Walnut Health and Nutrition Benefits

A Walnut Study was done in the early 1990's at Loma Linda University that made headlines around the world, and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.  They were the first to find that walnuts in a controlled diet reduced LDL (bad) cholesterol and heart disease risk significantly more than the Step 1 diet that was then recommended by the American Heart Association. In other words - they proved, scientifically, that food really can be your medicine.

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In April 2000, another landmark walnut study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study, a follow-up to the1993 Loma Linda study, was conducted at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona. Researchers had 49 men and women with high cholesterol incorporate walnuts into a healthy Mediterranean diet, substituting a handful of walnuts a day for some of the monounsaturated fat in the diet. Participants lowered their "bad" LDL cholesterol by almost 6 per cent and heart disease risk by 11 per cent beyond what would be expected from the Mediterranean diet alone. 

The Loma Linda study participants substituted walnuts, one of nature's richest sources of polyunsaturated fat, for saturated fat.  The Barcelona participants substituted walnuts for another healthy fat. Barcelona scientists also remarked on the ease of  incorporating walnuts into the diet. According to researcher Juan Carlos Laguna, Ph.D.,

"That's the main point of the study. You eat a normal amount, like five or six walnuts a day. That's something you can do every day without  any problem."

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Updated 11/8/18

Image Credit: LubosHousca on Pixabay