Eating Healthy – Nuts, Nutrition Myths Exposed :
Nuts are full of fat and bad for you.
If you want to be eating healthy nothing could be further from the truth about raw natural nuts. It is this false myth that has most North Americans not eating enough in their daily diet. Of course you will want to avoid all the processed nut butters full of sugars and unhealthy oils. However any natural nuts or nut butters can do your body a world of good. The fats you find the most are a healthy fats called Monounsaturated and Polyunsaturated fats. These types of fats are actually beneficial to your body in many ways. Monounsaturated fats help the human body to lower serum LDL and total cholesterol levels. It also does this without affecting our good cholesterol levels – HDL. The ones highest in monounsaturated fat are
- Macadamia nuts – 79%
- Hazel nuts – 78%
- Almonds – 68%
- Pistachios – 68%
- Cashews – 59%
Polyunsaturated fats help the body lower blood lipid (Fat) levels as well. The ones with higher amounts of polyunsaturated fats are :
- Walnuts – 63%
- Brazil nuts – 37%
- Pecans – 25%
- Almonds – 20%
It would be a great idea to include 1 nut from each of these two categories into your new daily healthy heart eating program. All these nuts are also typically very low in saturated fats. Nuts also provide a number of essential vitamins and minerals adding to their health benefits. Nuts typically have good amounts of potassium, magnesium, zinc, copper and heart protecting tocopherols – a form of vitamin E. Nuts are also chock full of heart protecting phytochemicals. eating nuts also contributes to our health goal of eating more fiber. Nuts typically contain 2 to 3 grams of fiber per ounce.
Eating Healthy, Eat More Nuts – Get Healthier
Many studies have shown that people with higher nut consumption in their diets have a reduced risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). People who ate nuts 5 or more times per week showed a 50% risk reduction of coronary heart disease. This was compared to a group of people who ate them less than one time per week. This alone should be enough evidence for everyone to include a diet rich in natural nuts. Keep in mind we are talking about actual tree nuts. Peanuts are not included because they are actually peas from the legumes family. Studies also show that those eating nuts more frequently also have lower body weights than those not eating them.
Eating Healthy – Clinical Nut Trials
Clinical nut trials have shown that eating almonds and walnuts can lower blood cholesterol levels by 10 to 15 %. Increasing your consumption of walnuts to 3 ounces per day produced a 16% decrease in LDL – the bad cholesterol. This was compared to a similar diet but with no nuts in as little as 4 weeks. Walnuts are also high in omega 3 fats – linoleic acid which studies have shown are associated with a lower risk of stroke in middle aged men. The bottom line – everyone should be eating more natural raw foods. Increasing our nut consumption is a very easy way to help this overall health goal.
Eating more nuts reduces the amounts of sugars and carbohydrates in the diet helping control weight and diabetes conditions. To understand the truth about nutrition you have to understand the basics of fats, carbohydrates and protiens. You can find out more about vitamin D health benefits by visiting our tanning salon website and blog. You can find more about them throughout this blog.
Looking to improve your health and well being … take the 90 Day Health Challenge .
Joseph Lane
P.S. Please feel free to leave your comments below about this topic. I would love to get your feed back and hear your opinions. Also feel free to make some suggestions on eating healthy topics you would like me to cover.