Become Nuts About Eating Nuts!
Become Nuts about Eating Nuts!
I have followed a primarily plant-based diet (no meat, poultry, or dairy) with some fish (I guess that means I am a pescatarian) since about 2002. And it has benefitted me in many ways. Not only have I been able to maintain my college weight but unlike numerous friends and peers, I sailed through menopause without night sweats or hot flashes or the other key symptoms from which many women suffer. In addition, except for an occasional cold, bout of flu, or other minor ailment, I have enjoyed great health and feel youthful.
Maybe I have been lucky (some women have no symptoms when they go through menopause), but I believe that the major dietary changes I made in my late 40s and after turning 50 (and ever since) have played a significant role. Unfortunately, however, despite all the dietary and information that we have had access to for several decades, I am shocked by how few Americans still make below-par food choices.
Now that 2025 has begun, if you have not done so already, resolve to uplevel what you eat. As Greek philosopher Hippocrates said thousands of years ago, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
What we eat and the lifestyle we lead are crucial to not only how long we live but how well we live.
And nuts are one of the key foods that you should eat at least several times a week. I have always loved nuts but since learning during the past few years about how much of a boon nuts are to your health, I make sure to eat them regularly.
My advice to you: Become nuts about nuts!
Nuts are a nutritional powerhouse!
And they are so simple to incorporate into your diet! Eat a palmful of nuts (such as walnuts, almonds, Brazilian nuts, cashews) as a snack – no fuss, no muss or add them to your morning oatmeal or salad at lunch or dinner.
Dr. Michael Greger, a founding member and fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, a medical doctor who focuses on evidence-based methods to enhance health (he backs up all his claims with high-quality scientific research ) and a New York Times bestselling author of several nutritional tomes including, How Not to Die, The How Not to Die Cookbook, How Not to Diet, and his most recent work, How Not to Age, shares the following key information nuggets about nuts in the latter book and in his videos that you can find on NutritionFacts.org
· Nut consumption is associated with a lower risk of dying from stroke, heart disease, respiratory disease, infections, diabetes, and even cancer.
· Eating nuts at least twice weekly appears to halve mortality risk compared to almost never eating them.
· Randomized controlled trials have certain shown that nuts can improve some of the key risk factors for some of our leading killers, such as cholesterol, and in the case of walnuts, artery function.
· Nut intake can delay cognitive aging by two years
· Nuts can help reduce inflammation in the body
Also, the National Institute of Health reports that nuts are important for the following reasons:
Nuts contain fat-soluble vitamins (ascorbic acid, B1, B2, B3, B6) and antioxidants such as α-tocopherol (vitamin E), promoting better health, playing an important role against the aging process, improving brain function, and helping consumers to have healthy skin [24,25]. According to studies carried out by several researchers, the existence of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is an important antioxidant for human colon cells [26,27]. The nut’s nutritional value depends on its chemical composition, and this is the result of the interaction of the cultivar (genotype), meteorological factors such as temperature and radiation, and production practices [28,29,30]. As Table 2 shows, walnuts, almonds, pine nuts, and hazelnuts are especially rich in vitamin E. Almonds, cashews, pistachios, walnuts, and peanuts are abundant sources of B vitamins. The concentration of folic acid was higher in pistachios and chestnuts. It is also the chestnuts that reveal the highest amount of vitamin C.
And if you worry that eating nuts regularly will cause you gain weight because of their high caloric and fat content, Dr. Greger reports that dozens of studies that involved adding an average of hundreds of calories of nuts a day for fifteen weeks to people’s diets did not result in significant weight gain. If you eat a small palmful of nuts daily, you need have no worries about weight gain. And the fats in nuts are healthy fats.
Assuming you are not allergic to any nuts, start eating palmfuls of mixed nuts—almonds, walnuts, cashews, etc. to improve your physical and mental health.
