My Health & Fitness column in the Aiken Standard this week is about the health benefits of nuts. It is a follow-up to a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago. This isn’t new, of course, since nut consumption has been recommended as a part of a healthy diet for years.
What is new is a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine that shows that nut consumption was associated with a reduced risk of death from heart disease, stroke, and some cancers. The people who ate nuts every day got the biggest benefits.
That doesn’t mean that simply adding nuts to an unhealthy lifestyle will have some magical influence on health. In fact, the people in the study who ate the most nuts were also likely to do other healthy things like eat more fruits and vegetables, exercise, and not smoke.
The most practical advice is to eat nuts as a replacement for other snacks or to add nuts to salads and other dishes. While specific types of nuts have different health benefits, the recent study suggests that all nuts, including peanuts, are beneficial.
Dr Parr Says... 