Given the name "nuts" you'd think that nuts were snacking foods - for those who want a salty snack or want to "crack seed" as they say in the islands.
To the contrary, nuts are real foods. Serious foods. Nuts are one of the most nutrient-dense categories of foods known. Nuts as a category could well be one of the healthiest and most nutritious types of foods known to humans.
Nuts provide a perfect blend of fats, proteins, isoflavones and minerals.
And our earliest ancestors relished nuts found from climbing trees or watching for early droppings. Researchers have found nut residues among the teeth enamel of humanoid species as early as two million years ago.
Seed pods
The nut is a seed pod - it is the embryo that renders a sprout and a new little tree. Therefore it contains all the DNA, protein and nutrients needed to nourish a living organism.Our ancestors may not have realized this, but tree nuts are healthy for the heart.
In fact, a study by researchers from the University of Georgia found that tree nuts have even more heart-healthy nutrients than ever considered by nutritionists.
The researchers studied the nutritional constituents of ten tree nuts: almonds, black walnuts, Brazil nuts, cashews, English walnuts, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, and pistachios. (Peanuts are legumes - not tree nuts).
Nuts have healthy fats
Nuts got a bum reputation a few decades ago because of their fairly high fat content. But the type of fats nuts have is the critical point.The University of Georgia researchers found that the percentage of heart-healthy fats to be primarily unsaturated oleic and linoleic fatty acids.
Most of the nuts maintained lower than 10% saturated fats, except for Brazil nuts (24%), cashews (21%), macadamias (17%), and pistachios (13%). These are also known as the more fatty nuts.
Vitamin E tocopherols and tocotrienols
The tree nuts also contained heart-healthy tocopherols (natural form of vitamin E), which ranged from 1 to 33 milligrams for every 100 grams of the nut meat.The researchers also found that six nuts also contained tocotrienols (another type of natural vitamin E): Brazil nuts, cashews, English walnuts, macadamias, pine nuts, and pistachios.
Nuts contain phytosterols
They also found that all the nuts contained significant phytosterol content, and mostly above the levels that have been reported in the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference.Heart-healthy phytosterol content was highest in pistachios, containing over 300 milligrams for every 100 grams of the nut meat. Pine nuts came in second, with 272 mg/100 g nutmeat.
While tree nuts are most known for great protein sources - most having all the essential amino acids – a number of studies have confirmed that diets with more nuts provide cardiovascular prevention. The reasons, as this study presents, are their lipid content, phytosterol content, and tocopherol and tocotrienol content.
Walnuts exceedingly good
Walnuts are one of the best nuts. They contain a host of nutrients. A cup of chopped walnuts will contain 18 ounces of protein, or about 15% by weight. Walnuts also contain a host of B vitamins, led by folate at 115 mcg, B6 at 600 mcg and thiamin at 400 mcg.A cup of walnuts also contains 115 milligrams of calcium, 185 milligrams of magnesium and 516 milligrams of potassium. Walnuts are also rich in manganese – with 200% of US Daily Value. Walnuts are also rich in selenium and phytosterols.
But it is walnuts’ omega-3 content that blows the doors off of most foods, at 10,623 milligrams of omega-3s per cup. Much of this comes in the form of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). Healthy livers convert ALA to eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) as needed, at a rate of between 7% and 36%.
REFERENCES:
Robbins KS, Shin EC, Shewfelt RL, Eitenmiller RR, Pegg RB. Update on the Healthful Lipid Constituents of Commercially Important Tree Nuts. J Agric Food Chem. 2011 Oct 27.Adams C. The Ancestors Diet: Living and Cultured Foods to Extend Life, Prevent Disease and Lose Weight. Logical Books, 2014.