Meta analysis of 'activated almonds'

To start the meta analysis of 'activated almonds' I searched the ovid medical database for all mentions of 'activated almonds':



Well that was fast. So my meta analysis concludes that there is no evidence for the use of activated almonds. But maybe there is evidence for activated almonds, just it isn't published in a peer reviewed journal. Lets go hunting!

Just in case you're wondering, why activated almonds? Well it was on the radio and I am bored, here is what started it off.

Livestrong found here says that 1 oz of almonds has 13% of your daily calories whilst 1 oz of 'activated almonds' has a mere 8%.  They break that down into 'carbs' where 1 oz of activated almonds contain 6g and 3.3 of fiber and fat where activated almonds contain 11g compared to 12.8g of normal almonds.  They then mention protein and vitamins and that activated almonds have good stuff in them but do not show a benefit. Finally in the 'fat' section they say that "Sprouted almonds also contain an abundance of the cholesterol-reducing substances campesterol, beta sitosterol and stanol." 

So what has livestrong told us?
1. There is a reduction in calories
2. There is a reduction in fat
3. It has all this good stuff

Point 1 and 2 sound great but it seems misleading.  Why?
Well let's do a science experiment:
1. Get 100g of any substance.

2. Mix with 100 g of water

3. Split that shit and notice that you now have 100g but with only 50g of  the substance and 50g of water.

  So what does making a mess in the kitchen have to do with activated almonds? Not much.
But it does demonstrate that if you rehydrate food and measure its energy per weight before and after you will get a dilution in energy per weight BECAUSE YOU ADDED WATER.  Tiny amounts of energy would be spent by the almonds growing and that would decrease the energy storage in the almond, but it would not be significant.  By that logic you should only eat sprouted potatoes because they are have less calories, but let's face it you eat them cause you left them for too long.

Point 3 up there was something about having nutrients.  Interestingly there is no comparison between nutrients of almonds and activated almonds probably because they would show that the nutrients have also been diulted.   So no specific change mentioned on the nutrient front.

What has livestrong actually told us?  That if you make awesome crunchy almonds soggy then you have made your almonds soggy.



But I don't want to give up there, lets keep looking for any evidence. Livestrong gives some references. So...

reference 1:
An almond supplier, no conflict of interest there...  They claim "The process of sprouting fundamentally changes the nutrient composition of the nut. The nutrients such as enzymes, amino acids, and vitamins are substantially increased and become more bio-available, allowing for better absorption. The "anti-nutrients" such as phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors and insoluble fibres are decreased, again allowing for increased bio-availability and nutrient absorption."

But they don't give a reference so it is all just hear say.  I might touch on phytic acid later but the phrase 'enzyme inhibitors' is as vauge as saying "other bad stuff" and "insoluble fibres" simply means fibre, which is a desired part of our diet.

Reference 2: Is by "Almond Essence Nut Milk" It is a website for a book, written by an artist and a computer programmer. Its claim is "Sprouting enlivens the enzymes that are dormant within each almond. These enzymes activate when they come in contact with water (the soaking process), and the nuts are “awakened”. The potential growth for each almond is to become a tree—and when we eat sprouted almonds our bodies receive this concentrated vital energy and nutrition (page 20)"

I mean it's a nice idea.  Again there are no references except to their own book that I am not going to read. Further if all it takes is for the enzymes to come in contact with water, then there will be plenty of time in a stomach. Maybe there is a really complicated mechanism here that just won’t fit onto a blurb but if there was I would expect to see the information in a medical journal or the book to be written by a biochemist. Let us move on.

Reference 3-5 on live strong are for the daily requirements cited on the page. Let’s skip them.

Reference 6: "All about almonds sprouted" is a 3 paragraph summary of 'almond sprouts'. The only line which even mentions a benefit is "Of all nuts, almonds are the easiest to digest, especially after 24-48 hours of sprouting. "

Once again it has no references, nor any reason cited. There is one link on the page which takes you to advertised books on the site that don't relate to almonds.

After what seems like an epic search the only benefit that I could substantiate is sprouting may reduce  Phytic acid.   What is this benefit? Let's consult wiki!

"Phytic acid is found within the hulls of nuts, seeds, and grains.^[2] In-home food preparation techniques can reduce the phytic acid in all of these foods. Simply cooking the food will reduce the phytic acid to some degree. More effective methods are soaking in an acid medium, lactic acid fermentation, and sprouting. "
And what does phytic acid do?  Well it binds to chemicals in the intestine making them nonabsorbable.  It has this effect on a number of chemicals but the effect is minimised because "soaking in an acid medium" IE our stomach reduces the effect.  Regarding the effects on phytic acid wiki concludes:
"For people with a particularly low intake of essential minerals, especially those in developing countries, [the] effect can be undesirable."
 
