The politics and health benefits of nuts

May 6, 12:31 PMSacramento Nutrition ExaminerAnne Hart

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Nuts are a political issue. Recently, salmonella scares featuring roasted and/or raw pistachio nuts and peanuts appeared in the media.

Organic nuts are expensive. Health benefits of nuts fill books on nutrition. Time shows how nutrition issues change.

In the 1980s, all nuts were condemned by many nutrition professionals as too fatty for the average diet. Today, nuts have been found by scientific studies to reduce the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Eating nuts helps your heart. Discover how walnuts, almonds and other nuts help lower your cholesterol when eaten as part of a balanced diet. See the Mayo Clinic.com  article on nuts and your heart health. 

Nutritionists no longer fear the fat in tree nuts. Most physicians and nutritionists now encourage consumers to replace sweet and salty snacks with unsalted nuts. Roasted nuts are recommended because the fungus that grows on certain nuts (such as peanuts) is destroyed by roasting.

Raw peanuts may contain a fungus that could infect the heart. A few years ago there were reports in the media about a famous baseball player who succumbed to a growth of fungus on his heart, said, according to news reports, to possibly be due to eating raw peanuts (instead of roasted peanuts).

An organic peanut butter-only sandwich that doesn’t contain hydrogenated fats, but is made from pure, unsalted roasted peanuts spread on high-fiber whole grain bread is now thought of as nutritious and healthy.

Peanut butter is said to help normalize blood glucose levels and sometimes is touted as a help to patients with type 2 diabetes. A handful of almonds is healthy as is almond milk.

The best way to eat peanut butter is to buy roasted peanuts and turn them into peanut butter at home with your juicer that has a nut-butter making attachment or buy the peanut butter freshly made from a store's peanut-butter grinder. But then, you still don't know whether the machine has been cleaned frequently.

Don't eat raw peanuts. They contain a fungus that grows on your heart causing illness.

Buy roasted peanuts or roast them yourself. If nuts are too expensive, buy them on sale days. Nuts contain a balance of oils that in small amounts are healthy if you're not allergic to tree nuts. So test yourself first before you eat nuts to make sure you haven't developed a sudden allergy to any type of nuts.

Most nuts contain some of these healthy substances:

• Unsaturated fats. — (Nuts contain both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats —to lower bad cholesterol levels.)
• Omega-3 fatty acids. (Helps prevent heart rhythm disturbances.) Nuts are one of the best plant-based sources of omega-3 fatty acids. Another source of Omega-3 fatty acids is fish. See the article at: Mayo Clinic.com .
• L-arginine. (Nuts are high in L-argninine.)
• Fiber.  (Helps to prevent type 2 diabetes.)
• Vitamin E.  (May help stop the development of plaques that narrow arteries.)
• Plant sterols. (Some nuts contain plant sterols, a substance that can help lower your cholesterol.)

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