Natural Foods


The high nutritional value of nuts

What is nut? According to botany, nut is a dry fruit with one or two seeds that remain sans attachment with the ovary wall. The ovary wall, with maturity, becomes as hard as the wood or the stone. Some 'true' nuts are edible like walnut, hazel while some are not such as wingnut, birch. It must be clarified that nuts are seeds but on the contrary, all the seeds are not nuts. Seeds are part of the fruits and can be detached from the latter; but nuts can't be removed from fruit since they are compound ovaries amalgamating the fruit and the seed. Sometimes, nuts are even mingled with legumes (peanut) or capsules (horse-chestnut, Brazil nuts) or drupes (pistachio nut, almond, coconut)!

Now let's talk about the utilities of nuts. Nuts are of great value in the four corners of the kitchen because of their high energy potentiality and vitamins like A and E. But while satiating our gluttony in culinary marvels, we sometimes forget the thin demarcation between seed and true nut. Whenever we come across something big, something with oil-filled kernel clandestine in a shell, we name it as nut. So many 'untrue' nuts like almond, cashew nuts, coconuts which are actually simple seeds are used in our cuisine, eaten as snack food or raw and even pressed to obtain its oil which is valuable in gastronomy or cosmetics. Apart from serving the humans, the nuts are a source of great nutrition to the lives in the wild.

What are the nutritional advantages obtained from nuts? It is scientifically proved that consuming nuts on a regular basis decreases the chances of coronary heart maladies. Walnuts or almonds can actually minimize serum LDL cholesterol concentrations. Nuts are composed of different substances believed to be the possessors of cardio-protective effects but it is also believed that the fatty acids of the nuts bear the responsibility, to an extent, for the hypolipidemic response which is witnessed in clinical experiments. Apart from having cardioprotective effects, nuts are supposed to have an extremely low level of glycemic index or GI. So, those who have insulin resistance problems like type 2 diabetes mellitus, are prescribed diets containing nuts.

Is there any Problem posed by nuts? Yes there is. Nut allergy is a grave problem found commonly. Persons who are prone to allergy caused by nuts can be subjected to anaphylactic shock when exposed to even very small amount of nut fragments! Peanuts are the main culprit in causing nut allergy. Baby foods containing peanuts should not be given to kids who are yet incapable of digesting peanuts completely. As soon as those children are fed with peanut containing baby food, their body reacts. However, allergy to peanuts doesn't imply allergy to all the nuts. Children having problem to digest peanuts may be fine eating other types of nuts. It is so because peanuts (basically legumes) are not related with other kinds of nuts. Again, allergy to other nuts may not mean allergy to peanuts.