Conclusion:
Is there a conceivable nutritional benefit?  Yes
Is it a significant benefit for a normal person who is not deficient? No
Is it worth eating soggy almonds? No

The coolest websites on the web

So what are the coolest websites on the web?

Reddit: You can waste all your free time here, I do.

Music:

Groove shark: I use to go to youtube to listen to music and then have to down load  a video with it.  Now I just listen to music and I don’t get the adds.

Stereo mood -  click a feeling, listen to the music.

Noise arch - sounds of lost records

Games:

Orisinal

Armour games – well

utopia - for your slow paced text based fix.

Great reading:

XKCD

419 eaters

Blogs:

tucker max

greatest website in the universe

Eleanor the professional - the cutes blog ever!

environmental refugees blog

27b/6

Spent time

I've spent my day sitting around watching TV and reading the internet.   And it struck me an hour ago that I've wasted yet another day.  So as I sat pondering this and other deep thoughts I wondered, 'how much of my life do I waste?'

Well it is a pretty simple calculation:

The average Australian life expectancy, google says, is 81.7 and a quick search informs me that as a 23 year old I can expect another 56.88 years (61.31 if i were female).  For simplicity sake I am just going to go with 81.7 from this point on.  So:

How many days is 81.7 years?
81.7 x 365.25 = 29841  (lets say 30 thousand)
how many hours?
29841 x 24 = 716 182  (round down to 700 thousand)
how many min?
716 182 x60 = 42 970 932  (43 million)
how many seconds
42 970 932 x 60 = 2.5 billion

So since I wasted my day I wasted 1/30 000th of my life. 

Naturally I started to wonder.  If I brush my teeth twice a day for 2 min as I was recommended, how much of my life will I waste brushing my teeth?
The answer: 1/360th

Visually represented with a twelve hour cycle of a clock, I spend 2 min of my 12 hour life brushing my teeth!!! (If I had 12 hours to live I probably would brush my teeth cause I hate the feeling when you don't brush your teeth.)

Or what about If I veg out on the couch when I get home and watch four hours of TV? 
In one sitting I can waste 1/179 045 of my life.

On the clock that doesn’t amount to much:

In fact it roughly equates to 0 hours, 0 min, 0 seconds and 24 milli seconds. 

After a little more time playing with the numbers I realised that I probably have watched near every episode of the Simpsons.  To date there are 510 episodes with an average run time of 22min.   So almost 1/4000th of my life expectancy I have spent watching the Simpsons.

And it just dawned on me now that I've recently signed a contract for 38 hours of work a week for 48 weeks of next year.  That means I just signed away 1/400th of my life.

Well that’s all for now, I hope it was an interesting milli second of your 12 hour clock..

Realistic fiction.

Stick Jump, The Game Revolution.

Stick jump is going to sweep across the globe as the next great game! 'What is this game revolution that I have never heard of?' you ask. Well I am glad you asked. Here is how you play:

Step 1. Gather sticks, big straight sticks are best, maybe 10-15

Step 2. Gather friends, I don't know how to do this one. Maybe go to a club and yell over the music that you are playing stick jump outside and anyone who wants to play should join you. Then you can assume all the smokers outside want to play and because of their puny lung capacity you will have a good chance of winning!

Step 3. Arrange sticks in a straight line about 1m apart, (kinda like train sleepers)

Step 4. Run through the sticks with one and only one step in between each stick. Each person in the group does this and the last person takes a mighty leap at the end. Mark where the last person landed.

Step 5. Take one of the sticks already in play (not the first stick though) and place it where the last person landed.

Step 6. Repeat until people can no longer make the jumps.

Here is a picture to explain

As you can see, you keep some narrow more technical parts and you get some areas where you need to take massive strides. 

Sometimes it can be cool to leave a narrow bit in the middle so people have to slow down and then make massive jumps at the end.

The winner is the person who makes it when no one else can.  Towards the end if you take the wrong stick out it can make it impossible so sometimes a third party needs to step in to make the course more difficult without making it impossible for all players.

















So I give you the game that will take over the world STICK JUMP.  Unfortunately there is nothing that I can make money off in this game; all you need is sticks and grass and since I don't sell either of these I am not going to make millions.


Maybe when it takes off I can start selling official merchandise like 'official sticks' and stick jump shirts.  Currently my family competes for a stick that we have kept from our first game.   I am seriously considering coating it in gold when I am super rich.

Below is the first official picture of stick jump in action.  That is me in the game.  I came second to my brother who is super springy. My family is in the background.



May the stick be with you.

Mt Hay Canyon (butterbox) - stuck in the middle

For a number of years, me and my family have done canyoning.

