The FastDay Forum

I like nuts and I know they are good but some are high in calories. What type ae best to eat and should they be plain from the health food shop rather than salted from the supermarket. This WOE has got me thinking more about the choices I make and what food I put in my body.

Since I try to avoid food high in omega 6 I almost only eat macadamia nuts which are high in omega 3. I go for a high fat, low carb diet with moderate protein, I figure I have to be extra careful with the types of fat I choose. Plain, unprocessed is always best.

Pistachio's are the lowest in calories. I LOVE raw nuts - and actually choose them over chocolate these days - so that's saying something! I have jars of them in my kitchen - whole almonds, walnuts, hazlenuts and the aforementioned pistachios (shelled) - plus I add a few sunflower and pumpkin seeds.

I don't personally eat macadamia nuts as they are the highest calorie nuts you can eat....

I love cashew nuts and peanuts. Hazel nuts are okish. Will try some others I think. I like sunflower seeds, my Dad kept parakeets so we used to nick the seeds sometimes.

I vaguely remember from my low-carb diet days that cashews have the highest amount of sugar/carb of all nuts.

here you go: http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/carbco ... -Seeds.htm

I'd say it's best to be careful with eating too much nuts, more than a handful a day, and especially seeds like sunflower seeds. I guess the science isn't really clear about these matters yet, but high doses of omega 6 fats can very well be highly inflammatory and cause various long term health problems.

It seems unclear if you can compensate for high doses of omega 6 by eating more omega 3, or if you should focus on simply limiting the omega 6 as much as possible. If you don't eat much carbs and processed food in general, the calories shouldn't matter much for weight loss purposes.

@MaryAnn thanks for posting that link, very interesting!
I love unsalted almonds and eat far too many, as they are quite high in calories. I can all too easily polish off 100g or more, which account for a whopping 500 calories.

Ohh i love nuts but they're too moreish! My particular fancy is brazils with some dates to snack on..nourishing but highly calorific! X

I think any nuts are fine as long as you buy them in the shell. This severely restricts the likelihood of shovelling them in by the handful! In the case of macadamias, the extra effort required to get through their bullet-like casing may well use up some of the extra calories they contain.

I put this into practice by eating only pistachios, which require just the right amount of effort to shell. Other nuts in the shell just languish and go off because I find laziness trumps greed. I count out 20 pistachios at a time, and am usually quite satisfied at that.

I do however buy huge jars of peanut butter and eat it on feast days (ie, 5 times a week), sometimes on bread and sometimes straight by the spoonful. I used to feel guilty about this, until I read a study which found that daily consumption of PB actually conferred health and weight-management benefits, though not as much as tree-nuts. (That's when I added pistachios for lean days). My peanut butter habit definitely didn't stop me losing weight on 5:2 and now maintaining - though I expect I could have lost more quickly without it. For an occasional treat, I buy cashew butter.

So maybe the trick is to have what you love.

I read an article recently (it may even have been on a link through here!) that said that although nuts are high in calories, usually the people that eat them aren't generally that overweight and also that the high fat and calorie content doesn't seem to have the same effect on the body as something "bad" with the same calorie/fat content.... it's almost like the body processes them differently, but they don't yet know how or why....

[Debs]

I am a shocking nut fiend and have to limit myself otherwise I can go a bit crazy, but I have a handful of unsalted mixed nuts on a non fast day.

Ooh yeah! Love nuts! As my name would suggest....!

My faves are hazelnuts & brazils. Covered in chocolate if at all possible......in the bad old days!

Last week I had a hankering for a peanut butter sandwich on a non fast day - boy, was it delicious!

Very fond of cashews too. At Christmas, M&S sold jumbo cashews which were incredible. Very expensive, totally moreish....but incredible! Good job Christmas is only once a year......

Can I just take the time to congratulate @Brand-ie - you are doing so well!

Cheers all

Thanks Hazelnut. I went to the health food shop today and got Pine, cashew, roasted hazel nuts (was all they had) broken brazil nuts blanched almonds (again all they had) and some sunflower seeds. I'm going to make my own mix.

I have 10g of brazils (about 3) and 10g of almonds (8 or 9) on non fast days. I use roasted and salted cashew nuts to make nut roast etc as we are vegetarian but I don't add any more salt to the recipe and sometimes I add a seed mix to salad but some of the family complain about the seeds.