Why should you add Nuts in your daily diet? Heart Health Benefits. You may already be eating nuts occasionally some way or the other, but have you ever considered making it part of your daily diet?
If not, why not?
Make a conscious decision to include different nuts in your daily diet as almost all tree nuts offer significant heart health benefits.
Eating a healthy and balanced diet is an important contributor to remaining fit and healthy for longer periods.
If a balanced diet is a way of eating all essential nutrients everyday. Depending on your body's requirements you will require different nutrients on a daily basis for your body to function efficiently.
Your body requirements for nutrients change based on race, gender, age, workloads, sickness, geography and may be some other factors specific to you.
You perhaps have already been told to eat fruits and vegetables in your daily diet to stay healthy.
Nuts are considered dry fruits, yet it subconsciously doesn't become a regular healthy inclusion in the daily diet until it is consciously included daily to make it a new habit.
The biggest convenience advantage of nuts is that they are very healthy snack food that can be stored easily for longer periods. You can replace your unhealthy snacks with nuts.
There is one drawback though; they are high in calories, so you have to limit consumption. Not a big deal!
Why Nuts are Heart Healthy
Various scientific studies show the benefits of nuts as cholesterol reducing and providing other heart health benefits, but there is no really conclusive evidence that they prolong life.
But it is logical that if you Improve your heart health you are going to live longer.
On the other hand eating nuts have no bad effects except that eating too much can have too many calories. Therefore, eat in limits.
So what are the limits?
An average adult female requires 2000-2500 calories and an adult male requires 2500-3000 calories daily.
One ounce or about 28 grams of nuts can provide 160-210 calories.
Just to give you a comparative perspective, an ounce of potato chips gives you about 170 calories.
You can add about a handful of nuts or a little less to your daily diet to maintain total calories consumption within your limits.
You will agree that, instead of eating an ounce of potato chips and other similar junk snack items, it is wise to eat nuts.
Make sure that you eat raw unsalted and unflavoured nuts. The salt, chocolates and other flavours will reduce the health impact of nuts.
Nuts are essentially fats, almost 80% of the calories comes from fats. This is healthy fat. The monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats in nuts help to reduce LDL - the bad cholesterol that clogged the arteries. You can use nuts to substitute saturated fats received from the meat, eggs and dairy.
So balance your diet by the use of nuts against undesirable food items.
Healthy Constituents of Nuts
Health of your heart is maintained by many of the following elements that are found in the nuts
- Fiber - Fiber makes you feel full with less consumption. It lowers Cholesterol and protects you from Diabetes Type 2 leading to better heart health.
- Omega 3- Omega3 fatty acids help to maintain proper rhythm of the heart.
- Unsaturated Fats - Unsaturated fats helps in reduction of cholesterol.
- Vitamin E- vitamin E helps to stop plaque accumulation in the arteries. The narrow arteries can cause chest pain and coronary artery diseases and heart failure.
In addition tree nuts contain plant sterols, L- arginine and other antioxidants that keep artery walls flexible and stops blood clots to form.
It may be worthwhile to relook at your diet and consider adding an ounce of nuts in your daily diet. You know there are a lot of food items from your daily list that can be removed to accommodate nuts without adding to total calories.