Nuts: What’s Not to Love?
![MPj04031620000[1]](http://diabeticmediterraneandiet.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/mpj040316200001.jpg?w=150 "MPj04031620000[1]")
Nut consumption is strongly linked to reduced coronary heart disease, with less rigorous evidence for several other health benefits, according to a recent article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
This is why I’ve included nuts as integral components of the Ketogenic Mediterranean Diet and the Advanced Mediterranean Diet.
Regular nut consumption is associated with health benefits in observational studies of various populations, within which are people eating few nuts and others eating nuts frequently. Health outcomes of the two groups are compared over time. Frequent and long-term nut consumption is linked to:
- reduced coronary heart disease (heart attacks, for example)
- reduced risk of diabetes in women (in men, who knows?)
- less gallstone disease in both sexes
- lower body weight and lower risk of obesity and weight gain
The heart-protective dose of nuts is three to five 1-ounce servings a week.
Reference: Sabaté, Joan and Ang, Yen. Nuts and health outcomes: New epidemiologic evidence. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 89 (2009): 1,643S-1,648S.
November 7th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Most of the data has been with almonds but I know that peanuts are included in the mix. Do you know of studies showing beneficial effects of peanuts given their very different omega 3:omega 6 ratio?
November 8th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Isaac-
Nearly all of the observational studies lump peanuts in with all other nuts when they survey study participants on nut consumption.
I’m not aware of studies specific to peanuts.
[We both know peanuts aren’t nuts anyway; they’re legumes.]
-Steve
December 16th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Dr. Parker, if you don’t mind a bit of tech advice: I wouldn’t use tinyurl’s for links in the blog, for two reasons:
- if that company falls down for any reason (going out of business, getting their database hacked or corrupted, etc) then all those links become dead
- when a user passes their mouse over the link, we can’t see where it’s going to. That could be a security concern, among other things. I hesitate to click on anything blindly anymore, because who knows if the link might lead to a site that tries to infect the visitor’s computer. Having an antivirus etc is no longer a sure protection.
And so tinyurls are being posted on *newsgroups* as always to sidestep problems with long URLs not wrapping properly - but the real URL is also being included right along with the tiny one. But for a weblog (as opposed to usenet or email), URL size shouldn’t be a factor at all since you’re using actual HTML linking.
Good luck with your blog, I like the approach of an intelligent person with a health/medical background who’s not in the camp of low-carb or low-fat per se.
As for this article, two things come to mind: I’ve generally seen nuts lauded because of their mono-unsaturates, not omega-3 PUFAs. Secondly, peanuts get criticized because of aflatoxin content, though I don’t know if I buy that.
December 18th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Ken, many thanks for the tech advice. You make a lot of sense.
Aflatoxins and peanuts have been linked for years, and it’s real. But must be rare in the U.S. In over two decades of primary care medical practice, I’ve never seen a case of aflatoxin poisoning, nor have I heard my doctor’s lounge colleagues mention a case. It would definitely be a topic of discussion.
Probably more of an issue in countries with food standards lower than ours.
-Steve