Nuts get a bad rep due to their fat content, but it is actually the mono-saturated fats and antioxidants they contain are very heart healthy. Here is a study i came across earlier.

Research published in the British Journal of Nutrition (Blomhoff R, Carlsen MH), which identified several nuts among plant foods with the highest total antioxidant content, suggests nut's high antioxidant content may be key to their cardio-protective benefits.

Nuts' high antioxidant content helps explain results seen in the Iowa Women's Health Study in which risk of death from cardiovascular and coronary heart diseases showed strong and consistent reductions with increasing nut/peanut butter consumption. Total death rates decreased 11% and 19% for nut/peanut butter intake once per week and 1-4 times per week, respectively.

Even more impressive were the results of a review study of the evidence linking nuts and lower risk of coronary heart disease, also published in the British Journal of Nutrition. (Kelly JH, Sabate J.) In this study, researchers looked at four large prospective epidemiological studies—the Adventist Health Study, Iowa Women's Study, Nurses' Health Study and the Physician's Health Study. When evidence from all four studies was combined, subjects consuming nuts at least 4 times a week showed a 37% reduced risk of coronary heart disease compared to those who never or seldom ate nuts. Each additional serving of nuts per week was associated with an average 8.3% reduced risk of coronary heart disease.

Practical Tip: To lower your risk of cardiovascular and coronary heart disease, enjoy a handful of peanuts or other nuts, or a tablespoon of nut butter, at least 4 times a week.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]

Thanks for posting; I love nuts, but eat them moderately, about what the study participants ate. I figure with all the other good plant foods I eat, I'm doing well

Tamukha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks for posting; I love nuts, but eat them
> moderately, about what the study participants ate.
> I figure with all the other good plant foods I
> eat, I'm doing well

I eat nuts anywhere 2-5 times a week myself, i forgot how antioxidant rich most nuts are. I find moderate consumption of most foods other than vegetables is the way to go. Vegetables should be the main component of any diet.

I guess what i was trying to show is that nuts and the right fats are healthy and shouldn't be encouraged to go to dangerously low fat diets which can really mess with hormone production and endocrine health.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2012 03:01PM by powerlifer.

One hormone to watch out is estrogen and its relation to hearth problems in males. Some diets have the effect of increasing this hormone on males (ok in women). Tip, the antidote to this effect is Zinc + enough protein + exercise.

unless they controlled all other variables , studies are meaningless

I eat them almost every day but very little (approx 10 nuts a day) - my worry about fat is not heart so much, as digestion.

>Banana ice-cream rocks!<

chat Wrote:
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> I eat them almost every day but very little
> (approx 10 nuts a day) - my worry about fat is not
> heart so much, as digestion.

Nuts can be hard on digestion especially if you have poor bile flow. If digestion of fats is compromised then eating smaller portions at a time is a good idea so that you are not consuming them all at once.

Consuming a small amount of fat at meals helps increase bile flow and aids in the absorption of fat soluble nutrients. Adding a fat source to a meal can increase fat soluble vitamin absorption by around 22%. Low fat diets promote bile stagnation.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2012 03:48PM by powerlifer.

Here are a few articles from my file on Nuts:

Nuts
CHAPTER X
[www.soilandhealth.org]

Eating Nuts Greatly Reduces Your Risk of Heart Attack and Cancer
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 by: Barbara L. Minton
[www.naturalnews.com]

Macadamia Nuts Lower Risk Factors for Coronary Disease
Saturday, August 23, 2008 by: Barbara L. Minton
[www.naturalnews.com]

Dr. Fuhrman -- Value of High Fat Foods
10:00 Minute Video
[www.youtube.com]

headveg | October 30, 2007 | 135 likes, 5 dislikes
The importance of eating nuts and seeds for health, rather than oils and why super low fat eating is not ideal, and more about essential fatty acids.

Olive oil is not good for your heart! (It's just not as bad as other fats most people eat, but it still promotes heart disease.)

This is a 10-minute excerpt from one of Dr. Fuhrman's 90-minute talks from the Healthy Lifestyle Expo 2007. To purchase the full talk along with 11 other fascinating talks, go to [secure2.vegsource.com]

or go to VEGSOURCE.COM and click on STORE

JR’s Notes:

1:33 MM
But one thing I am making clear to say today and that is that a Diet of 10% of calories from Fat is NOT a Healthy Diet and may, in fact, be too low and create medical problems and disease in a large segment of the population. And that’s what I’m going to talk about that we do need some Fat in our Diet. 1:52 MM

6:47 MM
But we have to recognize that the American Diet is very, very high in Fat and obviously, eating excess calories of any type, especially excess Fat causes us to gain weight and I call it Dietary Lipoaugmentation, meaning that we can eat in a way to quickly put Fat on our waist and we can augment ourselves so we can make ourselves look Fatter very easily by eating the Diet most Americans eat. Almost all of the Fats in the American Diet come from Animal Fats, Trans Fats and Refined Oils.

