Sometimes I read things too interesting not to share. I came across this interesting read about calories in Scientific American. It involves nuts. And backs up much of what my body has been telling me for years. To illustrate today’s read – and to celebrate what you’ll learn below – I’m sharing another recipe from my I Quit Sugar Cookbook, for those of you who don’t have all 108 in a nice easy format. Activated nuts!
image via Marija Ivkovic
Here’s why you should activate your nuts. (Yes, I laugh every time, too.)
Want the recipe? Scroll below.
Inspired to buy the rest of the cookbook? Click this button below.
But for now…some interesting stuff to chew on…
I’m anti-calorie counting. It’s just not the way to eat.
For one, it’s miserable. When I’m miserable, I eat more.
For two, the “calories in calories out” formula just doesn’t make any sense. Surely our bodies are more complex than that?
For three, I eat close to double the amount of calories an adult woman is meant to. I can tell you, I need every one of them. I don’t fit the maths. Ergo, I abort the maths.
But now I read this: the way calories are calculated is completely unreliable. This explains why I can eat a lot of high-calorie food and it really doesn’t seem to have an affect on my weight. While sugary, carby foods do.
Some factoids from the article:
* The calorie counting formula was developed over a 100 years ago. Surely things have been updated since then? No?
* Some veggies contain a lot less calories than listed on the label. Cell walls in some plants are tougher to break down than those in others. If the veggie has more of it’s cell walls broken down we take more of the calories from the guff inside. Cooking ruptures most cell walls (so cooked veggies have more calories, generally); but in very fibrous vegetables, such as cassava, cell walls hold strong and hoard their precious calories in such a way that many of them pass through our bodies intact. Ergo, are less calories.
* Plus nuts are less “fattening” than listed on the label. Peanuts, pistachios and almonds all seem to be less completely digested than their levels of protein, fat, carbohydrates and fibre would suggest.
A new study found when you eat almonds you get just 128 calories per serving rather than the 170 calories “on the label.”
* Plus protein is less fattening than what’s listed on the label. Proteins can require ten to twenty times as much heat-energy to digest as fats.
* Some foods require our immune system to get involved during digestion. For example, raw meats. This burns more calories, not accounted for on the label.
* And what do you know, processed foods contain more calories. A recent study found if you ate a 600 calorie serving of wholewheat bread with REAL cheese, you expend TWICE as much energy digesting it than if you ate 600 calories of white bread with processed cheese.
Food for thought and a good reminder to forget about calorie counting (for lots of reasons). But, as promised…
How to make activated nuts
- 3 cups nuts or seeds
- water
- 2 tablespoons salt
Soak the nuts or seeds overnight (except macadamias and cashews) in a pot of water with the salt. Drain. Lay out on a baking tray and “heat” in the oven at the lowest temperature possible (less than 65 C; for gas ovens, on the pilot light) for 12-24 hours.
Store and eat straight from the freezer. (makes 3 cups)
You can buy the I Quit Sugar Cookbook and get the other 179 recipes by clicking below:
Thanks for spreading the message far and wide Sarah! I’m the same, I’m just over five feet tall and if I stuck to my supposed daily calorie intake I would starve. I can do a packet of nuts a days
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I have been following your advice and activating my nuts for a while now, but have also been doing cashews as did not realise till this post to leave them out. So why not cashews?
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The polyunsaturated fats that nuts are so rich in tend to suppress thyroid function and block cell metabolism (they also promote oxidative stress and tissue ageing)… Actually because of this nuts can be pretty ‘fattening’ far beyond caloric value… Polyunsaturated fats are used to fatten livestock because they suppress metabolism and promote weight gain (saturated fats are protective).
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September 18th, 2012 at 9:53 am
So, just to confirm…nuts are bad?
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September 18th, 2012 at 10:08 am
I think that in the context of the modern diet already so loaded with PUFA (polyunsaturated fats), it would be a little unwise to go nuts on nuts. I avoid them completely to be perfectly honest.
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September 18th, 2012 at 10:33 am
Interesting! A very cool nutritionist I saw, Emma Sgourakis, call nuts PUFA bombs. Though she did say macadamias are ok, as they are the lowest in PUFA’s. Thank goodness for that!
September 18th, 2012 at 10:43 am
I’m a big fan of Emma’s
And yes, PUFA bombs!
September 18th, 2012 at 1:14 pm
Just checked out you blog, it’s great, I think we are definitely on the same page nutrition-wise. Funnily enough, I’m studying nutritional medicine too!