What does it involve? We drive from Sydney to the mountains (not a short drive), park our car at the top of a giant hill and walk down to a freezing cold river with cliffs on either side. We then swim down the river until there is a point that you can climb back out and up the gigantic hill.  Exhausted, cold and hungry we drive back home and plan our next trip.

Sometimes I think it is a little crazy, similar to skiing.  In skiing you sit on a chair and are battered with freezing winds.  Once at the top of the mountain you ski down which is to the internal dialogue of "shit shit shit shit."  You then get to the bottom of the slope, pay exuberant money for food or drink and then repeat.  Somehow I still see skiing as one of the greatest holidays.

So my two older brothers and my professional girlfriend were going canyoning at Mt Hay.  We did the drive and started our walk where we quickly were met with knee deep mud and leaches.  The mud is not so bad really; I just hate the thought that a leach might be sucking my blood.  It wasn't helped by Elle asking "what happens if they get in my ear?"



We continued on and the mud slowly became a creek and then the creek dropped down into a valley which was surrounded by cliffs and waterfalls, we were now canyoning.  Our first abseil was down a lovely waterfall, which had a slippery overhang on it.  The picture below actually has my brother under the waterfall if you look closely.  Maybe it is hard to see.  He is the thing attached to the rope that is making the water change direction mid fall.










We were surrounded now by great cliffs on either side and with an abseil down we had reached the point of no return. haha.

My worry at this point is that we will get to the next abseil and the anchor (the tree or rock that we tie the rope around) will have been washed away in a flood.  I often wonder what I would do.  There is normally no phone reception and parents know where we are but don't expect a phone call for hours.  In most places I would expect the situation to be a bit of a tea party where we find the one patch of sunlight and talk and play games until someone comes to save us.

We next came to a jump in.  It was about a 4 m drop into black water.  Technically it is possible to set up a abseil here, but it takes time and in a recent track report people said that the water underneath was clear.  My brother led the way without hesitation and then scouted the depth of water after already taking the leap of faith into the water




I'm the one still up the top of the jump and I believe that is Elle shooting through the air. I had to go next,  I hate the moment where you start counting down for yourself.  You throw yourself forward which just feels wrong, but as soon as you are in the air you get the rush, quickly replaced by freezing cold water.

The walls of the canyon closed in, now they were just meters apart and maybe 20m high.  We had come to the double abseil.  From reports we knew that you abseiled down to a rock suspended by the walls of the canyon.  At this point you set up another abseil and go on down again.  This is all we could see from above.



Below us was a waterfall hidden by the rocks which generated a roar.  From where we stood we couldn’t see the rock that was our destination. Once again my brother led first, and disappeared behind the canyon wall.  The rope went limp and we heard distant yelling so we followed.

The next bit we don’t have photo's from.  So I drew a picture.


All four of us were on the rock, stuck between the walls of the canyon.  It was pretty cramped, we had one rope connecting us all together ancored to the rock. We were setting up for the next abseil.  There was the roar of the waterfall and a constant spray of water on us as it bounced off the walls.  The abseil below us was around 20m but we couldn't see the bottom of it.  As we pulled the rope down, there was a fair bit of friction, then it stopped coming all together.  We all pulled the rope as hard as we could but it wouldn’t budge.  Our rope was stuck!

I had the horrible thought of being stuck on this tiny rock for hours.  It was dark, cold and we were wet.  My tea party couldn't happen here, there was no patch of sun, no way we could talk over the roar of the water and no way to stay warm.

We gathered what rope we had pulled down, and measured it, a rough guess would be 42m by our arms lengths. (the way we do canyoning abseils is we double it up so that you can pull it down at the end, we believed we needed 40m of rope to do the next abseil and we had to double it up because there were abseils after this one), and so taking charge my brother cut the rope that we could from the cliff above.

We then set up the abseil, we couldn't see the bottom, we didn't know if the rope made it all the way but we had no choice so my brother went down.  He turned a corner in the canyon and we lost sight of him, there was no way to tell if the rope was long enough, no way to hear him but the rope went limp.  We felt for tugs of the rope or any signal that it made it to the bottom as opposed to a 10m drop from inaccurate track notes.  Elle went next.

I followed Elle, and turned the corner of the canyon to find my brother standing in the water belaying and Elle on a bank.  I took over so my brother could get out of the waterfall and my other brother followed down the abseil.  This is a picture of me down the bottom and my brother going down the waterfall.  You can see the corner off to the left which is as far as we could see from the rock above.




Once down the bottom it was pretty amazing.  We had overcome something that if we were unlucky could have been disastrous.  There was a patch of sun and we shivered knowing that we had made it out of the worst of it.  We still had a number of abseils and a rock climb to get out, but I think that is another story.

The other story can be found as written by my  professional girlfriend Eleanor .

We drove home, we were tired and we slept. Somehow it was still a great day; I can't wait to do it again.