So in other words, when I’m saying Americans are eating 40% of their calories from Fat, we’re saying that 40% is totally made up of Animal Fats, Trans Fats and Refined Oils.

So when we look at scientific studies and the relationship between Fat intake and disease, you’re not really studying the relationship between Fat intake and disease - you’re studying the relationship between those types of Fats and disease because less than 5% of Fat intake in America comes from Nuts and Seeds - what we’re calling the Healthy Fats. Studying the Dangers of Fats - the Fat in the Diet in Medical studies doesn’t look at Nuts and Seed consumption - they look at those Low Nutrient Dangerous Fats. Did you follow that? 8:00 MM
[www.youtube.com]

Eating This Fatty Snack Can Protect Your Heart and More
Posted By Dr. Mercola | March 29 2012
[articles.mercola.com]

Member-created
Heart Health Fuhrman Ornish
News on Nuts
[forums.webmd.com]

Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
Heart Health: How You Can Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease
Posted: 11/17/10 08:14 AM ET
[www.huffingtonpost.com]

[crazysexylife.com]
By Joel Fuhrman MD on February 2, 2012
The Good News About Nuts & Seeds
Eat Fat or Don’t Eat Fat, That is the Question

The major determinant of your long term health is the nutritional quality of the calories you eat. It is the quality of the fat you eat, the quality of the protein and the quality of the carbohydrate that influences your health.

Ask yourself, is the food I am about to eat a whole, natural plant source of calories? Is it packaged with fiber, antioxidants and phytochemicals? Does it contain not just discovered nutrients, but plenty of undiscovered nutrients too? Or were most of those fragile, but beneficial nutrients lost in the way the food was processed or prepared? These are the questions, to ask yourself, not whether it is a low fat or high fat food.

You may have heard that nuts, seeds and avocados are fatty and fattening and are foods to be shunned. However, recent evidence from many different studies showing a wide variety of health benefits from eating these foods has finally buried this myth. It is important to emphasize that the health problems associated with high fat diets are from consuming animal fats, processed oils and trans fats, not from the consumption of avocados, and raw nuts and seeds. There has never been a study that showed any negative health outcomes from consuming these natural, high fat, whole plant foods. In fact, the studies that have been done only show positive health benefits, and conclude that these foods should be an important part of a well-rounded, healthy diet.

Macronutrients are the three sources of calories—fat, carbohydrate and protein. Americans eat too much of all three and we need to reduce all of them. I intentionally do not give a preferred percentage of each macronutrient in the diet and I do not recommend fat be significantly limited. Trying to micromanage the precise amount of each caloric source misses the most critical issue in human nutrition. The real critical issue in human nutrition is meeting your macronutrient needs without excess, for all three macronutrients, and getting sufficient micronutrients in the process (vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals—the parts of food that do not contain calories). There is a broad acceptable range in the macronutrient ratio as long as one is not overeating calories.

However, adhering to a diet that is less than 10 percent of calories from fat is not an appropriate recommendation for ideal health and often results in less than ideal health outcomes. One could be on a healthful diet that is 15 percent of calories from fat or a healthful diet that is 30 percent of calories from fat too. As long as the diet is rich in micronutrients and does not exceed our need for calories, the lower fat diet has no advantage in the prevention and treatment of disease. There is no evidence to suggest that a diet of equal calories that is much lower in fat is an advantage for prevention or treatment of heart disease or any other disease. Studies that compare dietary fat percentages suggest that it is not the fat level, but other more critical qualities that make the diet more or less beneficial.

To achieve an ideal level of phytonutrients and other micronutrients it necessitates eating a large amount of green vegetables each day. Any diet that does not recommend sufficient consumption of vegetables is lacking. When you eat lots of vegetables, especially green vegetables, you meet your body’s need for fiber and micronutrients with very little calories. Then to comprise the balance of the diet and fill our caloric needs we can choose an assortment of other foods, preferably ones that are of the highest nutrient quality. Unlike some other doctors and authors advocating a plant-based diet, I recommend more vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts and seeds and use less bread, potato, and rice. With the addition of nuts and seeds, which average about 175 calories an ounce, one or two ounces a day brings the diet up to the 15 – 30 percent of calories from fat range. My recommend diet is definitely not under 10 percent of calories from fat and because of the addition of seeds and nuts it is also considerably higher in protein too.

It might seem logical to restrict higher fat foods like nuts seeds and avocado because high fat foods are higher in calories and fat is 9 calories per gram compared to 4 calories a gram for carbohydrates and protein. Of course one should take care not to eat too many calories and adjust the level of these foods to maintain a slim body and not to overeat on them or any other food. However, there are lots of good reasons to include at least some of these higher fat foods in one’s diet.

