GO NUTS OVER NUTS
Nuts are one of my favorite foods—not just because they taste so
good, but because they’re so amazingly fantastic for health and weight loss.
Almonds, cashews, peanuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, pistachios, Brazil nuts, pine
nuts—I love them all.
I never go anywhere without a couple servings of these
super-portable “fast foods”—and by fast foods, I mean that I can eat them in a
hurry when I’m hungry between meals and tempted to snack on chips or other junk
food.
Nuts find their way into many of my meals as well. For breakfast
I’ll drop chopped walnuts and blueberries into my yogurt, mix slivered almonds
into my oatmeal, or spread pure almond butter on whole-grain toast, an apple, or
a banana. At lunch I’ll sprinkle pecans or pine nuts on salads, and at dinner I
enjoy peanuts mixed into stir-fries or blended with Thai spices into a sauce for
poultry or fish.
I do keep an eye on my serving sizes, of course. Although nuts
are terrifically healthy, they are also fairly high in calories. What’s nice is
that they are so satisfying that it really doesn’t take many of them to take the
edge off food cravings. In the afternoon, a handful goes a long way towards
satisfying my hunger. And they fill me up for a while, so unlike other snacks,
they leave me satiated enough that I can easily make it to dinner without
thinking about food again.
THE PEANUT IS ACTUALLY A LEGUME RATHER THAN A TRUE NUT. BUT
SINCE MOST OF US THINK OF PEANUTS AS BEING PART OF THE NUT FAMILY, THAT’S HOW
WE’LL CATEGORIZE THEM IN THE HEALTHY DIET.
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The doctor in me loves nuts even more than the hungry eater in
me. Really big studies that look at people’s food intake, disease risk, and
death rates over long periods of time have found that people who eat nuts tend
to live longer than those who don’t. This doesn’t surprise me because compounds
in nuts help fight off several of the chronic diseases that
land people in the hospital, including heart disease and diabetes.
There’s also some evidence nuts—especially walnuts—may offer
cancer protection as well, although there hasn’t been a huge amount of research
done into the effect on specific kinds of cancer.
Last but not least, nuts are an important weight-loss tool—which
is really the number one reason that they’re part of The Healthy Diet. Nuts and
nut butters are a very effective way to lose weight and keep it off permanently,
so they’re part of every phase of The Healthy Diet.
I ask you: What’s not to love about these portable little
packets of nutrition and flavor? If you aren’t eating nuts (and assuming you’re
not allergic to them), now’s a really good time to start adding them to your
diet.
WHY AM I NUTS ABOUT NUTS?
Some 20 years ago, researchers started to shine an intense light
on nuts, looking to quantify their impact on our diets. Nuts are an integral
part of the Mediterranean diet, which has been associated with some dramatic
health benefits. (The Mediterranean diet is an eating pattern that focuses on
fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, legumes, seeds, herbs and spices,
seafood, and olive oil, while incorporating some dairy foods and eggs and
limiting sweets and red meat.)
Nuts have been the topic of many large studies in the United
States, Europe, and elsewhere in the world. The results consistently point
toward nuts being an important food for good health and weight loss.
For example, we recently heard about the results of PREDIMED, a
Spanish study of 7,216 men and women ages 55 to 90 with elevated risk of heart
disease. For about five years, the study compared the health of people who ate
nuts with those who didn’t eat nuts. The findings, published in 2013 in the
journal BMC Medicine, showed that nut eaters were less
likely to die during the study than non–nut eaters. Here are some specifics:
- People who ate one to three servings of nuts (1 ounce, or 28 grams) each week were 29 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who ate no nuts.
- People who ate three or more servings of nuts weekly were even less likely to die (39 percent) during the study than those who did not eat nuts.
- The results are even better for heart disease and cancer: people in the study who ate three or more servings of nuts a week were 55 percent less likely to die from heart disease and 40 percent less likely to die from cancer.
- Those who ate nuts had, on average, a smaller body mass index and waist size than those who didn’t.
WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT NUTS?
Nuts have a lot of things going for them, health-wise, including
the following:
Slimming power. Even though
they’re delicious and relatively high in fat, nuts actually help with weight
loss. Take a look at the research on nuts and weight and you’ll find that, to
put it simply, people who eat nuts tend to weigh less than those who don’t.
For example, a 2011 study of more than 120,000 men and women in
the US published in the New England Journal of Medicine
found that people who ate nuts gained noticeably less weight over the course of
20 years than those who didn’t. Similarly, a 2007 study published in the journal
Obesity showed that participants who ate nuts two or
more times per week were 31 percent less likely to gain weight after 28 months
than those who rarely ate nuts.
Other studies have shown that weight loss is more likely to
succeed when people are following reduced-calorie diets. Subjects in these
studies find they are better able to stick with their eating plans and lose
weight if they include nuts in their diet. What it comes down to is this: a
weight-loss diet is simply more filling, more palatable, and more enjoyable when
it contains nuts.
