Going Nuts About Weight Loss?

Nuts are tasty, nuts are healthy, and a good source of non-animal protein – unfortunately nuts are also high in calories.

So are people who eat a lot of nuts more likely to gain weight?

This question was recently addressed by Maira Bes-Rastrollo and colleagues from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA, in a prospective study on the relationship between nut consumption, long-term weight change, and obesity risk in women, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Based on the self-reported data of 51,188 women in the Nurses’ Health Study II over 8 years, women who reported eating nuts 2 or more times per week had slightly (but statistically significantly) less mean weight gain (5.04 kg) than did women who rarely ate nuts (5.55kg).

The results were the same irrespective of the type of nuts or whether the women were normal-weight, overweight, or obese.

In multivariate analyses, frequent nut consumers were about 30% less likely to become obese than people who ate nuts less than 2 times a week.

So will nuts be the new miracle weight-loss diet?

Probably not!

Should nuts be part of a healthy diet even in folks concerned about their weight?

Probably yes!

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta