All-Mighty Almonds

People untrained in nutrition often shy away from nuts for fear that their high fat content while wind up packing on pounds. But this couldn’t be a more foolish way of approaching nuts. In short, it’s just plain “nuts”! Why? Because nuts, particularly almonds, can actually counteract weight gain due to the satiety they provide and their high antioxidant content that help reduce cholesterol levels, a prime contributor to a host of diseases.   
Researchers from the Agricultural Research Service, the Almond Board of California and the Canada Research Chair Endowment set out to test the powers of antioxidants in almonds to see if they could reduce oxidative stress levels in people. Oxidative stress occurs when there is a significant imbalance in the ratio of free radicals to antioxidants in the body. Oxidative stress is linked to a host of diseases, including atherosclerosis, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and chronic fatigue syndrome to name a few.

To see if almonds really had much of an impact on the health of people, the researchers used 27 participants who had high cholesterol levels and split them up into three groups. They were all instructed to exercise just as they normally did prior to the study, but they would all eat similar diets, the exception being the amount of almonds each ate, or in one case, did not eat at all. For example, one of the groups had 2.5 ounces of almonds per day (which amounts to about 72 whole, unsalted almond pieces) another group had 1.25 ounces of almonds, and the control group had no almonds at all. They followed this almond allotment for one month, meeting with dieticians regularly on how to keep their weight in check throughout the month-long trial (the other things the participants ate were all low in fat and amounted to the same number of calories for each day).

By the study’s conclusion, the researchers found that the group that ate the 2.5 ounces of almonds – or as the researchers called it, the “full dose” – key oxidative stress indicators had dropped significantly. One indicator, called plasma malondialdehyde (MDA), dropped 19 percent compared to the start of the study. The other indicator, urinary isoprostane, dropped almost 30 percent! The researchers were able to determine the fluctuations in these indicators by taking urine and blood samples from the participants at the beginning and conclusion of the study.

The findings of the study are published in the well-respected and renowned Journal of Nutrition.

Now, do these findings suggest that one has to eat 72 almonds to gain the antioxidant benefits of almonds? I suppose it might on the surface, but the researchers themselves don’t advocate this. More research needs to be done to determine the minimum amount one needs to eat to gain the minimum antioxidant benefit for reducing oxidative stress.

The point of the study was to show the inherent quality of almonds from an antioxidant perspective. I eat about a handful of almonds every day, or about an ounce. Until more information comes out on the antioxidant benefits of almonds, I think that’s just the right amount of almonds to be eating everyday to help maintain weight levels while improving one’s skin health thanks to their high vitamin E content.

But that’s another article for another day.