Eating a Handful of Nuts Daily Reduces Disease Risk

It's no secret that nuts are a nutritious and beneficial food. While high in calories, they contain large concentrations of protein, fiber and healthy fats. It's these healthy fats that could prove useful in protecting against many harmful diseases.

According to a study published in the journal BMC Medicine, eating just a handful of nuts daily protects against many diseases. For the study, researchers from the UK's Imperial College London and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology scoured through data from 29 previous studies, all of which focused on the health benefits of nuts.

Researchers discovered that people who consumed one handful of nuts daily (about 20 grams) had a 30% lower risk of developing cancer, 15% lower risk of developing heart disease, 40% lower risk of developing diabetes, 50% lower risk of developing respiratory disease, and a 22% lower risk of premature death from all causes.

Those are some pretty remarkable findings to say the least, attesting to the positive health benefits of nuts. But how can something as delicious and otherwise simple as nuts offer such astounding benefits?

Researchers believe the health benefits of nuts can be attributed to its high concentration of healthy fats. We've talked about this before on our blog, but it's worth mentioning again that nuts are an excellent source of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. Why is this important? Well, these healthy fats are actually beneficial, and they don't contribute to weight gain like saturated fats and trans fats.

Healthy fats, such as those found in nuts, lower levels of bad cholesterol in the body while also raising levels of good cholesterol.

“In nutritional studies, so far much of the research has been on the big killers such as heart diseases, stroke and cancer, but now we're starting to see data for other diseases,” said Dagfinn Aune, the study's co-author. "We found a consistent reduction in risk across many different diseases, which is a strong indication that there is a real underlying relationship between nut consumption and different health outcomes. It's quite a substantial effect for such a small amount of food.”

And in case you were wondering, eating more than a handful of nuts daily isn't going to increase its disease-fighting benefits. Researchers found that people who consumed more than 20 grams daily had the same disease risk of people who consumed the standard 20 grams.