Besides being packed with protein, most nuts contain at least some of these heart-healthy substances: Unsaturated fats. It’s not entirely clear why, but it’s thought that the “good” fats in nuts — both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats — lower bad cholesterol levels. Omega-3 fatty acids.
Eating nuts as part of a healthy diet can be good for your heart. Nuts, which contain unsaturated fatty acids and other nutrients, are a great snack food, too. They’re inexpensive, easy to store and easy to pack when you’re on the go.
The type of nut you eat isn’t that important, although some nuts have more heart-healthy nutrients and fats than do others. Walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts — you name it — almost every type of nut has a lot of nutrition packed into a tiny package. If you have heart disease, eating nuts instead of a less healthy snack can help you more easily follow a heart-healthy diet.
(MedPage Today) — A tree nut industry group reaped the fruits of its labor, with the publication of two positive studies that it sponsored.
Both of the meta-analyses — one in BMJ Open, the other in PLOS One — found that daily servings of tree nuts led to improvements in metabolic health. Both studies were authored by John Sievenpiper, MD, of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, and colleagues.
The International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation — yes, that’s the full name now, and the group can be found at nuthealth.org as its original treenuts.org website loads as a blank page — has long sponsored research into the foods it represents.
In November, the council supported a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that found nuts to be associated with a lower risk of mortality. The running list of other scientific articles it has sponsored can be found in the press release section of its website.
The group represents nine tree nut industries: almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, and walnuts. It counts the Almond Board of California, the Hazelnut Marketing Board, the American Pistachio Growers, and the California Walnut Commission among its members.
The BMJ Open paper, reviewing 47 trials with 2,211 patients, found that a daily dose of 50 g of tree nuts over 8 weeks was associated with a 0.06 mmol/L lowering of triglycerides and a 0.08 mmol/L lowering of fasting blood glucose compared with control diets.
But there were no benefits in terms of HDL cholesterol, blood pressure, or waist circumference.
The PLOS One paper involved 12 trials in 450 patients, and showed that 56 g of nuts per day (that’s about two servings) over 8 weeks improved HbA1c by 0.07% and fasting plasma glucose by 0.15 mmol/L compared with a control diet.
article source: http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/DietNutrition/46994
photo source: Google ImagesNut Roaster’s Reserve Gourmet Unsalted Deluxe Mixed Nuts (No Peanuts) — Roasted with No Salt (24 ounces of our finest cashews, almonds, pecans, hazelnuts and brazil nuts)
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