Evidence is accumulating that a diet as low as 10 percent of calories from fat Is too low, even for the overweight, diabetic or heart disease patient and that the judicious use of these higher fat foods is beneficial for not just heart disease, but for weight loss and diabetes too. The scientific literature corroborates my clinical experience over the last 15 years caring for thousands of patients with obesity, diabetes and heart disease, and provides evidence to show that for every calorie removed from the diet from rice, potato, bread or animal products and substituted with raw seeds and nuts you get many health benefits, such as:

• Lower blood sugar
• Lower cholesterol
• Lower triglycerides
• Better LDL/HDL ratio
• Better antioxidant status
• Better absorption of phytochemicals from vegetables
• Better diabetic control
• Lower weight
• More effective reversal of heart disease
• Prevention of cardiac arrhythmias in heart patients
• More weight loss, not weight gain
• Better nutritional diversity and satisfaction with less calories
• Increased protection against cancer
• Better muscle and bone mass with aging

With the growing awareness of the health properties of nuts and seeds, we must also realize that they must be eaten in moderation. Should we all sit in front of our TV’s, eat the entire bag of nuts in an hour, and complain when we gain weight? Of course not. Healthy eaters avoid excessive calories and do not eat for recreation. Eat only an ounce a day if you are significantly overweight, but if thin, physically active, pregnant or nursing eat 2 – 4 ounces according to your caloric needs.

Originally published September 30, 2009.
[crazysexylife.com]

Peace and Love..........John

anything in small amounts won't hurt you too much, and of course nuts contain nutrients, but phytic acid and lectins make nuts not so ideal.

cacao also has high phytic acid

i used to eat a lot of pistachios but they're not so tasty now for me..

Phytic acid gets a poor reputation in the raw movement, when in truth phytic acid actually has a higher affinity for heavy metals and free iron, than it does beneficial minerals.

Phytic acid also has antioxidant and anti-cancer properties.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2012 06:05PM by powerlifer.

The raw movement?

is Pubmed part of the raw movement?

Phytate, which is present in staple foods like cereals, corn and rice, has a strong negative effect on zinc absorption from composite meals.

[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

dietary phytate reduces zinc absorption

[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

The results suggest that phytate inhibits zinc absorption and high levels of dietary phytate could result in zinc deficiency in man.

[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

Yes but generally Phytic acid has a higher affinity for heavy metals and free iron which makes it a good thing in moderation. A serving of nuts a day would not be classed as a high phytic acid intake pending the rest of your diet wasn't grain or bean/legume rich, which as a raw vegan it won't tend to be. Phytic acid has a chelating effect so yes extremely high intakes have the potential to lower minerals such as zinc and magnesium.

Again high levels of phytates is the key factor here, a serving of nuts a day within a healthy diet would not be problematic and infact beneficial due to the small amount of phytates it contains. Nuts tend to also be mineral rich.

Search pubmed for the beneficial effects of including a little phytic acid in your diet which range from antioxidant to anti-cancer/tumor effects.

Good info John.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]



Edited 10 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2012 06:47PM by powerlifer.

I suspect [chriskresser.com]

Safe amts lower than u may think

fresh Wrote:
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> I suspect
> [chriskresser.com]
> t-go-nuts-on-nuts
>
> Safe amts lower than u may think

Yeah i agree with what he has to say and similar opinions to my own. Like i say a small serving of nuts is all you need to get the heart healthy and other benefits that nuts provide so you don't need to consume large amounts.

He is just warning the benefits of high phytic acid intake because Paleo diets often can be rich in nuts, but then so can raw vegan gourmet style diets which often rely heavily on nuts. Again this has nothing to do with those who eat nuts in moderation and shouldn't be put off by consuming a little phytic acid which is healthy.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2012 07:47PM by powerlifer.

you can reduce the phytic acid by soaking and then dehydrating your nuts, though you don't have to. I do it because I like the taste. Nice crunch for the organic trail mix.

Paul

pborst Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> you can reduce the phytic acid by soaking and then
> dehydrating your nuts, though you don't have to.
> I do it because I like the taste. Nice crunch for
> the organic trail mix.
>
> Paul

Good point and tip Paul, must remember to soak my nuts and seeds more.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]

Hi, Paul! I have gotten lazy about soaking

Honestly, fresh, excess phytic acid(like most things in excess) is a problem for SADers. We don't have to worry about stuff like this to that degree. Thank goodness!

Tamukha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi, Paul! I have gotten lazy about soaking
>
> Honestly, fresh, excess phytic acid(like most
> things in excess) is a problem for SADers. We
> don't have to worry about stuff like this to that
> degree. Thank goodness!

Agreed, if we eat most food groups in moderation and balance we tend to not run into many problems when it comes to diet. The only food group which should be eaten in abundance is vegetables in my opinion.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]

Tam,

I agree it certainly is more of a problem for SADers and it isn't necessary. And as Chris points out, phytic acid has benefits as well as risks. For me, I like the consistency of my nut butters when I have soaked the nuts first. And again for the trail mix (mine is tree nuts, goji berries, dehydrated carrot and zucchini), nothing beats the crunch of a soaked/dried pistachio or walnut or almond.

Paul