The one snack that turbocharges weight loss efforts

Remember what I said yesterday about nuts being a health food? Well, it just so happens that you can call them a diet food, too.

I realize that may sound crazy to anyone steeped in the low-fat, low-calorie weight loss dogma. But like I’m always telling you, if you want to burn fat, you have to eat the right kinds of fat—in ample quantities.

There are a number of reasons why nuts are the perfect snack to turbocharge your weight loss efforts. But today, I want to share the results of two recent studies that focus on a few key benefits in particular…

A serving a day melts the pounds away

This first analysis used data from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and the Nurses’ Health Studies. Researchers looked through four years’ worth of dietary reporting and made a handful of key observations.

For one, they found that eating a daily serving of any type of nut—and this included peanuts—was linked to a lower risk of weight gain and obesity over the course of four years. (In this case, researchers defined one serving of nuts as either one ounce of whole nuts or two tablespoons of nut butter.)

Plus, swapping a serving of processed meat, French fries, desserts, or potato chips with a serving of nuts was linked to less weight gain over the study period. (Quite possibly the least surprising discovery of all time.)

Nuts are high-fat and calorie-dense—which is one reason behind their former reputation as a forbidden food. But this research, once again, shows that the opposite is actually true.

What it doesn’t address, however, is how nuts protect against obesity. And that’s where today’s second study comes in…

Curb hunger and blunt blood sugar

In this study, researchers gave more than 20 healthy adults either 36 grams of pretzels (that’s a little over an ounce) or 20 grams of Brazil nuts (that’s about five) in addition to their regular diet.

And, well… I’m sure you can guess what happened.

For starters, while both snacks reduced hunger, Brazil nuts gave subjects a greater sense of fullness. (Again…tell me something I didn’t know. Because of course the high-fat, high-protein option is going to curb hunger better.)

But if you think that finding was obvious, get a load of this: Researchers also found that pretzels caused significant spikes in blood sugar and insulin after 40 minutes. And you guessed it—Brazil nuts didn’t.

You don’t say?! That’s the American Heart Association’s grant money hard at work, ladies and gentlemen.

Both snacks had roughly the same amount of calories and sodium. So you can consider these results yet another reminder that neither of these factors really matter when you’re dieting.

But you know what does matter? In addition to Brazil nuts’ ability to squash appetite, they’re also packed with selenium—a mineral that, among other benefits, is effective at balancing insulin and glucose responses.

And there’s not a pretzel on this planet that’s capable of doing that.

I discussed the many health benefits of selenium in the October 2018 issue of Logical Health Alternatives (“This miracle anti-aging mineral fights prostate cancer”). Not a subscriber? Click here to sign up today!

Source:

“Nuts for nuts? Daily serving may help control weight and benefit health.” Science Daily, 11/05/2018. (sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181105081742.htm)