Nuts: Friend or Foe?

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I'm battling both weight and cholesterol, and to distract me from my craving for cheese (You too?  Amazing!) I tried to stock nuts instead.  Then it struck me: haven't I heard that nuts are a source of cholesterol?

I hate to look something up unless I can report to someone, and my buddies all happen to be either on sabbatical, or uninterested in nutrition news.  But I have a blog!  So I made a halfhearted attempt to look up the information, i.e., Google.  To get a little more perspective on the subject, you should do your own research.  Remember, a lot of the research we see on the Web has been paid for by the very folks who are being studied; in this case, you must suspect that the Nut Industry (Big Nuts) would support research that makes them come out looking good.  There is probably some government website that provides a very conservative report, and that's probably a little more trustworthy than a voluntary report from the industry itself.  It will probably lack careful explanations, unfortunately.

The data I got was from a single source: the "Fat Free Kitchen", about whom I know little or nothing.  Still, it is a starting point.  The data is shown in an image; you could always go to their site and get the html version.

My favorites are Pistachios and Cashews.  Vegetable foods do not actually contain cholesterol, which is a kind of substance found in our bloodstream which transports artery blocking material around, and dumps it where it can clog the blood passages.  (Not deliberately, of course, but as a by-product of its other functions, I suppose.)  However, saturated fats, which most certainly are found in vegetable foods, are what our own bodies manufacture cholesterol from.  So we need to cut down the amount of saturated fats we eat.  (A little saturated fat is ok.)

In contrast, unsaturated fats are actually good for you.  They are from what the body makes a variant of cholesterol that actually helps transport clogs away from where they are.  This is something I don't fully understand; e.g., where do they transport the clogs to?  Ideally, the material in the clogs will be metabolized (i.e., used up), and will not be a problem any longer.  This good cholesterol is, by all accounts so valuable that doctors are more anxious about increasing it, than decreasing the regular ("bad") cholesterol.  I think of the bad stuff as dirt, and the good stuff as detergent, but if a person who knows about these things learns that this is how I view it, I might have to do time.

By the way, I learned about ten years ago that the body uses up bad cholesterol converting Niacin into Niacinamide.  The former is a nutritional supplement readily obtainable, and the latter is one of the B-Vitamins.  (So by eating Niacin, you burn off some of your cholesterol, while simultaneously gaining a son, to mix our metaphors in the most delightful way.  I never metaphor I didn't like.)

From the chart, it looks as if Pistachios are low in the bad saturated fats.  As you can see, Walnuts are the champions (within this particular set of nuts) for unsaturated fats.  I personally don't like them, but if you do, you're in luck.  Also find out which nuts provide more fiber; I failed to do this, though I should have.  (Trivia: peanuts are technically not nuts but a bean, or legume.  They contain lots of protein.)

Cooking and fats:
As we reported sometime last year, it is regarded as better, in some circles, to do your fryings with a small amount of saturated fat.  You have to drain it well.  But the little amount you end up eating is considered worth it, because of the avoidance of certain by-products that are created when you fry with unsaturated fats.  Unsaturated fats are chemically active, and at high temperatures apparently get converted into a group of substances that cause cancer.  So cooking with unsaturated fats, e.g. Canola Oil, for many years could expose you to this carcinogenic stuff ("free radicals") that have a bad cumulative effect.  So: unsaturated fats are great, provided you do not cook with them.  What can you do without cooking with them?
Eat them as nuts, for instance.
Use them in salads.
Use them in dips.
Deep frying is a problem, because the foods get soaked in the oil, and the fat does not actually get drained away effectively.  So deep-fried foods are a nutritional liability.  And restaurants that use polyunsaturated fats for deep-frying are not doing you a favor, either, because of the free radicals.  You've got to make your own decision whether you prefer to eat foods deep-fried in a saturated fat (heart attack), or deep-fried in polyunsaturated fat (cancer), or just avoid them (no french fries).

Finally, nuts have another benefit: they're filling.  Snacking on nuts satisfy you in two ways: satisfying your need to chew, and because they fill you up.  Weight Watchers, for instance, are really big on foods that fill you up.  They encourage you to eat these filling foods as much as you want, because they provide few calories, but do satisfy your hunger.  So you get to eat tons of it: broccoli, oatmeal, nuts, whole wheat and multi-grain bread, flatbreads, etc.