Hunger zappers. Nuts are very
filling—in fact, the combination of protein, fat, and fiber in nuts makes them
one of the most filling foods out there. In nutrition studies, when researchers
ask subjects to add nuts to their diet, the subjects tend to
eat less of other foods even if the researchers don’t ask them to cut back.
People who eat nuts feel full enough after eating them that they naturally skip
eating other (often less-healthy) foods.
Nuts can be a real gift if you struggle with hunger pangs. The
nutrition equation in nuts—protein + fiber + healthy fat—is a just-right hunger
fighter that can satisfy your appetite for hours after you eat them.
How long do nuts stay with you? Longer than you might think,
according to a 2013 study published in the British Journal
of Nutrition. In this study, participants who had either 1.5 ounces of
peanuts or 3 tablespoons of peanut butter (about a serving and a half) at
breakfast reported that they had lower desire to eat for 8 to 12 hours after
their morning meal compared with people who had no nuts at breakfast. (They had
a high-carbohydrate breakfast instead.) Researchers looked at the study
participants’ blood and found that those who ate peanuts or peanut butter had
higher levels of a hormone called peptide YY, which promotes fullness and
satiety.
NUTS ARE VERY FILLING—IN FACT, THE
COMBINATION OF PROTEIN, FAT, AND FIBER IN NUTS MAKES THEM ONE OF THE MOST
FILLING FOODS OUT THERE.
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Sugar balancers. One of the
reasons nuts are such great hunger fighters is that their protein, fat, and
fiber content all work together to keep blood sugar stable. Eat a sugary snack
and your blood sugar will zoom up fast, spark a rush of insulin production, and
then fall down rapidly, triggering hunger, crankiness, and a craving for more
sugary snacks. But eat a handful of nuts, which are very low on the glycemic
index, and your blood sugar will rise slowly, eliciting a reasonable and stable
insulin response, and then fall gradually, without all the cravings, hunger
pangs, and nutritional drama of a sweet snack.
Over time, the blood sugar stability promoted by nuts seems like
it may help lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. And in people with
diabetes, replacing high-carbohydrate foods with nuts can help keep blood sugar
in control. In fact, a 2011 study published in the journal Diabetes Care found that people with diabetes who replaced
high-carb foods in their diet with two ounces a day of nuts
saw significant decreases in tests of HbA1c, which are used to monitor long-term
blood sugar control.
In the Nurses’ Health Study, a large, long-term study of women’s
health, eating an ounce of nuts five or more times a week was associated with a
27 percent decrease in developing type 2 diabetes.
Fiber phenoms. Nuts contain
anywhere from 2 to 3 grams of fiber per 1 ounce (28 gram) serving. Not only does
fiber fill you up, but eating a high-fiber diet (21 to 25 grams daily for women,
30 to 38 grams daily for men) is associated with successful weight loss, heart
health, lower diabetes rates, lower risk of some kinds of cancer, and an overall
increase in digestive health.
Protein shell-out. Protein helps
satiate your hunger and plays a role in successful weight loss. A serving of
nuts contains about 8 grams of protein.
Just what the cardiologist
ordered. Nuts improve your blood lipid profile—which means they help
lower your total cholesterol, help bring down LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, reduce
triglycerides, and raise HDL (“good”) cholesterol. Four large studies that
followed the health of over 160,000 men and women showed that eating about 1
ounce of peanuts daily cut the risk of heart disease in half. That’s a huge
benefit!
Why do nuts help with heart health? We don’t know all the
reasons, but we do know a few. Some nuts, such as peanuts, are high in a
compound called arginine, which can help open blood vessels and allow blood to
flow more easily. Walnuts contain especially high levels of alpha-linolenic
acid, which appears to help blood vessel walls increase their elasticity. (In
people with heart disease, blood vessels can get stiff, hard, and
inflexible.)
In the PREDIMED study I mentioned earlier, people who ate
primarily walnuts had even lower rates of death from heart disease and cancer
than people who ate other kinds of nuts.
Source of “good” fat. Nuts are a
wonderful source of healthy fats. All nuts contain monounsaturated fats, and
walnuts provide omega-3 fatty acids (which, as previously mentioned, are also
found in salmon and other fatty fish). These fats contribute to heart health,
help keep blood sugar stable, and may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Nutty nutrients. Although
different kinds of nuts have slightly different nutrient profiles, they
generally are a good source of calcium, magnesium, potassium, vitamin E, and
folate. Several of these nutrients, especially magnesium,
potassium, and folate, are known to play a big role in heart health. They also
provide a range of disease-fighting phytochemicals, such as phenolic acids,
polyphenols, and phytosterols.
HANDFUL OF HEALTH
The main reason nuts are such an important part of The Healthy Diet is what they bring to the table in terms of weight loss. When you munch on
nuts as part of a balanced eating plan, they fill you up, keep you satisfied,
and give you the energy you need to keep on going with your day while cutting
back on calories. It’s a simple equation: eat nuts, feel less hungry. Now that’s something to go nuts about!
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