries

Vegetables: alfalfa, bell peppers, bok choy, carrots, celery, cucumbers, eggplant, green beans, kale, lettuce, olives, parsnips, potatoes (and sweet potatoes, yams etc), radishes, spinach, squash, tomatoes*, turnips, zucchini

*our stance: botanically it’s a fruit, but culinarily it’s a vegetable.

For more on the science of this, check out:

Strategies for Producing Low FODMAPs Foodstuffs: Challenges and Perspectives ← table 2 is particularly informative when it comes to the above examples, and table 3 will advise about…

Bonus

Grains: oats, quinoa, rice, tapioca

…and wheat if the conditions in table 3 (linked above) are satisfied

(worth mentioning since grains also get a bad press when it comes to IBS, but that’s mostly because of wheat)

See also: Gluten: What’s The Truth?

Enjoy!

Our Sponsors Make This Publication Possible

Have we found the holy grail of hearing aids?

There’s a reason experts are calling hear.com’s new IX hearing aids “the ultimate conversation starter.” Because they’re the world’s first designed with clarity in conversation in mind.

That means state-of-the-art noise suppression. Lightning-fast dual processing technology.

The most natural listening experience ever. In your day-to-day life, that means effortless conversation, wherever you go.

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

You May Have Missed

• What Menopause Does To The Heart

• CBD Oil: What Does The Science Say?

• The 6 Pillars Of Nutritional Psychiatry

This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between shredded wheat cereal and organic crunch cereal—we picked the shredded wheat (click here to read about why), as did 82% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

Bonus (Sponsored) Recommendation

The device breathing new life into personal wellness:

Meet Lumen, the world's first metabolic coach that measures your metabolism through breath analysis. Get personalized nutrition plans, track metabolic health, and effortlessly improve overall wellness. Take charge of your health journey today with Lumen. Order now using code GETLUMENHEALTH for $50 off.

You (Also) May Have Missed

• 7 Steps to Get Off Sugar and Carbohydrates (book)

• Brain Food: The Surprising Science of Eating for Cognitive Power (book)

• Dr. Patrick Walsh’s Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer (book)

One-Minute Book Review

Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence – by Dr. Rick Hanson

Publishers are very excitable about “the new science of…”, and it’s almost never actually a new science of. But what about in this case?

No, it isn’t. It’s the very well established science of! And that’s a good thing, because it means this book is able to draw on quite a lot of research and established understanding of how neuroplasticity works, to leverage that and provide useful guidance.

A particular strength of this book is that while it polarizes the idea that some people have “happy amygdalae” and some people have “sad amygdalae”, it acknowledges that it’s not just a fated disposition and is rather the result of the lives people have led… And then provides advice on upgrading from sad to happy, based on the assumption that the reader is quite possibly coming from a non-ideal starting point.

The book does an excellent job of straddling neuroscience and psychology, which sounds like not much of a straddle (the two are surely very connected, after all, right?) but this does mean that we’re hearing about the chemical structure of DNA inside the nuclei of the neurons of the insula, not long after reading an extended gardening metaphor about growth, choices, and vulnerabilities.

Bottom line: if you’d like a guide to changing your brain for the better (happier) that’s not just “ask yourself: what if it goes well?” and similar CBTisms, then this is a fine book for you.

Click here to check out Hardwiring Happiness, and indeed hardwire happiness!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

Wishing you a wonderfully restorative weekend,

The 10almonds Team