Nuts are one my favourite foods, they are a great snack with a piece of fruit or you can sprinkle them in to a salad to give a bit of texture and flavour. Nut butters are nice with vegetable crudités and you can also chuck them into a smoothie to add a bit of protein and healthy fats.
I am always confronted by people when I tell them to eat nuts, that they are full of fat and will either make you fat or increase your cholesterol and be bad for your heart. This is so far from the truth. Except in the case where someone has a nut allergy or nut intolerance nuts are extremely healthy. Research from the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2010 found that those eating 67g of nuts a day reduced total cholesterol by 5% (total cholesterol is a pretty useless marker for cardiovascular health by the way), but also lowered the “bad” LDL cholesterol by 7% and improved the ratio of LDL to “good” HDL cholesterol.
