The Nutritional Benefits of Nuts for a Healthy Diet
Nuts, nuts nuts! The nutritional benefits of nuts are becoming better known
The nutritional benefits of nuts: hazelnuts are sweet and nutritious. Picture thanks to pizzodisevo.
So what are the nutritional benefits of nuts?
And what part should they play in a healthy diet?
This page offers an introduction to the benefits of nuts for our health and takes a look at some of the commoner nuts and their nutritional benefits.
Nuts and Nutrition
Nuts and seeds can be a great addition to your diet. They are full of vitamins and minerals and have really good amounts of natural oils too. Then there's a bit of protein as well. All in all, they are some of nature's wonder foods. And they can help towards a greener lifestyle. More and more nutritional benefits of nuts are being found all the time.
Eating plenty of nuts can be a real and sustainable way to enhance your green living plans and improve your health.
See the individual nut types below for information on their specific nutritional merits.
There are loads of excellent recipes which use nuts and if you are vegetarian or vegan they can provide significant amounts of your protein and vitamin requirements.
Most common nuts can now be found from organic sources, which helps biodiversity and wildlife. So they can be a great part of a greener lifestyle. They also make a very valuable contribution to vegetarian and vegan dietary choices.
If you are not a vegetarian or vegan, eating nuts can help you cut the amount of meat that you eat. This can help us all to reduce our demands on the planet for land. For more on this please see:
Lets have a look at some common nuts
Peanuts
- Aha! I hear you say.. those ain't nuts! And of course you are absolutely right. Not a good one to show the nutritional benefits of nuts, perhaps - except that they are one of the commonest "nuts" available and almost everyone eats them!
Peanuts, or groundnuts as they are sometimes called, are not really nuts at all. As the name suggests, they grow in the ground and they are members of the pea family or legumes. But they do have a few things in common with nuts so we'll classify them together.
Peanuts are rather well known these days for the wrong reasons: increasingly large numbers of people are allergic to them - and not just a little bit allergic either. Peanut allergy can be so severe that it is sometimes fatal. The reasons for this are not yet known and research is being done to find out whether people should feed young children peanuts or not. (Recent findings tend to indicate that it is best to introduce young children to peanuts early rather than late.)
Assuming peanut allergy is not an issue for you, what's good about peanuts?
Peanuts provide some calcium and useful amounts of potassium and a little niacin (B3). They are about 25% protein and 50% fat, some of which is saturated. The great thing about t...
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