September 18th, 2012 at 1:34 pm
Thanks Toni! Great to hear from like-minded people
September 21st, 2012 at 11:59 am
There are some nuts I eat a lot of and some only a little, but i find when i snack on nuts (say three handfuls a day) I lose weight. I enjoy macadamias and cashews because they are much higher proportionally in mono and saturated fats to PUFAs. Brazil, Pecan and Pine Nuts are quite high in PUFAs so I limit them, although I wonder if activating them changes the way they are digested? From what I have read PUFAs are ok if they are consumed in balance with MUFAs and SFA. It’s when we consume high levels of PUFAs and limit or eradicate the others that we’re in trouble.
September 23rd, 2012 at 5:37 pm
Does it matter, I wonder, what kind of PUFAs the nuts contain? ie. omega 3′s, omega 6′s or other PUFAs? I thought it was only the omega 6′s that were a problem.
September 21st, 2012 at 12:01 pm
sorry, walnuts are really high in PUFAs too.
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Love nuts! Why no need so soak macadamias and cashews? Thanks, Karen
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Really interesting article. My favourite quote:
“With humans, studies of symbionts usually involve fecal samples, which is a bit like studying the center of the Earth by looking at lava, if, I guess, the lava were feces. Something of the grandeur is missed.”
Grandeur indeed.
Am also interested in why macadamias and cashews shouldn’t be soaked? I soak cashews overnight to make nut ‘cream’ and ‘milk’ etc and never seem to have any problems… Is soaking these nuts something I shouldn’t be doing?
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Hi, I tried to activate some nuts using this recipe, and they ended up a bit soggy, or kind of chewy. Not nearly as good as the ones loving earth make! Do you have any tips for why that would happen? They were in an electric oven on 50 for about 15h.
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September 18th, 2012 at 10:35 am
hi sam, i find i need to leave mine in for what seems like days on end!! i was leaving them at 30 degrees, but they were just still not crunchy, so have upped it to 50 degrees, so now thy’re cruncharama!! but i always have to leave them in for at least 72 hours … dont forget to turn them too – give them a rustle up half way thru … i dont know if im doing something “wrong” but i definitely have to leave them longer than whats recommended. sooo worth the wait tho!
on the other questions about the cashews and maccas – i’m not 100%, but i think they dont get such a great result when activating them because they contain a higher level of oils than the others.
welcome home sarah!! yay!!
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September 19th, 2012 at 10:16 am
Thanks for asking the question. I thought it was just me. I was home in Aus a couple of weeks ago and bought the loving earth and superfoods ones, they were nice. They were a bit different to how mine turn out I must say.
I’ll need to keep them in the oven longer, I was only putting them in for 8 hrs for some reason. I do get a little concerned with the oven on gas for so long.
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@ Sam – my first lot were also a bit soggy – so next time around I put the oven up a bit more and that helped. However, I must admit I did wonder if having the oven on for about 15 hours, plus the cost of the raw nuts, costs more than buying the nuts already done. I also wondered if making such a large batch of the nuts to offset the cost meant I eat more than I should.
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Great article Sarah. I could never count calories..I’m hopeless at maths!
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We also forget that there’s a lot more to the “weight gain & lost” equation than mere calories. Hormone plays a HUGE factor. If your hormones are out of whack, you could be living on vegetable soups and still put on weight.
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I’ve used Sarah’s recipe and you do have to juggle the timings to suir your oven….just like every other recipe. Agree with Simone above: I wonder what the costs are compared to buying them….but then there’s the convenience of doing huge batches for the same amount of electricity/gas consumption. ( Must do the meter reading one day to see what the real cost is…I love maths!)
After reading Gary Taubes, I agree, calorie counting is ridiculous.
For me, though, nuts seem to be a bit “carbohydratey”. When I eat larger amounts ( which is easy for me to do) then I don’t lose weight ( and there are still a few more kilos to go). Like Gary says: you need to find what suits you.
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So, by that logic… raw veggies would have less calories AND less vitamins, yes? If they are not properly digested? Which actually doesnt surprise me at all, my digestion does far better with lightly cooked veggies than raw.
Personally I think if you are worrying about the calorific content in VEGETABLES of all things, you have gone wrong somewhere. Food shouldn’t be that complicated.
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Absolutely awesome article, thank you!
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Ah…I’m now completely confused after reading Nutrition by Nature’s comments?
Seems to completely contradict Sarah’s post….
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interesting. yeah, sometimes i wonder about labels. i’ve heard that most expiration dates on things are also 100% made up.
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Another great post Sarah. Hormones control our weight, not food. As I always say “there’s no need to count calories, if you make the calories count!”.
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sarah will the book have the recipies as well?
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I would love to agree with this, but it just doesn’t work for me. I embraced the IQS wholeheartedly and felt great. I have adopted a sugar free lifestyle for some time now. However, it has not lead to any weight loss. For the last three and a half weeks I have been following a 12 week calorie control program run by a well know celebrity and have already lost 4.5 kilos. I have not felt hungry, have been eating clean, and finally feel like something is working for me. I was not born with a metabolism that allows me to eat fat and stay thin. I am now only 2.5 kilos off the weight I want to be.
Having said that, I love everything you stand for Sarah and have been thoroughly enjoying your travel tales
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September 20th, 2012 at 6:46 pm
I agree that for weight loss you really do need to count calories.
It is not really a natural thing for your body to lose weight. Evolutionarily we are programmed to store fat and maintain our weight for times of famine and therefor in order to lose weight we really do have to put our body into a position where it is forced to use our fat stores because we are not providing it with enough energy from the environment for it to carry out its functions (in other words eating less calories than are being expended).
However after reaching my goal weight and maintaining it for 2 years now I have found that for weight maintenance it is most effective to listen to your body and not count calories.
It is impossible to work out exactly how much energy you have expended during the day, how much energy it is taken to break down your food or what your hormones are doing.
I found attempting to maintain calorie counting once I was at my goal weight made me miserable, hungry and put my body out of whack.
I eat mostly Paleo now and if I think about it I probably eat 3000 calories or more some days (I should say I am very active), but still I am leaner than I ever was when counting, I eat heaps, my weight fluctuates very little but most importantly have more energy, never feel deprived and am healthier than ever.
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I was wondering the same about macadamias and cashews, well cashews did go a bit odd when I soaked and activated them, but the macadamias are delicious afterwards- I assumed still better to ‘activate’ than not? And who calorie counts veg!!
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Hi Sarah, great post.
I guess they have to be kept in the freezer because they are not active and won’t keep in my tupperware.
And no I have never agreed with the whole calorie counting idea either.
Many thanks
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September 24th, 2012 at 6:51 pm
@ Alice why do they have to be frozen and not just in Tupperware??
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Hi Sarah,
I purchased your ebook bundle in the weekend and I didnt read about downloading them to my pc first so my link expired. I have emailed the info email address to download it again but havent heard anything back.
Im really waiting to read it.
Thanks,
Celeste
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I’ve bought the ebook and the cookbook and was just wondering if oats are okay? The general message seems to be to say goodbye to refined sugars and fruit, yet I don’t see any mention of oats. Also, what bread would be best for the mornings? I’m having a lot of trouble keeping my calories up!
Thank you
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sarah, how do you soak almonds? is there a particular way of doing these?
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[...] cups almonds, cashews, pecans, walnuts, pepitas (preferably activated ones), chopped [...]
Can anyone recommend places in Australia to buy good quality nuts in bulk at a reasonable price? I try and get them from the grocery shop when they are on sale, but this doesn’t occur frequently. I would love to make my own almond milk more frequently but can’t get enough almonds for my $$$$.
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Hi there,
I am really into activated foods – I have a business making and selling them, all inspired by Sally Fallon and just how yummy and wonderful they are!
Many people ask me to do cashews, but until now I have always put it off because I don’t get it!! If ‘raw’ cashews are heat treated to remove the inner shell, then surely that negates the whole principle of activating them because the phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors are destroyed by the heat….?In which case, where’s the nutritional benefit of activating them? I have trawled the web looking for an answer to this question but have never found it. If you could clarify it I would be hugely grateful!
Thanks very much
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[...] really is my no fuss go to snack. As Sarah Wilson says nuts are less fattening than you think! No preparation required just go to the bag and snack. I mainly eat macadamias as my favourite nut [...]
Hi All,
Does anyone else have a gas oven that doesn’t go below 120 deg. Celsius? And have you successfully activated nuts? I was just about to try, but I’ve been reading that temperatures at and above 120 deg. Celsius will cook off all the good enzymes etc. rather than just ‘dry’ the nuts.
Any suggestions (other than a dehydrator)?
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