Heart Healthy Benefit of Salty Snack -- Pistachios Are Heart-Health Boosters

Heart Healthy Benefit of Salty Snack

I've snacked on pistachio nuts for years. I now enjoy them even more knowing they're relatively guilt free thanks to recent research that demonstrated that they also protect the heart! Adding a daily handful or two of pistachios to a heart-healthy diet may help decrease a person's risk of cardiovascular disease, confirms Penny M. Kris-Etherton, PhD, distinguished professor in the department of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania. In a recent study at Penn State, researchers found that pistachio nuts deliver heart benefits and may help people maintain healthy cholesterol levels.

SOMETIMES YOU FEEL
LIKE A NUT

In the trial, Dr. Kris-Etherton and her colleagues set out to determine the effect of pistachios on cardiovascular (CVD) risk factors. All participants first consumed an average American "baseline" diet for two weeks, consisting of 35% total fat and 11% saturated fat. Next they all followed three different diets for four weeks each, with two-week breaks between each diet, during which time they followed their usual diet. The different eating plans were variations of a general cholesterol-lowering diet, as follows:

• A control diet without pistachios, with 25% total fat and 8% saturated fat.

• A diet with 1.5 ounces of pistachios a day, with 30% total fat and 8% saturated fat.

• A diet with 3 ounces of pistachios daily, with 34% total fat and 8% saturated fat.

All three diets were designed to provide adequate calories to maintain participants' weight -- and all did, on all three test diets... no one lost or gained weight. Thus, the effects of the test diets were not due to changes in body weight.

Researchers tested participants' blood following each diet. They found that both pistachio diets significantly decreased LDL cholesterol, and the more nuts, the better. The 3 oz. pistachio diet reduced LDL levels by 12% compared with the baseline diet, while the 1.5 oz. pistachio diet reduced LDL by 9%.

The pistachio diets also resulted in lower total cholesterol levels... decreased non-high density lipoproteins (of which there are three different kinds), which is another measure of cardiovascular disease risk... and reduced the ratios of total cholesterol to HDL, LDL to HDL, and non-HDL to HDL and apolipoprotein B (additional measures of CVD risk).

WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT PISTACHIOS?

Pistachios have a unique nutrient and fatty acid profile, explains study co-author Sarah K. Gebauer, a graduate student in Integrative Biosciences at Penn State. She told me that pistachios are naturally...

• Low in saturated fatty acids (SFA) and rich in the good fats -- monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). Pistachio oil is low in saturated fatty acids and high in unsaturated fatty acids, including MUFA and PUFA. Other vegetable oils that are low in SFA and high in unsaturated fatty acids are soybean oil, canola oil, olive oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil and corn oil.

• One of the highest sources of phytosterols (plant components which have been shown to effectively reduce LDL cholesterol) in foods commonly consumed as snacks.

• Rich in disease-fighting antioxidants such as lutein, which is commonly known to be found in leafy green vegetables.

While this study was partially supported by the California Pistachio Commission, the findings are consistent with previous nutritional research data regarding pistachios -- along with walnuts and almonds... these can be considered the body's "nutty buddies." As for the many times you couldn't stop eating those pistachios because they tasted so good? Apparently your body knew best.

Source(s):

Penny M. Kris-Etherton, PhD, distinguished professor, department of nutritional sciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania.

Sarah K. Gebauer, graduate student in integrative biosciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania.