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Aw, Nuts!
The Good... and Not So Good News
About One of Our Favorite Snacks
Nuts are a wonderful snack. They're rich in important nutrients and hearty enough to sustain us between meals.
But there are downsides to eating too many nuts. Today we'll look at both the good and not so good qualities of this popular snack food.
First, The Good News
In addition to supplying important nutrients, especially Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs), nuts are quick, easy, portable and tasty. This makes them wonderful travel foods and great for satisfying us between meals.
If that's all there were to them you might think they are nature's perfect food.
But there's a darker side to nuts. In some circumstances they can create or at least aggravate specific health problems. Knowing what these are helps you make better choices at snack time.
The Rest Of The Story...
There are a couple of specific health-related issues you should be aware of if you like eating nuts for a snack.
Depending on your state of health you may want to restrict them or at least reduce how many you eat. You might also make different choices about which nuts to include on your list.
Aside from the somewhat higher calories nuts have, there are two specific potential problems with eating too many. These are the Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio and the issue of allergies.
The allergy problem is simple: nuts are among the most common foods people have allergic reactions to. If you have any type of negative reaction to nuts you're likely to avoid them already. And that's a good thing since some of these reactions can be life-threatening.
The sneakier problem has to do with the Essential Fatty Acids in nuts.
Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs) - Proportion Is Everything
Long-time readers will know that we need EFAs in our diet. After all, that's why they're called "Essential."
In addition there are two specific types of EFAs that we need to eat in close proportion to one another. These are the Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids.
Although you'll find differing opinions of the very best dietary ratio between them, generally experts say the best balance comes when eating between 1 & 3 parts Omega-6 for every 1 part of Omega-3.
Modern diets are heavily skewed towards greater proportions of Omega-6 because of their large amount of grains and processed foods. Some estimates say that people often get as much as 20-to-1, 30-to-1 or even higher (Omega-6 to Omega-3) in their daily diet.
The problem with such a high 6-to-3 ratio can be expressed in a single word: inflammation. Omega-6 fatty acids feed the pro-inflammatory biochemical pathways, while Omega-3 fatty acids feed the anti-inflammatory pathways.
Why This Is Important
There is growing awareness in the medical community about the role inflammation plays in chronic disease. Inflammation is part of heart disease, risk of strokes and heart attacks, diabetes, arthritis and other diseases.
By having an excessively high 6-to-3 ratio, you are increasing the tendency towards such inflammatory reactions.
What does this have to do with nuts? Take a look at the following diagram:
From this diagram you can see that only a few nuts approach the ideal 6-to-3 ratio. Others, like peanuts, have astronomically high amounts of Omega-6 compared to Omega-3, and others have no Omega-3 at all (marked with a "µ").
If you ate a lot of peanuts, for example, you'd have to eat a very large amount of salmon or take fairly high doses of fish oil to get a high enough amount of Omega-3 to compensate.
The bottom line is this: if you have a health condition that
includes inflammatory issues (joint pain, diabetes, metabolic
syndrome, cancer, heart disease, etc.), you'd be better off eating
less nuts or avoiding them altogether.
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